The good thing that happened seems to be that China has essentially 10xed the Japan railways template. I wonder how bad a car centric China would've had been.
the railways are excellent, but it's funny. I was just in Kyoto and saw flyers seemingly at every single temple opposing the Hokuriku Shinkansen extension. apparently this type of opposition has always existed (I looked at the history of trains in Japan and originally most Japanese did NOT want it at all because they thought it looked really ugly), like nimbys in USA, but such decisions are apparently federalized according to some Japanese nationals I spoke to, so the nimbys have no power.
USA should do the same (well, the current federal government is volatile to say, the least, but in general I think it'd be improvement).
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 important? Just look around.
I love the Japanese rail system. I am retired, now, so don't travel there, anymore, but I always used to cry, after coming back to the US, and getting on LIRR trains.
The most amazing thing, is how on-time they are, and how precise their stops are. They have marks on the platform, showing exactly where the doors will open (Protip: Don't stand directly in front of the doors, when they open). I hear that this is the result of human drivers; not robots. Apparently, engineer training in Japan is pretty intense.
I'm not sure how unique that is. Many rail systems, in most stations, have platforms only just long enough for the longest train. Most commuter stations in Ireland, say, can take the longest commuter train which calls at that station, and no more (typically because there were lengthened to that to accommodate that commuter train). It has to stop _fairly_ precisely, or some doors will be to nowhere.
(I am sometimes on a train that stops short, and then has to slowly crawl forward to align fully with the platform. This, unfortunately, causes delays.)
Japan also has amazing car infrastructure too! Last time I was there visiting family in the mountains, I was quite impressed by the number and quality of tunnels and spiral ramps. The highways are similarly privatized, with tolls like train fares reducing the need for government subsidies.
Japan has some of the best infrastructure anywhere. It will be interesting to see if they can keep it that way with their population changing and becoming more geriatric.
Japanese railways are indeed amazing, but it should be pointed out that peripheral routes are being dismissed everywhere in the country side, often isolating people and killing places.
Infrastructure is also dated in many places.
It's not a criticism to Japan, I think they are just facing the fact that many people move to the cities and the country is on a population decline as well.
In the West some private equity company would be buying these up, selling off the land and separate businesses, and screwing the rail passengers for all they can, until the whole thing sinks in a sea of debt. Then repeating the formula.
This article is dishonest about the level of privatization in the JR's.
Yes, they're private companies, and they do diversification like investing in real estate around their rail cooridors to grow towns and grab people looking to do some shopping in their adjacent department store as passengers are walking through the stations. This is transit-oriented development at its best. (Also, ask google why land property lines in the US western states often look like big checkerboards)
But there's no mention of the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency (JRTT). That's the government entity that builds many new Shinkansen lines. It then leases them to the JR companies at a fixed rate for 30 years. This keeps massive construction costs off the private companies' balance sheets.
Or when they do need large capital spends, there's no mention of the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program (FILP) which provides loans in the form of low-interest credit backed by government guarantees. Their creditors are effectively lending to the Japaneese government, not the JR company.
Is that kind of system really privatized? It's hybridized at best, and it shows that you really need government support of some sort to push country-scale infrastructure like this forward. Sorry free-market absolutists.
It's generally regarded that Hong Kong has the best subway in the world. There are many reasons for this, but one cannot be overstated: Hong Kong's geography. A huge portion of the city consists of long thin urban corridors sandwiched between mountains and the sea. As a result, Hong Kong need concentrate its funding on only a few subway lines to support a huge portion of the population.
This good article aside, I wonder if the same thing is true about Japan when we're talking about long-distance trains. Compared to France or Germany, Japan is basically a stick. A very large chunk of the populace lies on a single train line running from Kagoshima up to Hakodate, running through Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, Tokyo, Sendai, etc. So you can slap a single bullet train line there and service all of them.
In Japan there's a cross party political consensus that public transport projects are a net positive for society. That's important when you have work which could take a decade or more to complete - the Chuo maglev project for instance will be complete when my kids are approaching adulthood and they're still not in primary school. I often wonder what we might be able to do in New Zealand (where I'm from) if we had the money and population to support it. But then I remember that one of the two major political parties always cancels or scales back anything ongoing which is public transport related, every single time they're elected, so nothing ever gets done.
one thing worth pointing out is that the legacy private railways work because they were never nationalized and had decades to quietly buy up land around stations before it was worth anything. That's really hard to replicate from scratch. This model is great in dense cities but even Japan is still struggling with rural lines
“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 benefitted their society in ways we can only dream about here in the West.
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.
This 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.
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 transport in Tokyo shutting down completely at midnight. In contrast, the Swiss government-owned system delivers usable connectivity to almost any human settlement, even most mountain villages. The ticket prices are also not so different, which is surprising considering the large difference of salaries in the two countries.
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.
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.
"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.
The introduction lost me. To quote: "Japan’s vast railway network", but it does not address the mouse in the room. Japan is approximately the size of California with a population density that is three times that of California. I would argue that a comparison of rail systems without addressing those critical issues may be interesting but isn't really informative. The issues are complex.
> "I think that though we are a railway company, we consider ourselves a city-shaping company. In Europe for instance, railway companies simply connect cities through their terminals. That is a pretty normal way of operating in this industry, whereas what we do is completely different: we create cities and then, as a utility facility, we add the stations and the railways to connect them one with another."
I think this is it. The economic model incentivizes rail development. (Certainly, part of it is also cultural and legal frameworks that in the US make it very hard for this model to work)
Because the railway companies also participate in the economic activity at the destinations, they extract extended value from enabling mobility. Imagine if the rail operators owned a percentage of a stadium or convention center, for example. This then creates the economic incentive to build more connections to this "hub".
I believe America has built railway towns. I am surprised why America that’s very fond of capitalism never developed this concept further? With some aggressive horizontal integration you can built your own kingdom. It is brilliant!
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 72.4 ms ] threadUSA should do the same (well, the current federal government is volatile to say, the least, but in general I think it'd be improvement).
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 important? Just look around.
The most amazing thing, is how on-time they are, and how precise their stops are. They have marks on the platform, showing exactly where the doors will open (Protip: Don't stand directly in front of the doors, when they open). I hear that this is the result of human drivers; not robots. Apparently, engineer training in Japan is pretty intense.
I'm not sure how unique that is. Many rail systems, in most stations, have platforms only just long enough for the longest train. Most commuter stations in Ireland, say, can take the longest commuter train which calls at that station, and no more (typically because there were lengthened to that to accommodate that commuter train). It has to stop _fairly_ precisely, or some doors will be to nowhere.
(I am sometimes on a train that stops short, and then has to slowly crawl forward to align fully with the platform. This, unfortunately, causes delays.)
In Japan, that would get the engineer fired.
Japanese railways are indeed amazing, but it should be pointed out that peripheral routes are being dismissed everywhere in the country side, often isolating people and killing places.
Infrastructure is also dated in many places.
It's not a criticism to Japan, I think they are just facing the fact that many people move to the cities and the country is on a population decline as well.
They are facing this very masterfully.
Yes, they're private companies, and they do diversification like investing in real estate around their rail cooridors to grow towns and grab people looking to do some shopping in their adjacent department store as passengers are walking through the stations. This is transit-oriented development at its best. (Also, ask google why land property lines in the US western states often look like big checkerboards)
But there's no mention of the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency (JRTT). That's the government entity that builds many new Shinkansen lines. It then leases them to the JR companies at a fixed rate for 30 years. This keeps massive construction costs off the private companies' balance sheets.
Or when they do need large capital spends, there's no mention of the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program (FILP) which provides loans in the form of low-interest credit backed by government guarantees. Their creditors are effectively lending to the Japaneese government, not the JR company.
Is that kind of system really privatized? It's hybridized at best, and it shows that you really need government support of some sort to push country-scale infrastructure like this forward. Sorry free-market absolutists.
This good article aside, I wonder if the same thing is true about Japan when we're talking about long-distance trains. Compared to France or Germany, Japan is basically a stick. A very large chunk of the populace lies on a single train line running from Kagoshima up to Hakodate, running through Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, Tokyo, Sendai, etc. So you can slap a single bullet train line there and service all of them.
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 benefitted their society in ways we can only dream about here in the West.
South Koreans then took over. In between were the Taiwanese.
The next wave will be mainland China.
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.
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.
Because the railway companies also participate in the economic activity at the destinations, they extract extended value from enabling mobility. Imagine if the rail operators owned a percentage of a stadium or convention center, for example. This then creates the economic incentive to build more connections to this "hub".