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

301–310 of 609 posts

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#301

Post by nunez »

decimalenough wrote: post #283

This made it to the HN front page 4 days ago, under its (terrible) previous name "The secrets of the Shinkansen": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762060 And the top comment was mine, pointing out a bunch of factual mistakes and misleading claims: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765032

the "city merging" thing also happens in the US! particularly with school districts. this is why many gigantor middle/high schools exist; they serve HUGE coverage areas with many cities that are too small/rural to have their own school districts.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#302

Post by yongjik »

SilverElfin wrote: post #233
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…

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.

At the same time, the same government, mysteriously, has no problem building a vast network of roads reaching everywhere and spanning the whole country.

If the US government neglects a section of highway until a city becomes unreachable by roads, there will be riots. The same city losing a train service? Totally expected, trains are supposed to suck.

The sorry state of American public transport is a self-fulfilling prophecy: everybody knows that public transportation sucks, and therefore nothing is done to improve it, because it's a waste of resource.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#303

Post by wsatb »

SilverElfin wrote: post #233
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…

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.

That’s maybe the reason today to not build more but not the reason it is bad. America ignored rail for decades in favor of highway systems and now the cost is almost always considered infeasible. We will redo our roads every 5-10 years though.

If it was invested in 50 years ago or more we would be in a different place for sure.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#304

Post by scythe »

yongjik wrote: post #302
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.

At the same time, the same government, mysteriously, has no problem building a vast network of roads reaching everywhere and spanning the whole country. If the US government neglects a section of highway until a city becomes unreachable by roads, there will be riots. The same city losing a train service? Totally expected, trains are supposed to suck. The sorry state of American public transport is a self-fulfilling p…

>the same government, mysteriously, has no problem building a vast network of roads reaching everywhere and spanning the whole country.

Our road-building has slowed dramatically since the 1980s. The Interstate Highway network would be much more expensive and slow to build today.

>If the US government neglects a section of highway until a city becomes unreachable by roads, there will be riots.

Consider John's Island, South Carolina. The highway that was supposed to go there has been delayed for 33 years. Access to the island/town is through two two-lane roads that get backed up to a standstill every night. There's a running "joke" about how everyone is going to die if there's a major hurricane.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#305

Post by BirdieNZ »

dublinstats wrote: post #292
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 J…

It's significantly more efficient to provide services to compact towns than sprawled towns, so I'm not sure this registers to me as a downside.

It's pretty common for small sprawled towns to struggle to keep up with maintenance of roads/water/power, which is less of an issue with compact towns.

The same applies at the city level, of course.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#306

Post by scythe »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #218
mjamesaustin wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are dramatically misinformed. Where I live in Los Angeles, a very large number of people park their cars primarily or exclusively on the street. Such a change would have a significant impact.

> Where I live in Los Angeles, a very large number of people park their cars primarily or exclusively on the street. > Such a change would have a significant impact. What would that impact be? Do you see, or experience, a lot of contention for nighttime parking? There's plenty of contention for street parking in nonresidential areas. But a nighttime parking certificate doesn't do anything about that. Nighttime parkin…

>Do you see, or experience, a lot of contention for nighttime parking?

In the Hudson Waterfront of New Jersey, yes.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#307

Post by kulahan »

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…

A fellow Shoupista!

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#308

Post by kulahan »

newsclues wrote: post #181
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…

Makes you consider the cost of anything that is “free”

"free" just means "publicly subsidized" in these cases. Not that this is a bad thing, but that's really all it is. See also: literally anything any nation pays for using tax money.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#309

Post by bombcar »

nunez wrote: post #301
decimalenough wrote: post #283

This made it to the HN front page 4 days ago, under its (terrible) previous name "The secrets of the Shinkansen": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762060 And the top comment was mine, pointing out a bunch of factual mistakes and misleading claims: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765032

the "city merging" thing also happens in the US! particularly with school districts. this is why many gigantor middle/high schools exist; they serve HUGE coverage areas with many cities that are too small/rural to have their own school districts.

The bus from Cars 3 says “You about to feel the wrath of the Lower Belleville County Unified School District!” - and it works because almost all school districts people are familiar with in the USA have names similar to that, with the combinations and crossings of county and city.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#310

Post by kulahan »

mjamesaustin wrote: post #210
thaumasiotes wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before someone buys a car, they must prove that they have a reserved night-time space on private land, either owned or leased. > This is got to be a huge factor. If the USA implemented that exact rule, it would change almost nothing. People already need nighttime parking for non-legal reasons.

You are dramatically misinformed. Where I live in Los Angeles, a very large number of people park their cars primarily or exclusively on the street. Such a change would have a significant impact.

Neither LA nor NYC are even vaguely similar to the rest of the nation, so invoking their names when talking about national effects is pretty useless. They're insanely, unbelievably dense locations. The extreme majority of Americans do not live in anything near that dense.
Post reply on HN