Discussion
The Works in Progress Newsletter
0x3f: It's a good article, but I think the "it's not culture, just good governance" idea is a little hand wavy. The two bleed into each other greatly. The fact that houses are more disposable and wealth is less intergenerational in Japan does a lot to tamp down the NIMBY issues that plague e.g. the UK.The UK is so far gone that the transport authority in it's largest city can't revamp stations or do add-on development without literal years of hand wringing. And even then it's often rejected or reduced in the end.
marak830: Title should be "The secrets of the Shinkansen" which is odd for a (very well written) piece about Japanese commuter trains (non-shinkansen versions).Maybe it's a carry on though "This is the third article we have released from Issue 23".
limitedfrom: On the magazine itself, it seems to be labeled "Why Japan has such good railways"[1] instead[1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-japan-has-such-good-rai...
l5870uoo9y: It’s fascinating to read but I have a hard time imagining a public western railway provider could evolve into a train based mega corporation doing real estate and health services.
dkdbejwi383: Transport for London (TfL) have a fledgling property development arm called Places for London which aims to try and replicate some of the successes of Japanese railway companies. They propose the mooted Bakerloo line extension is partially subsidised by over-station developments.
keiferski: The idea that culture can be divorced from other aspects of society seems like one of the biggest misconceptions of the 20th century.
ljsprague: Would "other aspects of society" include race?
razorbeamz: These mixed companies can be very confusing to tourists especially. I'm always answering questions from tourists who are confused why they can't buy a ticket to where they want to go.
0x3f: Almost everything works with Suica, no? Although to be fair I guess tourists are _more_ likely to use the heritage lines with slightly different rules.
razorbeamz: Tourists are often buying paper tickets. There's no way for a foreign Android phone to use a digital Suica, so people with Android are stuck with a physical card or paper tickets, and there's a lot of outdated information online that the physical cards are in low supply (They were last year but this year they're not).
Animats: Japan's railroad system has a big geographic advantage - the country is long and narrow. The railroad system is primarily a long end to end line with short crosswise branches.[1] That's an efficient structure. The branch lines don't have to be fast. Many are still narrow gauge, at 3 ft 6 in.The US had to fill a huge area in the railroad era. That left a lot of underutilized track once the road network got good.[1] https://www.jrailpass.com/pdf/maps/JRP_japan.pdf
socalgal2: That's got zero to do with anything. you do not need to add rail to the whole country.As an example SF Bay Area and Switzerland are about the same size, SF has double the population density. It has a Bay, Switzerland has mountains. Switzerland has like 10x the trains. There's no reason SF Bay couldn't too.It's similar for most metro areas.
wahern: > the country is long and narrowThe northeast and west coast metropolitan corridors are similar, and combined have comparable populations, densities, and distances as Japan. Yet we can't even build a single high-speed line. And for all the excuses about the difficulty of building rail through developed regions, the existing rights of ways and infrastructure in both the NE and California are comparable to what everybody else has had to work with, at least in the past 50 years. The density of the NE is nothing like what you see elsewhere in the world, especially Asia, and Japan and China specifically.It's lack of political will and ambition, period, by both the community and leadership. And excusing our inability by pointing at the hurdles only perpetuates the paralysis.
m4rtink: Japan is also mostly mountains and is prone to natural disasters like earthquakes and Typhoon induced floods.Sonce our first trip in 2017 at least two railways we rode have been damaged enough to be partially inoperable and under lengthy restoration work - Hisatsu line (washed away bridges) and Kurobe Gorge railway (bridge destroyed by earthquake).
0x3f: TfL can barely build some flats in Zone 2 without the locals rioting like they're destroying a Cotswolds village. Actually, it can barely fix the literal busiest station in the country without a bunch of minor celebrity detractors riling up everyone about how much of a travesty it is that we're doing it.Without the public or central government support, the efforts you're talking about amount to very little.
objclxt: > Actually, it can barely fix the literal busiest station in the countryLiverpool Street isn't managed by TfL, it's managed by Network Rail.
ta8903: >the country is long and narrowThis is a little counterintuitive but it does make a difference.I recently moved from a coastal city (that is very linear) to a landlocked city spread evenly in all directions. I had naively assumed the new city would be easier to get around in, since on average places would be closer to you. But the first city has decent commuter rail, which meant I could get to the other end of the city in an hour, and use cabs for last mile connectivity.I'm sure you can have good public transit in "round" cities too, but it is certainly more difficult to plan.
Gigachad: There is no excuse for the US’s failure. Many countries have large areas to cover. China is a similar size and has massive HSR coverage. The US could too if they didn’t waste all the money on corruption.
radicalbyte: Russia is far larger and far less populated, it's an economic backwater and a cultural dead end. Yet despite that they have rail connecting their country together.
hirako2000: [delayed]
kevmo314: Is this an Android thing? My US iOS works fine with digital Suica.
timr: > The density of the NE is nothing like what you see elsewhere in the world, especially Asia, and Japan and China specifically.Yeah, I defy anyone who claims the US can't build trains "because of density" to fly to Tokyo, and actually take the Seibu Shinjuku line west from Shinjuku station. Look at those buildings built right next to the tracks, for many, many kilometers. People live in those -- if the windows opened, you could reach out and touch the laundry on the balconies that overlook the tracks.Compared to that (and let's be clear: that's one average line in west Tokyo), even the Acela line in the east coast is a bad joke, density-speaking. The US doesn't build decent trains because the US is corrupt and sclerotic and run by incompetent people, not because of some mythical structural advantage in Magical Asia.
radicalbyte: The Netherlands is a similar shape to the continental contiguous United States yet we have an excellent public transport system. Very good trains and every population has awesome cycling infrastructure.The US could have all of this and more in their populated areas. They're the richest country in the world. Why is the infrastructure so neglected? It's clearly a choice.
Conan_Kudo: The question to ask is "who owns the rail lines?". That matters for having a good rail system. It's basically the same problem for why the US doesn't have fiber internet available everywhere, too.
Conan_Kudo: China also has nationalized rail systems. The major reason for the failure in the US is that the rail lines are not publicly owned. The reason the rail systems never got upgraded and Amtrak couldn't deploy high speed rail everywhere (despite it being a national priority in the 70s, 80s, and 90s) is that outside of the northeast corridor, Amtrak doesn't own the lines and couldn't get the owners to allow Amtrak to upgrade them for passenger high speed rail.
izacus: US army can deploy air force, tankers, soldiers and all the logistics together with Burger King anywhere in the world within days and somehow people that pay for it still think a simple rail in their home turf is impossible.
ekianjo: > these trains are loud, and run basically from 4AM until 1AM every dayNot that bad actually. You get used to it and even if trains are frequent they don't need 10 minutes to pass by your home.
timr: I've heard people say that, but I find it hard to believe. I think I'd go nuts. And sure, they don't take 10 minutes to pass, but the busy lines (like the Seibu line I mentioned) are running at least 2-3 trains every 10 minutes, so they might as well be continuous.The houses built next to the crossing points, in particular, have always boggled my mind. BING BING BING BING BING....
sparkie: If you intend to do a fair amount of travelling and your stay is <3 weeks, it may be worth getting a JR Pass[1]. It doesn't work for all lines, but does include the Shinkansen and several of the major inner-city lines. Buses too.Probably not worth it if you're only visiting one city as the pass is quite expensive. There are regional tourist passes though.[1]:https://japanrailpass.net/en/
ekianjo: Because most western train companies are nationalized or co owned by the state. They don't even have to turn a profit.
nephihaha: Once you get past the Urals, most of Russia's development is along an east west axis until you reach Baikal and the the far east. Also as a Marxist dictatorship for some years, there was little emphasis on independent travel (cars etc)To call Russia a "cultural dead end" is a bit much, considering all the great artists of various kinds that country has produced. In fact, you'll find that famous Russian novels like Anna Karenina and Doctor Zhivago feature trains as motifs.
williamdclt: > So did France. There is a common factor at play with Russia. Has little to do with the country's shape.You'll have to make yourself clearer, I have no idea what you're implying
Conan_Kudo: Apple doesn't make regional variants of the phone, so all models have the technology built-in, even if it's disabled by default. Android phones outside of Japan lack Suica support.
razorbeamz: And Pixel phones have the tech, but you need to flash a Japanese ROM to be able to use it.
vidarh: When we visited Tokyo last year, what stopped us from even trying was the online information we came across was unclear and suggested we could only get the physical cards at the airport and at some tourist office, and we forgot to look for it at the airport... I don't know if that is correct or not, but compare Oyster in London which is advertised at practically every corner store, so even if you get into town not knowing the system, it's hard not to find somewhere you can get a card (or you can just use contactless - I haven't had an oyster card in years).The UK is completely chaotic ticket-wise on a national level, though.
razorbeamz: The card mentioned in the guides you read is the "Welcome Suica" that's only for tourists.You can get a normal Suica just about anywhere.
DeathArrow: Isn't Netherlands trying to deter from car use by laws and taxes and at the same time funneling public money into railroads and bike infrastructure?>The US could have all of this and more in their populated areas.Probably people in US have other priorities and that means there are other public policies.
CalRobert: I dunno, centre right national governments in recent years have been pretty car friendly. Driving can be cheaper for family outings. For two adults and two teens to go from Utrecht to Amsterdam and back (26 minutes each way) is €48 (with discount if you buy a flex pass monthly) or €80 without a discount. Suddenly driving is pretty competitive
aposm: I think a big part of it is also that (partly because of the necessity of building for earthquake resistance), Japanese construction is a lot more robust than American housing, and also tends to have extremely good soundproofing on windows and doors. Actually, it's most of the rest of the world, except the US.
Shitty-kitty: The advatange they have is that all 4 of their major metropolitan areas are in a straight line across flat land. The enemy of high-speed is any diviations from flat and straigh. On he accela top speed can be maintained less then 40% of the trip.
aposm: All the major metro areas on the Acela corridor are also on a straight line, on significantly flatter land than Japan. Notice how the Acela never spends 10+ minute periods in long, deep tunnels under mountain ranges. The Acela primarily spends most of the trip going below 100 mph because it is operating on 100+ year old infrastructure that has only ever been upgraded piecemeal as it starts to fail.
dogscatstrees: I'm drawn by the style and aesthetics of the charts in combination with the fonts used in them.
Liftyee: I noticed when I visited Japan that the crossing chimes quieten once the barriers have fully lowered.Just another example of Japanese attention to detail and human oriented design.
timr: Not where I am standing right now!(I mean, maybe you’re right in some places, but it’s certainly not everywhere. Ironically, I happened to be standing next to a completely empty crossing, bonging away, while reading your comment. You’re engaging in a bit of Magical Japan.)
dandellion: Here in Spain a huge chunk of the population lives along the coast, so obviously what we need is a radial network along the coast, with a few spokes connecting to Madrid in the center. But for whatever reason it's impossible to make any trains that go anywhere other than the capital.
Tor3: The nearest crossings where I live indeed stop the chimes when the barriers have been lowered. This doesn't actually make much of a difference really, because the train arrives only a few seconds after, and, because it's a local line, there are never more than three cars in the train so it passes very quickly.Not that I'm bothered by the chimes at all. And grandson loves them.
Tor3: As the sister comment said - the houses are just strong enough not to fall over in a "normal", all-the-time earthquake. Our house sways a lot under typhoons and far-away earthquakes (far away = long wavelengths). It's only relatively recent that building codes have been updated to handle real earthquakes without falling over like a house of cards. Remember the Noto earthquake Januar 1, 2024? Large areas didn't have a single house still standing.(Which is why we're now tearing down our old house and building a new, stronger one. Post-war Japan was more concerned with a) building a lot of houses, and b) keep lots of jobs, which meant, as far as houses were concerned, building use-and-throw-away houses. Then build another. And another. And don't talk to me about sound proofing.. it's non-existing. What with no insulation in walls.)
aposm: When I lived in Japan it was in a relatively recent (last 10 years) but not brand new apartment block - Maybe if you are talking about a rural area or an old postwar Showa era house, sure. But either way the sound proofing is worlds better than any new construction in the US.
jabl: > China also has nationalized rail systems. The major reason for the failure in the US is that the rail lines are not publicly owned.The article we're discussing explains that Japan has the best passenger rail system in the world, and which happens to be privatized, along with privately owned track. So which one is it? Go figure.
Tor3: I believe the Japanese private rail companies also own the lines where their traffic is. This would explain a lot. There are other countries (including my native one) where the trains are run by one company and the lines are owned by another. This does.not.work
technothrasher: It's always feels funny to me when taking the Acela between Boston and NYC that you go screaming along at 150mph... for a small portion of track in Rhode Island. The rest of the time you're going much slower. It's almost like, why even bother for that small section?
Tor3: I'm in a 20 year old two-storey apartment right now (while we're building a new house), and the sound-proofing isn't non-existing but not as bad as some other apartments I'm aware of (where you can't make a sound without the neighbors start knocking on the walls/floors, and you're private to thing you don't actually want to hear..) - but we can hear every footstep when the neighbors walk the stairs to their upper floor. The rooms which are more distant are fine, we don't actually hear them talking. Most of the time.
DocTomoe: I was hoping for some 'technical' secrets.Like: you can actually change the lightbulbs for the headlights of the Series 0 train while it being underway - there is a service hatch that opens to a human-sized service area accessible from the driver's cabin which allows such repairs.
Tor3: "The Japanese love cars, but they take trains because they have the best railway system in the world"That's exactly it. It's not because of some cultural bias or whatever.I'm in Japan. I use trains because it's so very easy and it's so very reliable. It's simply the best option for travelling. If I wish to go to Tokyo? I check a website quickly, finds the best connection for my schedule (easy to find), I may pay in advance already, or not. I take my bicycle and go ten minutes to the nearest station, park it in the bicycle parking there, and off I go. As it's a small station I change to a limited express train (where I've booked a seat) after ten minutes, then, after another forty minutes I reach a big station and I switch to the Shinkansen and I'm off to Tokyo. I'm relaxed all the time. I buy a coffee on the train, and / or I buy coffee and lunch at the station and bring on the train.Every other way of getting there is way more complex, and would take way more time.
phrotoma: > “An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.”
tdeck: > Japanese construction is a lot more robust than American housing, and also tends to have extremely good soundproofing on windows and doors.This must be a different Japan than the one I'm familiar with, where exterior walls are often uninsulated and only a few inches thick and single-pane windows are still the norm in a lot of housing. I wouldn't be surprised if soundproofing were better for railroad-adjacent buildings, but compared to American homes the soundproofing here is surprisingly poor.
tonyedgecombe: >The UK is so far gone that the transport authority in it's largest city can't revamp stations or do add-on development without literal years of hand wringing. And even then it's often rejected or reduced in the end.They just finished a line that traverses the whole city. It's 73 miles from end to end and carries one seventh of the UK's rail journeys (600,000 trips per day).
0x3f: The Elizabeth Line is basically at the bare minimum for a global Asian city. It's not even that good by comparison. It's really a joke that London only has one line of that caliber and it took them literally decades to build.So it's touted as some great success but to me it's a sign of failure. They'll say similar things if they ever finish HSR in California. Yeah I'm sure the end product will be fine but the whole process is disgraceful.Never mind the fact that the Elizabeth Line is only so over-utilized because London completely fails at building density in and around its center. So it has to make its people live in zone 30 and sit on the train for two hours every day.
presentation: China is giant and sprawling and they are able to do it.That said this reply doesn’t actually address much of what the article talks about, most interestingly how rail companies are private and are also real estate developers. That thought process ought to make sense to Texans or something.
barney54: What is this corruption you are talking about? What specifically are you talking about? Things you don’t like aren’t necessarily the result of corruption.
gherkinnn: Oh this again.Then explain international train travel in Europe or China's national train network. Both fill large areas.Conversely, the UK is long and narrow, and unlike Japan has neither earthquakes nor is it particularly mountainous and yet its train system is rubbish.
pm215: Unfortunately the 70% price rise on the JR pass back in 2023 made it much less likely to be economic for most people compared to just buying tickets as you go, even for trips that visit more than one city. Last time I was there I did a loop up from Tokyo to Hokkaido and back by rail, and it was still cheaper to buy individual tickets. (There are obviously still some itineraries where it works out cheaper, but it's much less of an "obviously good idea for most people" than it was back before 2023.)
asutekku: Having followed some tourists coming to Japan, a large amount of the people appreciate convenience, and the rail pass gives them that. The price is secondary.Hell, there are even people paying the equivalent of 100 USD just to have someone pick them up from the Haneda airport and accompany them to the hotel. Not even a taxi service, just to be with them to buy them the train tickets, etc.
angled: Ah! But is your bicycle registered and do you have insurance.(I agree with the trains. I love the trains.)
skrebbel: People insure bikes?
barney54: What is seldom mentioned in these conversations is that the United States has a very good rail system—-for freight. That’s what the U.S. system did well, not passengers. From the article it isn’t obvious how Japan moves freight, but they obviously aren’t moving a lot of freight on the Shinkansen.
asutekku: They actually started doing that very recently, converting old Shinkansen into a freight trains. Obviously you can't fit large cargo, but it's a good option for fast transport of parcels etc.https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/03/24/companies/f...
throw0101d: >> "The Japanese love cars, but they take trains because they have the best railway system in the world"> That's exactly it. It's not because of some cultural bias or whatever.Are there not a lot of toll roads in Japan as well?* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressways_of_Japan#TollsAlso, is not the population density fairly high? There's not as much land to spread in low-density car centric suburbs like there is in (say) the US.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Populati...IMHO cultural bias (and practicality, geographic and economic (low car ownership post-WW2)) is there in Japan, which led to a particular development model, which lends itself to non-car-centric infrastructure.Contrast: Okinawa, where the US (cultural?) influence is higher and that has highways everywhere and where public transit is apparently not that good.
andreareina: They are easy to steal and can cost multiple thousands of dollars.
fooqux: It can be a factor of many things, can it not? Seriously, if Japan was a map option in Transport Tycoon, it would be labeled "easy".
