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Why Japan has such good railways

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Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#521

Post by al_borland »

prmoustache wrote: post #383
al_borland wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

The person I was replying to said to remove the parking and “nothing else”. To me this means no investment in transit options to compensate. This just kills the city as the money from the suburbs can’t get to the city to spend.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#522

Post by rootusrootus »

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.

It takes under a minute to find reputable sources which say that something on the order of 3 out 4 people prefer a suburban city environment. The remainder splits between preferring rural or dense urban.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#523

Post by rootusrootus »

yulker wrote: post #83
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…

One thing that is critical is that the country hasn't turned home ownership into an ever growing financial asset that is meant to carry the majority of one's wealth into perpetuity

Unfortunately that does not seem to have helped them keep housing affordable. Looks just as bad as anywhere else.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#524

Post by rendang »

mmooss wrote: post #268
superdisk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely common for there to be human shit in the train cars, and lunatics going nuts. It's absolutely nothing like Japan.

> It's extremely common for there to be human shit in the train cars, and lunatics going nuts Where does that come from? Not from your experience. You've never been on NY subways, clearly. I've never seen feces - and anyway, how could you tell if it's from a dog? Did you examine it? Take it home and test it? It's one of the stories that maybe is slightly plausible, and which yields such strong disgust that rationalit…

I lived in NYC for many years. Bodily fluids and liquid left on seats, litter, gag-inducing smelly people, people having episodes and screaming, all common enough to see on a weekly or monthly basis as a daily commuter. I have not been to Japan but I can't imagine they have the same level of antisocial behavior

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#525

Post by ghaff »

ericmay wrote: post #494
ghaff wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is like that phrase “nobody goes there anymore it’s too popular”. The surface parking lots would be replaced with things people want to go downtown for in the first place, never mind additional residences which mean more customers for businesses. Nowhere in the world, and I mean the entire world, has the scenario in which surface parking lots are replaced with other productive uses have resulted in a drop off in…

Nothing against multi-story garages.

Just go (or don't go) to places based on how much of a hassle it is to do so. If enough people--local or otherwise--want to visit good for them. I definitely make choices based on how easy or hard it is to get to the destination.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#526

Post by camgunz »

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…

> It’s not because people don’t know about trains. It’s because they don’t value the things you do, and they value things you don’t, like having distance from strangers and being able to buy a lot of stuff and cart it around with them everywhere.

But isn't this pretty fungible? Like it can't be that all the people genetically predisposed to like high density neighborhoods and biking to the grocery store happen to be in the Netherlands.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#527

Post by zawakin »

Japanese trains run on time not because of the tracks or the signaling. It's that any delay makes the total apology burden on station staff, conductors, and drivers grow exponentially. JR's timetabling is, in practice, an apology inflation containment policy.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#528

Post by QGQBGdeZREunxLe »

justanotherjoe wrote: post #167
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…

It's worth mentioning that swiss is a nation of 9 million, whereas Japan has 128 million people. I'm not sure how comparable it is. You probably don't need to pass through a lot of settlements for any public projects in swiss, for example.

Doesn't that make it more impressive? That such a small country can deliver an outstanding public transit network.

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#529

Post by cassepipe »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #439
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.

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…

Or maybe big vehicles which are inefficient from the point of view of physics (bigger = more energy to move around), take more space and damage the road more (more heavy, more bad for road) should be banned or taxed accordingly instead of having the law change the size of garages ?

Re: Why Japan has such good railways

#530

Post by selimthegrim »

enaaem wrote: post #327
rayiner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m probably a top 5% train nerd for the U.S. I took trains to work primarily from 2012-2020, in NYC, Philly, Baltimore, and DC. I used to ride Amtrak from Baltimore to DC every morning. I love Tokyo’s train system. I go there every year and I always take the train. But when I went there with my wife and three kids, I took a lot of Ubers! You can’t fit our double stroller with big America bags of toys and snacks on a…

If Tokyo was in America, your situation would be like this: imagine going outside of your home and walk for 10 minutes to a small hamburger shop. It only has 10 seats and it’s run a by hamburger nerd who makes elite hamburgers. This guy grinds his own beef, bakes his own buns and pickles his own pickles and everything is perfect. The burgers are only 8 dollars and you can’t even imagine of making hamburgers yourself.

This happens in New Orleans but the burger is like 28 dollars.
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