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How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
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Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a big difference with much of the U.S. and Europe, Japan doesn't subsidize car ownership as heavily. There is no on-street parking in the city, businesses aren't required to provide parking and if you want to own a car you first have to prove you have a parking space for it.
You do some heavy assumptions about European nations
Any statement about "Europe" as a whole will always be an oversimplification. But in Germany all of this rings true. We have lots of on-street parking, business are frequently required to provide parking spots (depends on the municipality though), it's even becoming more common that new residential construction has to provide parking spaces for all residents, no matter if the actual residents own a car
And while Germany is probably a bit worse than European average, I have seen plenty of other similarly car-pilled places in Europe. Though also some positive examples. Paris has done a lot to bring some parks to a horribly car-infested city. Amsterdam is great. Rome is pretty decent. Few places in Europe are as bad as the US when it comes to car-dependence. But there are also very few places comparable to Japan's approach to car ownership
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#83[flagged]
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#84For those of you planning to go to Japan, please make sure you actually calculate how much JR train trips would cost you. They upped the price a few years ago and, since then, it's basically impossible for the JR Pass to be more affordable than single tickets. For one of my recent trips, I was actually more better served with a local pass (Kansai Wide Pass) than the JR Pass. Too bad because it used to be a really goo…
> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal... Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...
So when we get riots due to mass unemployment and societal destabilization can iredirect them to you. Im so tired of call for actions without even an attempt to discuss the fallout.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal... Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...
This is exactly the reason why in germany we have now a broad ticket for short distance trains. Government realized they fail to meet EU regulations in reducing CO2, so they rushed to implement a cheap german wide ticket. Initially just 10€, now 60€ a month. Still a bargain, you can go anywhere as mich forth and back as you want (just not the dedicated long distance trains, so going through all of germany takes a bit…
You can tell this is a true success in Germany because 95% of local passengers now use it. It also caused a significant increase in ridership, putting the already overloaded rail system under a lot more pressure while taking away income from the rail companies (after making it cheaper).
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly the reason why in germany we have now a broad ticket for short distance trains. Government realized they fail to meet EU regulations in reducing CO2, so they rushed to implement a cheap german wide ticket. Initially just 10€, now 60€ a month. Still a bargain, you can go anywhere as mich forth and back as you want (just not the dedicated long distance trains, so going through all of germany takes a bit…
You can tell this is a true success in Germany because 95% of local passengers now use it. It also caused a significant increase in ridership, putting the already overloaded rail system under a lot more pressure while taking away income from the rail companies (after making it cheaper).
Well yes, the idea is to have more people use the trains, so yes also more trains are needed(and more investment and replacement of the Bahn management) in general, but as far as I know there is no income taken away, as it is subsidized and compensated on the federal level.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#87The U.S had the greatest rail network and then we built the Interstate Highway system and abandoned rail. Truth is that nobody funds multiple competing transportation network. Japan chose rail, we chose highways.
The US did not abandon rail, it just used it for freight
Europe shifts people by train, not freight.
The US/Canada/Mexico is about 10% more than the EU, but it shifts 7 times as much freight by rail.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#88Something I don't see mentioned in this article is the nation-wide adoption of a universal transit-payment system: IC Card (Suica is only one of several companies, but often used colloquially to mean train card). This makes it so easy to board any bus/ferry/train without worrying about setting up 30 different accounts each with its own card system. I've lived in Japan for 4 years now and it was a bit of a culture sho…
Although I'm seeing more and more public transit around the world (including Japan) adopting tap-to-pay so you can use your regular debit/credit cards.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#89For those of you planning to go to Japan, please make sure you actually calculate how much JR train trips would cost you. They upped the price a few years ago and, since then, it's basically impossible for the JR Pass to be more affordable than single tickets. For one of my recent trips, I was actually more better served with a local pass (Kansai Wide Pass) than the JR Pass. Too bad because it used to be a really goo…
No only that, but to ride the fastest Shinkansen you still need to pay additional fee on top of JR Pass.
Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
#90For those of you planning to go to Japan, please make sure you actually calculate how much JR train trips would cost you. They upped the price a few years ago and, since then, it's basically impossible for the JR Pass to be more affordable than single tickets. For one of my recent trips, I was actually more better served with a local pass (Kansai Wide Pass) than the JR Pass. Too bad because it used to be a really goo…
No only that, but to ride the fastest Shinkansen you still need to pay additional fee on top of JR Pass.
Pedantic note: the fastest Shinkansen is the 320 km/h Hayabusa service from Tokyo to Hokkaido, which you can ride for free with a JR Pass.
The fastest service on the Tokyo-Osaka corridor, Nozomi, maxes out at 300 km/h but is indeed not included in the pass.