5 ms·

There is the cultural thing, but Japanese transit is also extremely well staffed to the point where any anomalies are caught and dealt with preemptively. It's e

by unabst 9y ago

There is the cultural thing, but Japanese transit is also extremely well staffed to the point where any anomalies are caught and dealt with preemptively. It's endless city rail for the most part, and there are no true gaps until you're fairly far. During rush hour they have white gloved attendants pushing people in doors and confirming no hanging luggage or limbs, etc. Shinkansen tracks are also often suspended or walled in. In Tokyo you'll also often see signs apologizing for delays, but since the trains are still arriving every 2 minutes, it won't make a difference to you or your schedule whether that specific train is off schedule. Another factor is that many lines share tracks also. This means everything needs to be on time, or else they won't mesh. Even on one line you'll have various flavors of express that overtake slower trains on the same rail at stations... meaning they have to be on time. Of course, none of this is cheap, and neither are the tickets. It's not uncommon to find plane tickets cheaper than Shinkansen tickets. And even going 3 stations from Shibuya to Shinjuku will cost you 2 dollars on the Yamanote line. You could easily spend 10 dollars a day on a daily basis just getting around the city, and multiply that by the number of people who use the system, and it's a fortune.

rootsudo 9y ago
If you get the Tokyo Metro pass, it's 800 JPY 1 day/1500 JPY 3 day you can alleviate the cost. You can also register a popular route you use and get it highly discounted w/ passmo/suica.
- unabst 9y ago
  Anything on your commute you will buy a pass for. But Tokyo Metro isn't JR or Odakyu. Transfers get expensive. And all fares are by distance. Any commuter passes are based on point A to point B also. They have a Japan Rail Pass that allows for almost unlimited travel within Japan, but you have to be a visitor from a foreign country. But I hear it's one of the best ways to tour Japan. Their trains are quite awesome.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    Yeah, I did he JR Pass a year ago, and it was $249 for 7 days. I did some math after the trip, and if I had't had the pass, my Shinkansen bill would have been nearly 2x that. Plus I saved a bit here and there (on the order of $30) since I could use the local JR rail for free. The only transit expenses while there were when JR didn't have a convenient line and I had to use Tokyo Metro or the local trains in Kyoto and Osaka.
  - Taniwha 9y ago
    yes we did that last year, you have to prepurchase the ticket before you arrive and claim it (with your passport with its fresh new entrance stamp) at the desk in the airport station (at least that's the way it works in Tokyo)
teirce 9y ago
>Of course, none of this is cheap, and neither are the tickets. It's not uncommon to find plane tickets cheaper than Shinkansen tickets. And even going 3 stations from Shibuya to Shinjuku will cost you 2 dollars on the Yamanote line. You could easily spend 10 dollars a day on a daily basis just getting around the city, and multiply that by the number of people who use the system, and it's a fortune. I spent some time in Tokyo and found the subway both amazingly useful and cheap. But I also must compare it to the public transit in the US where I live (non-usable bus system), and that of San Francisco -- which was much more expensive and not nearly as well maintained. When the usual for me is a $6 Uber one-way to a bar that's barely 2 miles away, it blew my mind that I would regularly get across Tokyo for ~$5-10. I returned from Tokyo with a loathing of the overwhelmingly car-centric cities of the U.S.
- bootlooped 9y ago
  Of all of the Asian subway systems I've used, Tokyo was the most expensive and most complicated. The fact that there are 3 different rail systems that are not seamlessly integrated is a pain. Not necessarily their problem, but I also found some stations that were very hard to use for non-Japanese speakers. Still, this is almost certainly better than every subway network in the US.
  - wst_ 9y ago
    They are seamless for some time now. You pay with the same card and lines are connected. At least JR and Metro is.
- pcurve 9y ago
  "I spent some time in Tokyo and found the subway both amazingly useful and cheap" I like getting around cities by public transit too, but Tokyo Subway system is rather complicated and expensive. You pay by distance in pretty granular fashion and there are several private companies operating, and not always compatible. Seoul subway system is basically flat rate and much simpler, with free transfer to buses.
rayiner 9y ago
> And even going 3 stations from Shibuya to Shinjuku will cost you 2 dollars on the Yamanote line. You could easily spend 10 dollars a day on a daily basis just getting around the city, and multiply that by the number of people who use the system, and it's a fortune. Fun fact: Shinkansen tickets are about the same price as Acela Express tickets. Except the Japanese trains are unsubsidized while Amtrak is heavily subsidized (Congress pays capital costs). And the Japanese trains are fast and reliable, while Amtrak is the opposite of those things. Also: minimum D.C. Metro fare in peak hours is $2.25. Metro is also a disaster, with tunnels catching fire, etc.
- jabretti 9y ago
  All these comparisons are unfair, because Japan had the good fortune to be bombed into oblivion in the 1940s, enabling them to start with a more or less clean sheet and 20th century technology. In western cities (apart from Germany, also conveniently bombed) our train systems are stuck compensating for bad decisions made in the 1880s, and then the further bad decisions made in every subsequent decade to ameliorate those bad decisions. It's the physical equivalent of maintaining 150 year old legacy code written in Linear A (if you will pardon the mixed metaphor) except that you can't just throw it out and start again because you'd have to demolish tens of thousands of houses.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    "Good fortune" might be a weird phrase to use, but sure. I think it's reasonably valid to use this excuse for, say, why the NYC subway is so far behind Tokyo's train system. Maintaining a system as old as NYC's requires so much money and time that there's little left over for upgrades. But there's no excuse for a regional train like the Acela being so slow, expensive, and unreliable when compared to the Shinkansen. It's certainly difficult to do major upgrades in a constrained area like NYC, but upgrading tracks and signaling and the trains themselves in the mostly-open areas between (say) NYC and DC is a lot easier (even if you can't touch the last couple miles on each route due to city density, you can still make tons of improvements in between). And given that the US gov't gives Amtrak tons of money, and they still collect 2x as much as the Shinkansen does from passengers on a passenger-mile basis, it's shameful how poorly that money is managed. There was an article posted on HN months ago that talked about per-mile transit construction costs in various countries, and how construction in the US costs so much more. I don't recall if there was a conclusion as to why, but it seemed to be a combination of gov't and union waste.

by unabst 9y ago

rootsudo 9y ago

If you get the Tokyo Metro pass, it's 800 JPY 1 day/1500 JPY 3 day you can alleviate the cost. You can also register a popular route you use and get it highly discounted w/ passmo/suica.

unabst 9y ago
Anything on your commute you will buy a pass for. But Tokyo Metro isn't JR or Odakyu. Transfers get expensive. And all fares are by distance. Any commuter passes are based on point A to point B also. They have a Japan Rail Pass that allows for almost unlimited travel within Japan, but you have to be a visitor from a foreign country. But I hear it's one of the best ways to tour Japan. Their trains are quite awesome.
- kelnos 9y ago
  Yeah, I did he JR Pass a year ago, and it was $249 for 7 days. I did some math after the trip, and if I had't had the pass, my Shinkansen bill would have been nearly 2x that. Plus I saved a bit here and there (on the order of $30) since I could use the local JR rail for free. The only transit expenses while there were when JR didn't have a convenient line and I had to use Tokyo Metro or the local trains in Kyoto and Osaka.
- Taniwha 9y ago
  yes we did that last year, you have to prepurchase the ticket before you arrive and claim it (with your passport with its fresh new entrance stamp) at the desk in the airport station (at least that's the way it works in Tokyo)

teirce 9y ago

>Of course, none of this is cheap, and neither are the tickets. It's not uncommon to find plane tickets cheaper than Shinkansen tickets. And even going 3 stations from Shibuya to Shinjuku will cost you 2 dollars on the Yamanote line. You could easily spend 10 dollars a day on a daily basis just getting around the city, and multiply that by the number of people who use the system, and it's a fortune. I spent some time in Tokyo and found the subway both amazingly useful and cheap. But I also must compare it to the public transit in the US where I live (non-usable bus system), and that of San Francisco -- which was much more expensive and not nearly as well maintained. When the usual for me is a $6 Uber one-way to a bar that's barely 2 miles away, it blew my mind that I would regularly get across Tokyo for ~$5-10. I returned from Tokyo with a loathing of the overwhelmingly car-centric cities of the U.S.

bootlooped 9y ago
Of all of the Asian subway systems I've used, Tokyo was the most expensive and most complicated. The fact that there are 3 different rail systems that are not seamlessly integrated is a pain. Not necessarily their problem, but I also found some stations that were very hard to use for non-Japanese speakers. Still, this is almost certainly better than every subway network in the US.
- wst_ 9y ago
  They are seamless for some time now. You pay with the same card and lines are connected. At least JR and Metro is.
pcurve 9y ago
"I spent some time in Tokyo and found the subway both amazingly useful and cheap" I like getting around cities by public transit too, but Tokyo Subway system is rather complicated and expensive. You pay by distance in pretty granular fashion and there are several private companies operating, and not always compatible. Seoul subway system is basically flat rate and much simpler, with free transfer to buses.

rayiner 9y ago

> And even going 3 stations from Shibuya to Shinjuku will cost you 2 dollars on the Yamanote line. You could easily spend 10 dollars a day on a daily basis just getting around the city, and multiply that by the number of people who use the system, and it's a fortune. Fun fact: Shinkansen tickets are about the same price as Acela Express tickets. Except the Japanese trains are unsubsidized while Amtrak is heavily subsidized (Congress pays capital costs). And the Japanese trains are fast and reliable, while Amtrak is the opposite of those things. Also: minimum D.C. Metro fare in peak hours is $2.25. Metro is also a disaster, with tunnels catching fire, etc.

jabretti 9y ago
All these comparisons are unfair, because Japan had the good fortune to be bombed into oblivion in the 1940s, enabling them to start with a more or less clean sheet and 20th century technology. In western cities (apart from Germany, also conveniently bombed) our train systems are stuck compensating for bad decisions made in the 1880s, and then the further bad decisions made in every subsequent decade to ameliorate those bad decisions. It's the physical equivalent of maintaining 150 year old legacy code written in Linear A (if you will pardon the mixed metaphor) except that you can't just throw it out and start again because you'd have to demolish tens of thousands of houses.
- kelnos 9y ago
  "Good fortune" might be a weird phrase to use, but sure. I think it's reasonably valid to use this excuse for, say, why the NYC subway is so far behind Tokyo's train system. Maintaining a system as old as NYC's requires so much money and time that there's little left over for upgrades. But there's no excuse for a regional train like the Acela being so slow, expensive, and unreliable when compared to the Shinkansen. It's certainly difficult to do major upgrades in a constrained area like NYC, but upgrading tracks and signaling and the trains themselves in the mostly-open areas between (say) NYC and DC is a lot easier (even if you can't touch the last couple miles on each route due to city density, you can still make tons of improvements in between). And given that the US gov't gives Amtrak tons of money, and they still collect 2x as much as the Shinkansen does from passengers on a passenger-mile basis, it's shameful how poorly that money is managed. There was an article posted on HN months ago that talked about per-mile transit construction costs in various countries, and how construction in the US costs so much more. I don't recall if there was a conclusion as to why, but it seemed to be a combination of gov't and union waste.