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

291–300 of 609 posts

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#291

Post by superdisk »

mmooss wrote: post #268
superdisk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rationalit…

I actually am speaking from experience, I saw both of those things my first week in New York. It's really not uncommon, I find it hard to believe that you've never run into shit/barf, usually when a car pulls up that has nobody in it, that's what's in there.

And this is all to say nothing about the decrepit state of the stations and cars themselves.

I've also been to Japan and experienced their trains. It's in such a different league that it's almost comedy.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#292

Post by dublinstats »

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…

Their streets tend to be super narrow, with pedestrians and bicycles sharing the shoulder. And back streets are basically alleys with pedestrians sharing the street with cars. Obviously parked cars there would be a disaster.

Also it tends to cost more via tolls to drive any significant distance than to take the train or bus (or plane for that matter), unless you have multiple people in the car. The car situation in Japan strikes me as more a case of regulatory capture than wise use of land. Because even small towns with vast empty spaces operate this way.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#293

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

superdisk wrote: post #291
mmooss wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 rationalit…

I actually am speaking from experience, I saw both of those things my first week in New York. It's really not uncommon, I find it hard to believe that you've never run into shit/barf, usually when a car pulls up that has nobody in it, that's what's in there. And this is all to say nothing about the decrepit state of the stations and cars themselves. I've also been to Japan and experienced their trains. It's in such a…

> It's really not uncommon, I find it hard to believe that you've never run into shit/barf, usually when a car pulls up that has nobody in it, that's what's in there.

NGL this isn't surprising on Japanese trains either. Especially around last train. It's not super common but you see it from time to time and you just use a different car and report it to the staff next time you see someone.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#294

Post by xnx »

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…

[dead]

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#295

Post by dullcrisp »

bobthepanda wrote: post #206
twodave wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rail for the US has always been more about moving goods than people. For overland long-haul freight it is significantly cheaper than trucking. Rail allows us to ship goods to places where we don’t have ports or river access. A place like Japan can make such good use of rail simply because it is so densely populated.

The US is also densely populated; when people are talking about high speed rail they are talking about connecting the major, close by metropolitan areas that most people live in. The Midwest, as an example, has roughly the same size and population as France with a larger economy. In fact, if you overlay the French TGV network onto the Midwest with Chicago where Paris is, you get a pretty good approximation of where m…

Even if it would serve the same population, I don’t think a system like this would have the same level of demand as France’s high speed rail.

Frankly, these don’t look like locations that that many people want to travel between.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#296

Post by jt2190 »

zbrozek wrote: post #87
dangus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes permissive zoning laws don’t actually encourage positive urban development outcomes. Example: Texas Zoning has to both exist and be well-designed.

I bet you'd see natural market driven concentration around rail stations in Texas too, if they had a useful rail network.

Dallas-Area Rapid Transit (DART) member cities all had to develop 25-year plans for denser development around station sites as a condition of their membership, if that’s what you mean by “natural”.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#297

Post by tokioyoyo »

jltsiren wrote: post #250
SilverElfin wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won’t fix the cost of rail in America, which is the main reason America doesn’t have better rail. Look at California high speed rail or light rail in Seattle. They have insane costs per mile, are still very over budget, falling behind schedule, and basically are forever grifts. The availability of parking is unrelated to these issues. It comes back to mismanagement and corruption.

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…

I think it's not feasible in America because of the culture. If you have a good chunk of people that are hell-bent against sharing space with others for one reason or another (some are legitimate reasons!), you're already discarding a significant chunk of passengers.

Another hot take is... if you want any of the infrastructure to be mass-used, you have to make it better than the alternatives, so people with the means would use it as well. Like your subway should be faster than the cars, so even affluent people would take it. Your trains should be faster than door-to-door flight time, so people would take that as well. Unfortunately that makes a lot of things more complicated in communities with high income disparity.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#298

Post by nunez »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #243
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…

Street parking makes suburbs worse, too. Almost everybody in my neighborhood has their garages piled to the ceiling with junk and parks in the street, which makes it a pain to weave through even for someone driving a compact crossover… I can’t imagine what kind of hell it is for trash and delivery drivers having to squeeze huge trucks and vans through without swiping peoples’ cars.

my absolute biggest pet peeve about living in "modern" suburbs and a large contributing factor behind why i wanted to (and eventually did) leave them.

imagine having the only well-maintained sidewalk for a good ways out be blocked by cars whose owners have 2+ car garages!

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#299

Post by bobthepanda »

dullcrisp wrote: post #295
bobthepanda wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is also densely populated; when people are talking about high speed rail they are talking about connecting the major, close by metropolitan areas that most people live in. The Midwest, as an example, has roughly the same size and population as France with a larger economy. In fact, if you overlay the French TGV network onto the Midwest with Chicago where Paris is, you get a pretty good approximation of where m…

Even if it would serve the same population, I don’t think a system like this would have the same level of demand as France’s high speed rail. Frankly, these don’t look like locations that that many people want to travel between.

Most travel happens between cities that are close together, and Chicago has always been the larger gateway to the rest of the nation and the world.

The French urban areas on the TGV aren’t very big; Montpelier, for example, has a total of 600,000 people in its metro area, which is roughly the same size as Toledo, OH or Wichita, KS.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#300

Post by bsder »

savanaly wrote: post #78
ttul wrote: post #75

“Japan’s liberal land use regulation makes it straightforward to build new neighborhoods next to railway lines, giving commuters easy access to city centers. It also enables the densification of these centers, which means that commuters have more places they want to go.” This is the most important paragraph in the article. It can’t be overstated how ingenious Japan’s system of zoning is and how much this has benefitt…

>how ingenious Japan’s system of zoning is I'm only barely familiar with it so I ask this in good faith: is it really ingenious or is it just more permissive? My bias/priors are that the simpler and truer statement is: it can't be overstated how beneficial more permissive zoning laws are to a society.

> I'm only barely familiar with it so I ask this in good faith: is it really ingenious or is it just more permissive?

Let's start from the glaring problem: The purpose of the US zoning system was institutionalized racism to keep the "undesirables" out rather than anything having to do with development management. Once you realize that, all of the misfeatures (NIMBY, excessive permitting, sclerotic bureaucracy, public participation) make obvious sense.

Practically every zoning system would be better than that.

Post reply on HN