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Why Japan has such good railways

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Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#341

Post by dnnddidiej »

nunez wrote: post #298
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Blocking the sidewalk should be fineable?

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#342

Post by cyberax »

ericmay wrote: post #224
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…

The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots in American downtowns and stopping the development and expansion of highways through the same. If you did nothing else that would have a significant positive impact. For almost all communities those surface parking lots are economic extracts from the community. They're woefully underpriced for tax purposes too.

> The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots

You're pre-supposing that transit is _better_ than cars. It's not. ESPECIALLY the Japanese transit.

I certainly don't want to suffer through this bullshit every day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Xg7ui5mLA

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#343

Post by dnnddidiej »

al_borland wrote: post #340
ericmay wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots in American downtowns and stopping the development and expansion of highways through the same. If you did nothing else that would have a significant positive impact. For almost all communities those surface parking lots are economic extracts from the community. They're woefully underpriced for tax purposes too.

The removed parking needs to be replaced by transit options people actually want to use. I live just outside a fairly large city. Getting downtown sucks. Driving is the only real option, but parking is annoying and expensive. Even if it was free, it would still be annoying. I almost exclusively take an Uber because of it. Those can add up and be a mixed bag as well. There is bus service, but it’s infrequent and quadr…

Buses are a simpler solution. A city should solve the anywhere to downtown is quick on bus or train thing. You need transit lanes and more buses. Ideal is public transit is faster and cheaper. Even someone who already has a car will not use it.

Then once solved, let people get across from one suburb to the next on transit quickly but that is harder to do economically.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#344

Post by SilverElfin »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #297
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…

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…

> 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.

These days cities often achieve this by purposely hurting the alternatives like driving. And that just isn’t the solution. Mass transit has to be fast period. Not just faster than a bad alternative. And it needs to be safe, and 24x7.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#345

Post by bradchris »

rayiner wrote: post #325
bradchris wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but with caveats. Culturally, though, it’s because that over half of the population doesn’t know that they would benefit from trains? In the same way outside (just as inside) the US there’s an age-old divide between farmers and city folk (see Denmark or France for the most recent protests). In China, >66% of the population lives in urban areas. In the US, The issue is not that those areas that would benefit the…

> Culturally, though, it’s because that over half of the population doesn’t know that they would benefit from trains No it’s not. Everyone in America goes to Disney World, which was made by a train nerd and you can’t even drive into the parks. Everyone goes there, rides around the trains and walkable areas, and then goes home to Ohio and drives around in their giant SUV. It’s not because people don’t know about train…

That’s fun, because I’m from a third generation Dallas family :) I hope they enjoy Dallas and all Texas has to offer.

Dallas, TX has continually voted in expanding its DART Rail funding the past 40 years. It has the most miles of intercity rail in the entirety of the South. It has the most light rail, by mileage, built in the entirety of the US. It just opened up an entirely new rail line through the suburbs (and only the suburbs) in March, and is its third(!) line which connects directly to DFW airport, which makes it the most rail-connected airport in the United States, and tied with Shanghai, Tokyo and London for the world.

I also personally currently live on a farm in California, and am an advocate of HSR. I believe many of those in similar areas are afraid of rail because they have never experienced its benefits, and change without knowledge is scary.

So please forgive me if I say that you are incorrect in both your assessment of how the majority of Dallas, Texas supports rail and your assumption of what I value.

And regarding your point about Disney World, I believe you are actually agreeing with me. Disney is one of the only places in the US it makes more sense to use the train or shuttle than a car. It does not in most of the US. Many people go to Disney World and experience for the first time how well trains can work for day-to-day transit, if designed well and intentionally. People will use what is most convenient, immigrant or not — most people (including me) do not take trains out of some principled stance, they do so when it’s more convenient. And my argument is we should make it more convenient, safety and all.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#346

Post by landedgentry »

reenorap wrote: post #319

Japan's railways are amazing. They are amazing because the workers have low wages, so the companies can afford to over-employ, so they have workers that are doing things like wiping the handrails every hour, and ensuring that the bathrooms are meticulous. The trains are very clean and very safe, which encourages use more to the point where everyone uses them and alternatives are starved for money. Workers can afford…

This tweet finds that US systems like BART and MTA have more employees, when adjusted by number of riders or miles of track, than JR East, which seems to contradict your comment.

https://xcancel.com/shinobu_books/status/2043991756291879024

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#347

Post by unselect5917 »

swed420 wrote: post #229
dudul wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the reasons people usually invoke? And what are the "true reasons"?

Most people using the term "low trust society" are implying that certain subsets of the population are the cause of it, often with racial (non-white) and/or economic (lower class) components, whereas somebody like me views those groups and their behaviors, to the extent that it's true, as a symptom of the low trust society rather than the root cause. For me, the root cause is systemic corruption all the way to the to…

And they are obviously correct as the per capita statistics prove out over and over and over and over and over again.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#349

Post by ehfeng »

Barrin92 wrote: post #260
newyankee wrote: post #2

The good thing that happened seems to be that China has essentially 10xed the Japan railways template. I wonder how bad a car centric China would've had been.

In urban areas China is just as car centric. A lot of cities look like Robert Moses wet dreams[1]. Beijing and Shanghai have so many expressways, ring roads and arterial streets they look like they were built by Americans. The rail network in the country to get from city to city is great but the urban planning is taken out of Metropolis [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Tongzhou_Expre...

Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong are simply in a class of their own. imo, Shanghai and Guangzhou have decent systems.

Compare China's urban areas to Asia's other major developing nations: Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila. China can do much better, but there's also much, much worse urban planning out there.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#350

Post by gonzalohm »

ciupicri wrote: post #282
gonzalohm wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which part of Europe is cheap to park?

Romania. Even its capital and the largest city - Bucharest - is still pretty cheap, sometimes even free like in this example on Google Street View https://maps.app.goo.gl/r6TFFtHbj2SELTqY9 If you're willing to take the risk which is pretty low, you can even park it on the sidewalk like here https://maps.app.goo.gl/y6DNVBdR2KvJsA917 But times are changing. Lanes and sidewalks, sometimes even green spaces, are being co…

That's probably an exception. Most cities I know in Europe have crazy expensive parking and usually forbid cars from entering the city center. I would say EU cities are really hostile to cars
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