The idea that travel to work is necessary, most work is in the middle of a city, and people need affordable places to live that are far from the city led to both the road and rail catastrophes we have in nearly every modernish city. A better question is "Why can't the employer be close to home?" or "Why can't the employer pay for my commute?"
Why Japan has such good railways
431–440 of 609 posts
Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#432This is a great article, but I think it’s hard to ignore that Japan’s culture of harmony is a big part of why they were able to choose sensible regulations that benefitted everyone. We struggle to pass even the most sensible land use reforms because entrenched interests want to remain entrenched even if it hurts the system overall.
It's also hard to ignore that Japan was bombed to smithereens in the 1940s and undertook a nationwide rebuilding effort that might have contributed to a more uniform approach to land use.
Not to mention that every few years either a typhoon or a 9.0 earthquake defeats any effort to build exceptional value in your property.
It seems the only thing that is permanent in Japan is impermanence.
Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#433The 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 discus…
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Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Please show the statistics and explain how they prove the direction of causality you're so confidently claiming.
Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#435Japanese 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…
"Japanese public transport is good, but no match for the Swiss system."
I did some internet searches and Tokyo seems to always come in first when comparing rail systems. Switzerland comes in 3rd sometimes. Reasons for Tokyo being ranked first seem to be utilization, safety and punctuality.
Public transportation shutting down at midnight might be an annoyance to some, but it is a blessing to those that reside very close to the metro lines.
Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can make reservations online: https://www.eki-net.com/en/jreast-train-reservation/Top/Inde...
But you still have to pick up the tickets at the machine. Additionally, my mobile phone internet is not recognized as "being in Japan", so I can't access the QR code needed for the ticket without wifi. You can work around it (save the QR code when you have wifi), but it all just seems so inefficient compared to all the countries where you can _book_ your tickets using a mobile app.
Actually, ticketless services are being rolled out. Example: https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/ticket/eticket.html
Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#437Earlier 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 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
I'm a Tokyo local and yes, this is real. Even I find it uncomfortable. On the Yamanote Line during rush hour, trains come every 2-3 minutes and it can still look close to this.
That said, most people's daily commute isn't this extreme -- it depends heavily on the line and direction. The tradeoff most Tokyo residents accept is: 30 minutes of crowded train vs. hours stuck in traffic with nowhere to park.
Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A lot of people would have to give up their cars. You don't have to give up the car, you just park it farther away from the dense and crowded downtown and use some other personal transportation (scooter, bike) for the last mile trip.
In a city with a properly-designed transit system you wouldn't need a car at all. I think it is quite telling how car ownership is viewed here: it it something you "have to" "give up". Car use has been normalized to such a point that it is viewed as a necessity, almost a God-given right, rather than just another mode of transport to get you from A to B. Even in bike-heavy and transit-heavy cities you'll be hard-press…
> In a city with a properly-designed transit system you wouldn't need a car at all.
That's the wrong argument. People stay in traffic for hours, being frustrated about the waste of time. Yet, when asked why they wouldn't take public transport, you hear a bunch of dumb arguments why public transport is shit.
I experience this all of the time in my city. Public transport is awesome and you get around just as fast as with a car (given there is no traffic, which rarely happens). Yet, people complain about how bad public transport is and how unreliable. But if you point out that car traffic is just as unreliable and slower, then they take their freedom-card. That's some cognitive dissonance, if nothing else.
I wouldn't give a shit about these people. It's just so damn funny to see that - unless public transport is immediate teleportation - it never is good enough for them -- even if it's objectively faster a lot of times. Public transport will never good enough for these negative Nellie's.
Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#439> 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.
It doesn't help that under-main-roof garages seem to be designed to only just fit small to medium sized cars despite the significant, rampant inflation of car sizes over the past few years.
My family tend to opt for smaller cars, because we're practical and don't have the faulty 'keeping up with the Joneses' gene, which means we can fit two cars in a two car garage.
We may still be in the majority, but it feels like it won't be for long.
UMR garage sizes should be inflating with the average car size. The Ford Ranger, essentially a fucking truck, and completely impractical, is the highest selling car in Australia because of backwards-thinking tax incentives from a few years ago, and then the ensuing Joneses effect.
Sigh... humans.
/rant
Re: Why Japan has such good railways
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you still have to pick up the tickets at the machine. Additionally, my mobile phone internet is not recognized as "being in Japan", so I can't access the QR code needed for the ticket without wifi. You can work around it (save the QR code when you have wifi), but it all just seems so inefficient compared to all the countries where you can _book_ your tickets using a mobile app.
Actually, ticketless services are being rolled out. Example: https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/ticket/eticket.html
This sounds great, especially as it's linked to the IC card. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything similar for JR West or JR Kyushu, which I will be using in the next few weeks. Hopefully they will implement the same system in the future.