Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Japan has such good railways

worksinprogress.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 609 posts

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#261

Post by weberer »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #117
fsh wrote: post #97

Japanese public transport is good, but no match for the Swiss system. Outside of big cities, the coverage is spotty, and even reasonably large towns are only connected by reserved-only trains every couple of hours that get booked out days in advance. The almost complete lack of digitization is also remarkable (reservations have to be made with machines in the stations). There are other annoyances such as the public t…

How could a route busy enough to completely fill a train every few hours not justify some kind of regularly scheduled service?

Most cities at least have night busses. Tokyo has 0 options after midnight.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#262

Post by gonzalohm »

vantassell wrote: post #174

> Japan is one of the only countries to have privatized parking. In Europe and North America, vast quantities of parking space is socialized: municipalities own the streets and allow people to park on them at low or zero cost. Initially with the intention of encouraging the provision of more parking spaces, Japan made it illegal to park on public roads or pavements without special permission. Before someone buys a ca…

In which part of Europe is cheap to park?

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#263

Post by dgellow »

chmod775 wrote: post #221
dgellow wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw that’s what we have in Germany, unless you live in remote places. You always have a Lidl, Aldi, or REWE you can walk or bike to. No idea what our local zoning laws are

Not really the same thing. They're much larger already than most stores you'd see in urban Japan. Think more in terms of small convenience stores ("Spätis" with daily necessities) everywhere. Typical distance to a store is maybe 500-1000m in Germany. In dense areas of Japanese cities it's closer to one store every 100m-200m. So in Germany it'd be a 10 minute walk, while in Japan most of your "walk" would be getting d…

I see. What you describe does seem to match what I experienced in NYC, Portugal, and Spain? Small supermarkets everywhere with a bit of a random selection of items

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#264

Post by weberer »

ladberg wrote: post #36
jmull wrote: post #33

I’d think Japan being a long, skinny, population dense country has to help. There’s just more potential in every km of rail laid.

Is that not similar to both the west and east coasts of the US?

The Northeast Corridor in the USA has great rail service. Its the best way to travel between DC and NYC.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#265

Post by kavok »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #178
kavok wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBY seems to have a hard time stopping data centers. Why do they have more success stopping renewables and rail?

NIMBY is stopping data centers. Maine set to become first state with data center ban: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/09/maine-data-center-ban.html Also, it's a different kind of more insidious and visceral NIMBY rooted in racism and classism.

Sure, it’s stopping some, but not most/all even with strong public opposition.

See: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/small-missouri-to...

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#266

Post by ladberg »

weberer wrote: post #264
ladberg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not similar to both the west and east coasts of the US?

The Northeast Corridor in the USA has great rail service. Its the best way to travel between DC and NYC.

I'm very aware! I live in NYC and have taken many trains up/down the corridor. But it still pales in comparison to the experience I get in Japan (which is cheaper, nicer, faster, more frequent, often more direct, connects up better to local transit within cities, etc.)

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#267

Post by wahern »

WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #256
jltsiren wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of passenger rail is high in America, because America doesn't build enough rail. If you try building a single megaproject, nobody knows what they are doing, everything is inefficient, and mistakes will be made. But you learn by doing. If the individual projects are small enough that there are always multiple projects in various stages, you develop and maintain expertise. Then you can build things cost-effect…

> The cost of passenger rail is high in America, because America doesn't build enough rail. The cost of passenger rail is high in America because America has 11% of the population (read: customer) density of Japan. (For cities, NYC has 25% lower population density than Tokyo.)

Dividing population by total land area is a horribly misleading way to understand density. There are alternatives, like population-weighted density, that give you a better picture: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3119965 Here's a blog post where somebody re-invented the concept and analyzed density in Europe: https://theconversation.com/think-your-country-is-crowded-th...

The population-weighted density of the US is roughly similar to continental Europe.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#268

Post by mmooss »

superdisk wrote: post #187
mmooss wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always hear all these weird stories The weird stories, about anything, are nonsense; sensationalized to either be emotoinally compelling or even active disinformation to serve some political end (especially about American cities, especially about NYC.) It's just induced fear. Just go to NY and ride the subway. Millions do all the time without any problems, without a second thought. It's really no problem and amaz…

It's extremely common for there to be human shit in the train cars, and lunatics going nuts. It's absolutely nothing like Japan.

> It's extremely common for there to be human shit in the train cars, and lunatics going nuts

Where does that come from? Not from your experience. You've never been on NY subways, clearly.

I've never seen feces - and anyway, how could you tell if it's from a dog? Did you examine it? Take it home and test it? It's one of the stories that maybe is slightly plausible, and which yields such strong disgust that rationality is overwhelmed and it makes a sensation - perfectly constructed misinformation or urban myth. Like waking up in a bathtub with a kidney missing.

'Lunatics' is such a loaded (and hateful) word you'll have to specify what you mean, but the occasional person talking to themself is harmless and completely uninterested in you (thus the conversation with themself) - I have never had any problem with such people on public transit or elsewhere. They are the most vulnerable people and compassion is the appropriate response.

As I wrote above, the stories are nonsense and it's induced fear.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#269

Post by PacificSpecific »

vantassell wrote: post #174

> Japan is one of the only countries to have privatized parking. In Europe and North America, vast quantities of parking space is socialized: municipalities own the streets and allow people to park on them at low or zero cost. Initially with the intention of encouraging the provision of more parking spaces, Japan made it illegal to park on public roads or pavements without special permission. Before someone buys a ca…

Wow weird. I've lived there and never knew but now that you've pointed that out I'm realizing we never parked on the street. It's always at the house or the parking lot of the place we're going.

Of course 95% of the time we take the train. Only use a car to go to Costco or possibly go out to the country (even then a lot of remote areas are super accessible in public transit)

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#270

Post by vondur »

vantassell wrote: post #174

> Japan is one of the only countries to have privatized parking. In Europe and North America, vast quantities of parking space is socialized: municipalities own the streets and allow people to park on them at low or zero cost. Initially with the intention of encouraging the provision of more parking spaces, Japan made it illegal to park on public roads or pavements without special permission. Before someone buys a ca…

I think it is. You have to prove that you have a space to park your car and if you have space at your house, they come to measure and verify that you do. I don't mind parking for places that you are visiting, but you need to have your own parking and not depend on the street for it.
Post reply on HN