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Why Japan has such good railways

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Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#421

Post by wallst07 »

zhdc1 wrote: post #168
ianm218 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe and USA are both huge places so it depends what you mean. If you compare major east coast cities - Boston, DC, and NYC to European metros like Paris/ Madrid/ Lisbon the biggest tax on the citizens is the same in that it’s impossible to build anything so a huge % of income needs to go to housing.

East coast cities were built before modern building codes. Something that, for some reason, people in the states don't want to accept is that - when given the choice - the vast majority of people prefer living in dense urban environments.

>the vast majority of people prefer living in dense urban environments.

The vast majority of people REQUIRE to live NEAR their employment which happens to be in cities.

Look what happened to NYC real estate rent when you gave people the choice of NOT doing that. Look what happens when you force them back to the office, they come back, but not by choice.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#422

Post by laughing_man »

The real reason Japan has such good railways has to do with politics. Japanese politicians were unable to create jobs (and collect bribes) with military spending due to post war constitutional restrictions, so instead of a military industrial complex they created what some have dubbed the "construction state".

That's why they have cisterns under Tokyo which can handle a 400 year flood, and more germane to this discussion, railways which make no sense. There are railways built in the '90s which wend their way through a dozen of mountain passes to provide rail service to tiny towns with just a few thousand residents. There's no way you can justify paying the maintenance on something like that, and indeed in recent years they've been shutting these kinds of lines down.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#423

Post by wallst07 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #411
cmatza wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP addresses that. Japan is not particularly dense, especially outside of core downtowns. You see the same dynamics in London and Paris. People do not "prefer to live in dense urban environments" by urbanist standards. They prefer to live in dense urban environments by North American standards, which can still be far less dense than urbanists really want.

> People do not "prefer to live in dense urban environments" by urbanist standards. Nobody wants to live there, it's too crowded and there's too much demand for housing! Oh wait, that makes no sense.

YES it does, JOBS!

You are required to live there, its not a choice.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#424

Post by vixen99 »

gonzalohm wrote: post #262
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?

One way of reducing the need for parking somewhat is to introduce a 20 miles per hour (32 kph) speed limit. A number of British cities and the entire country of Wales have done this. One guy has been fined repeatedly for doing 22mph. One more transgression and he loses his license. "Keeping your eye on the speedometer while watching the road is tricky". Presumably his car doesn't have a cruise control. Seems this speed limit is quite stressful and may encourage some to use public transport if they can.

https://www.gov.wales/introducing-default-20mph-speed-limits

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#425

Post by ericzundel »

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…

I was thinking that Japan and Switzerland likely have good rail networks because the buildable land is severely constrained by geography. In those cases mountains, and connected only by thin linear corridors (valleys and near coastlines). Look at this map of Japan: The green areas aren't just natural areas, they are too mountainous to build cities.

https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ALOS/en/dataset/lulc_e.htm

In other places with large, flat expanses, human civilization spreads out to an extent that expensive railroads just can't serve the needs/desires of people. You could artificiallly constrain it, but you know what? People in general just don't like being told what to do.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#426

Post by crote »

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…

> The removed parking needs to be replaced by transit options people actually want to use.

Removing surface lots doesn't immediately mean removing parking. You're still free to build parking - you just have to integrate it into the building it is serving. Which gives you a pretty big incentive to only build the parking you actually need, and share it with neighboring buildings to reduce costs.

> Removing parking doesn’t build a train, it just raises parking rates, keeping people from even bothering to go downtown.

Removing surface lots means increasing density, which means the same transit stop can serve more people, which lowers per-passenger costs and allows for higher-frequency running and denser transit networks.

It's a chicken-and-egg problem: you don't want surface lots removed because there is no good alternative, but a good alternative isn't economically viable due to the surface lots enforcing low density.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#427

Post by bamboozled »

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…

I don't think you can have Japanese zoning rules without Japanese culture. They have a lot of respect for other people and their property. Not always, but I just I can't think of many other places in the world where it would work.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#428

Post by bamboozled »

kulahan wrote: post #388
pjc50 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Postal savings at 2% interest. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/08/how-did-japan-s-...

Rough.

Is it rough when a house costs 10-20x less than in countries where the best you can reasonable hope for is a whopping 10% return on your money?

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#429

Post by crote »

gonzalohm wrote: post #262
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?

Most of it? Parking is only expensive in dense downtown areas. Go out into the suburbs and on-street parking is almost always free.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#430

Post by bamboozled »

thegreatpeter wrote: post #18
andrewstuart wrote: post #11

Countries like Japan seem to make policy that serves the people. Other countries decisions serve politicians, corporates, the rich, and maybe possibly finally, the citizens. Here in Melbourne a city of 5 million people we don’t have a train from the airport to the city despite decades of political talk about it. But why not? Because the Airport Coporation makes vast unfathomable profit on car parking. What’s most imp…

most of the japanese railway system is private. their 2 largest companies are some of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.

I believe most of it was sold off after it was built, am I wrong?
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