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Why Japan has such good railways

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Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#441

Post by brigandish »

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…

This only applies to night time, and trains stop early compared to many other places. Also, there are plenty of paid parking spaces for use during the day, and you’ll often find cars parked in the street, even narrow ones, with the hazard lights on like they’re a magic spell, which they are, because enforcement is close to zero. You will even see cars parked on the road next to a car park.

All in all, I don’t think there’s any relationship between Japan’s car culture, parking rules or availability, and its train system.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#442

Post by walthamstow »

crote wrote: post #429
gonzalohm wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True in England for sure. People in towns and suburbs, which is most of the country, think they have a god-given right to park on the street outside their house.

Even in urban London areas there is usually onstreet parking, it isn't free but it is quite cheap, you buy a permit from the council for ~£400 a year. On a square footage basis that is extremely cheap land rent!

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#443

Post by tokioyoyo »

wallst07 wrote: post #416
rayiner wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

100% This is true. The only people I hear clamoring for trains in non urban areas are younger online folks (mostly living in urban areas). I rarely hear anyone ask for it in suburbia.

Frankly, if you've never lived in a place with clean, reliable, fast trains, you probably would be disillusioned and would never go to the train life. Or if your public infrastructure is deemed "for poor people".

Back to my original point, it's a cultural problem.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#444

Post by thaumasiotes »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #403
thaumasiotes wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But permission to park in front of your own house is trivial to obtain in the US (as the thread has noted, generally not even necessary to obtain, but in some cases it is necessary to get permission) and would satisfy the requirement. You can imagine a regime where parking in front of your own house is banned as a policy choice, but that's completely different from a regime where you need to document that you have pe…

> You can imagine a regime where parking in front of your own house is banned as a policy choice Yes, I believe that's exactly what's being referred to. A blanket ban on street parking and requiring documentation of a dedicated off street parking space to register a vehicle. Of course there would be little to no point to such an exercise in a nation where the majority of the streets have wide shoulders specifically i…

> Yes, I believe that's exactly what's being referred to. A blanket ban on street parking and requiring documentation of a dedicated off street parking space to register a vehicle.

Not at all. I agree with you that that's what they're hoping to express. But it's not what they said. The proposal is just "a reserved nighttime space on private land".

Street parking in front of your house is not necessarily banned by that requirement. The edge of the street can easily be part of the house lot. It can also easily be owned by a private company that owns the whole edge of the street and leases that space to homeowners.

But note that that company wouldn't be worth much, because residential street parking is not in short supply. Which is what I've been pointing out above.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#445

Post by ghaff »

bamboozled wrote: post #419
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.

There is an absolute mind-boggling number of garages full of crap in Japan too.

I think it's a corollary of Parkinson's Law: Crap expands to fill the space available for it. It's one reason I've never gotten a shed rather than just depending on my garage to store stuff in the winter when I need to get any cars off the driveway for plowing. Too much temptation to just fill spaces up.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#446

Post by ghaff »

wallst07 wrote: post #413
prmoustache wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you remove parking spaces it solves itself because traffic is reduced and transit options become more efficient AND more financially sound.

Or people just stop going there.

Exactly. I already don't go into the large relatively nearby city as much as I used to because of both general inclination and traffic/parking hassles. Which is fine.

But if people in the main stop going into the city you'd probably see a drop-off in the city amenities that make many people want to live there in the first place.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#447

Post by wongarsu »

bamboozled wrote: post #419
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.

There is an absolute mind-boggling number of garages full of crap in Japan too.

Garages are the easiest way to get cheap storage space attached to or close to your home. Apart from garden sheds.

The issue is really the perverse incentive: if there is free onstreet parking, its usually more useful to put your car on the street and use the garage for something else. For many people that might even hold true if they have to walk a bit to the next parling spot

That's really hard to escape unless you remove free on-street parking from large areas at once

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#448

Post by wongarsu »

skybrian wrote: post #354
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…

It would make a difference in dense cities like San Francisco where many people park on the street. A lot of people would have to give up their cars. Meanwhile, in rural areas and many suburbs, it would be pointless paperwork, because everyone has a big enough driveway for their cars and nobody parks on the street at night. So it seems like it would be difficult to get enough people in favor to do it state-wide in Ca…

In dense cities parking garages (both underground, free standing and on top of commercial properties) works great to give high-density parking space

The difficulty would be in transitioning. Building spots only open up so often

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#449

Post by bluefirebrand »

presentation wrote: post #364
bluefirebrand wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, people from western countries have very negative views toward the privatization of mass transit despite the wild success that Japan has experienced Japanese culture would frown heavily on enshittifying the transit experience to earn more profit. Western culture mass transit is already often shitty, and I cannot imagine how shit it would become if a for profit corporation took it over and started to s…

Did you read what I said? The whole Japanese system is for profit and the one of the biggest reasons for Japan’s system being so pleasant is that it is done for commercial purposes. If the incentives are right American companies can make good things, but usually they are not so because of poor policy.

> If the incentives are right American companies can make good things, but usually they are not so because of poor policy

I disagree. The incentives are never right for American companies because the only incentive they care about is making money at all costs. They don't even care about their reputations anymore if they can sell their rep for money

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#450

Post by codethief »

bregma wrote: post #432
SoftTalker wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Isn't that the same in certain regions of the US?

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