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What a Real Train System Looks Like (2009)

240 points by apsec112 8y ago

elvinyung 8y ago
Jane Jacobs talks about how cities generally fall into one of two different kinds of equilibria: a public transit equilibrium, and a car equilibrium. In each one, the preferred kind of mobility further shapes land use to make that kind of mobility even more preferable. Most of North America is so stuck in the car equilibrium that it seems hopeless. There's not even a handful of cities that would be nice to get around or live in without a car. This seems like it would take decades to correct, even if most North Americans actually wanted to. As an semi-extremist urbanite I'm incredibly pessimistic about this. I'm somewhat hopeful about new mobility methods like bikeshare or even rideshare, but none of them seem to be actively driving land use changes.
- Retric 8y ago
  You don’t need a huge public transit system to make the jump. You need high density + mixed use over a relatively small area with good public transit in that area. Which lets two car families drop to one car family’s. This reduces the need for public parking pushing up density and property values. It also makes links to that core of good public transit more valuable. The main problem in the US is you don’t get both high density and mixed use. PS: His harping on Vienna Fairfax completely misses the point, it’s the last stop on the orange line, the parking allows a vast area to commute via the subway including many people just visiting DC. The Pentagon City and Crystal City stops for example directly connect to shopping next to huge residential sections and have minimal parking.
  - elvinyung 8y ago
    Well, that does fit into what I meant -- Outside North America, it seems to be generally (more) taken for granted that public transit and density/mixed-use feed into each other (such that either can be a prerequsite for the other), whereas in North America, because we're in such a car equilibrium, public transit mostly just spends most of its time apologizing for the poor land use. Although it is probably worth noting that e.g. Los Angeles has some places (kind of) like what you're talking about [1], but it's basically a drop in the bucket. [1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/11/11/meme-weeding-los-angeles-density/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/11/11/meme-weeding-l...
  - mikeash 8y ago
    I’m amused by the Fairfax bit. I used to live within walking distance of that station. Almost all of the green space in the article’s image is now designated for commercial use (the remainder has housing), has plans ready to go, and is just waiting for the developer to start putting shovels into the ground. But the developer apparently doesn’t think it would be worth the cost of construction, so it just sits there. I’m not sure what else you could do there, unless you want to have the government heavily subsidize commercial development, which seems like a recipe for empty, decaying buildings in a decade or two.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      The American fascination with single use zoning is so counterproductive. If commercial doesn't work, just put housing next to it! Or build the housing first, or something. Pair with a tax designed to disincentivize land squatting. And it doesn't need to be eight story apartments with elevator, garbage, the whole shebang; a four-family house like this would still be a massive improvement over most American suburbs. https://activerain-store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/uploads/1/5/4/4/9/ar137731682494451.jpg https://activerain-store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/upload... Plus with how expensive DC is, you could do worse than selling houses.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        This one is the opposite. The developers would be happy to build nothing but housing, but the government wants offices and retail too. The developers built as much housing as they were allowed to without doing the rest (my house was one of them) and then basically bailed out.
        donarb 8y ago
        In Seattle there are lots of buildings going up that are residential with commercial space on the ground floor. Residential is so profitable that the commercial space can sit empty for quite awhile and still make a profit. They then cover the vacant storefronts with colorful graphics.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Any urban change takes decades, especially if you have to build things. For example it takes years from proposal to completion of a single bike lane. Digging subway tunnels is much slower. Here in Berlin we're still debating plans that were originally drafted in the seventies. I think the most effective tool cities have is zoning regulations. Getting them right enables the city to harvest organic change as opposed to having to plan every single project. Reducing free parking and allowing mixed commercial and residential use seems to me like the easiest way towards a public transit centric city. In Tokyo for example there is basically no curbside parking and shops are always within walking distance.
  - elvinyung 8y ago
    Totally, but in the North America it seems like we are culturally nowhere near aligned on changing this for the better. The cultural opinion seems to be slowly improving, but it still seems like most of North America has very agrarian/suburban tendencies. P.S. Japanese zoning is fascinating [1], but not without its faults. For example, the relatively laissez-faire zoning policies can be seen as to blame for the lack of bike lane infrastructure in most of Japan [2]. That said, 東京がとてもすきです :) [1] http://devonzuegel.com/post/north-american-vs-japanese-zoning http://devonzuegel.com/post/north-american-vs-japanese-zonin... [2] https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_Urban_Japan.html?id=KprPdsSvGyoC https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_Urban_Jap...
  - lbriner 8y ago
    The other problem with zoning is that it is not a decision made in isolation. When governments are under financial pressure (aren't they all?), why not zone for what makes the most short-term or long term cash? The environmental benefits of mass transit or even the idea of high density living doesn't necessarily appeal much financially.
    - adrianN 8y ago
      How do gigantic parking lots make most cash in the short term?
- oftenwrong 8y ago
  Daniel Herriges wrote some great articles about the "activation energy" of walkability, and what significance that has for suburban America: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/14/the-activation-energy-of-a-walkable-place https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/14/the-activation... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/17/the-catch-22-of-retrofitting-the-suburbs https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/17/the-catch-22-o...
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  > There's not even a handful of cities that would be nice to get around or live in without a car. > As an semi-extremist urbanite Don't call yourself an extremist. There's plenty of people that live without a car in big cities (outside of the US).
rwmj 8y ago
It's a shame this article doesn't lay out any plan for how to get from where the US is now to where the author would like it to be. You're not going to dig up the existing train stations, so how could the parking be converted to shops and housing? How can you persuade drivers and politicians to support whatever other steps are necessary? (eg. converting roads to railways)
- the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
  I wonder what changed in our mindset in the last 50 years that such projects seem impossible now but possible back then. I mean subways were not any easier to build 100 or 50 years ago than today. And it surely was not cheaper.
  - mikehollinger 8y ago
    My favorite theory is that the post WW2-era American value shifted to personal liberty and the American dream: your home, your picket fence, and your car. You choose where you go, when you go, and how you get there. Drive on those new interstates! Take the family for a picnic. Go surfing! How can you be truly independent and live that perfect magazine cover life if you’ve got to wait on the 9:27 to take you to the B line so you won’t be late to work?
    - michaelt 8y ago
      I think the_mitsuhiko is wondering not about rail projects specifically, but about a loss of confidence about performing large-scale projects in the abstract sense, independent of what the project is for. For example, in 1930 it seemed feasible to build the Hoover dam; in 1950 it seemed feasible to build the interstate highway system; in 1960 it seemed feasible to land a man on the moon. Now, in 2018, people think it isn't feasible to build some train stations. And those people might be right! What happened to our ability (practically, politically, and financially) to get such things done?
      - yourapostasy 8y ago
CaptainZapp 8y ago
When you look at the Tokyo railway map it looks like a totally unnavigational maze. Actually, and despite the fact that services are provided by more than half a dozen independent companies, it's quite easy to navigate. Even when you run into vertigo when seeing it for the first time. Each line, no matter if Tokyo metro, private metro, JR, private railway is color coded and has a fixed one or more unique letter designation. Say, you want to go to Ginza, to just take one example. You don't even have to remember the station name. You just need to know the station codes. In this case M16 (red), H08 (gray) or G9 (orange). The letter designates the metro line, while the number represents the station for the respective line. And each combination is unique. That, in combination with a PASMO or SUICA smart card makes orientation very straight forward and seamless.
- oftenwrong 8y ago
  I was able to navigate the Tokyo system on my first visit better than I could navigate the New York system, even though I had lived in New York for years. I credit the high quality signage.
  - have_faith 8y ago
    Second this. Tokyo was extremely easy to navigate considering I had done no planning until I arrived.
  - mynameisvlad 8y ago
    Yes, 100%. That, combined with Google Maps for routing made any sort of train or metro interaction in all of Japan utterly painless. The only time I got lost was when I couldn't immediately find a Tokyo Metro station and Google Maps sent me to the JR station on the other end of the mall. Even then, it only took me a few minutes of wandering around to find what I was looking for.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- kalleboo 8y ago
oftenwrong 8y ago
The author, Nathan Lewis, makes frequent references to concepts he established in detail in previous articles. For example, "Traditional City", "Place", "19th Century Hypertrophic City". All of his articles on cities: https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post-heroic-materialism/ https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post...
kkm 8y ago
Image captioned `Westfriedhof Station, Stockholm.` is actually `Westfriedhof Station, Munich.`
wink 8y ago
The Westfriedhof station pictured is also in Munich, not Stockholm, guess it's a copy/paste error. It is kinda nice, but it's relatively young (15 years maybe?) whereas most of our subway stations are from the 70s and not half as nice. Edit: it's 20 years old, not 15: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfriedhof_(Munich_U-Bahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfriedhof_(Munich_U-Bahn) and the others pictured are also on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-Brauchle-Ring_(Munich_U-Bahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-Brauchle-Ring_(Munich_U-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidplatz_(Munich_U-Bahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidplatz_(Munich_U-Bahn)
- the8472 8y ago
  Old does not mean it has to look shabby as the moscow stations demonstrate. Or these from berlin: http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful-underground-gems-of-the-berlin-u-bahn/ http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful-under...
  - wink 8y ago
    No of course not, but some stations here have this "this wall was modern in the 70s, also it's kinda grimy and some of the tiles fell off" look - like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendlinger_Tor_(Munich_U-Bahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendlinger_Tor_(Munich_U-Bahn), but some were worse. They are renovating some - and to be honest if it's structurally sound I couldn't care less if it looks shabby, I was just trying to point out the differences - because some of the newer ones look really nice :)
alistairSH 8y ago
As a DC resident, I partially agree with his conclusion on the DC metro. But, the stations he chose are suburban, not downtown. Tokyo is a much larger city than DC. so, it’s a bit apples to oranges. It was designed to get people into the city from the suburbs. As such, it completely fails today, where most jobs are also in the suburbs. It fails for reverse commuting as well, because, as noted, most stations are not within walking of commercial hubs. That said, the expansion to Dulles came with lots of rezoning and denser development. Arlington started this before the expansion with the Courthouse-Clarendon-Ballston areas, with increased density and walkable zones. Reston and Herndon are doing similar things. Now, if we can figure out how to build a line from Tyson’s to Rockville or Bethesda (without going all the way downtown and back out again).
- Symbiote 8y ago
  > But, the stations he chose are suburban, not downtown. Why? They could have been constructed downtown (assuming you mean in Vienna or Fairfax, rather than in the middle of the motorway not-especially-near either of them). Or they could have been surrounded by the shopping malls that instead are nearish (but too far to walk). The town (Vienna) is almost 2km to the north, and doesn't have a station — yet it used to! There's a path/trail labelled "Washington and Old Dominion Trail", which is obviously an old railway line, ripped up and replaced with a bike path. Since the article mentions Stockholm, I've chosen the metro station furthest from the centre of Stockholm [1], and the station before it. It's a suburban area, but the stations are still in the middle of the 'suburban centres'. They're within 150m of multiple schools/colleges, a shopping mall, a culture centre and a theatre. Stockholm also has commuter railway lines ("Pendeltåg") extending further from the city, not shown by Google's map. These stop at some fairly small places, but it will still be somewhere in the middle of each place. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8758039,-77.2713152,5435m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8758039,-77.2713152,5435m/da... [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@59.2443707,17.8132863,1092m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e2 https://www.google.com/maps/@59.2443707,17.8132863,1092m/dat...
  - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    The Orange line in Fairfax County was constructed in the median of I66 to save money. That was a huge mistake. The difference between the Orange line in Arlington where the locals lobbied to have it routed through actual neighborhoods and the Orange line in Fairfax County where it sits in the middle of an eight-lane highway is staggering.
yazr 8y ago
Lots of truths in the article. BUT Trains is always a system that picks winners & losers. The closer u r to the nearest station - the bigger winner u r. I lived in London. Any location not within 1km of a station is basically a prison. Even if u have a car, you cant go anywhere (since no parking), and no one will come to you. This is a particular problem when you adding trains (and impeding car) in an existing city.
- systemtest 8y ago
  Isn't it possible to rent a bike at the station?
  - tombot 8y ago
    Yup, apps like CityMapper will even provide direction based on a Train and Bike hire route.
- danhon 8y ago
  Weird, so all the people taking the bus in London to and from stations must be hallucinating while they’re trapped in their prisons?
  - yazr 8y ago
    A train+bus is a much higher threshold for many people. Will you go to a lawyer that requires a bus+train? A restaurant? A party u r not too sure about ? Trains are relatively dependable. The last mile is a big problem. (To be clear : i am pro public transport. I have a bike and ebike which i love, and car i hate.)
    - tombot 8y ago
      Yes, millions of people do every single day in London and other cities across the UK. Not sure where you're going? Citymapper will route across both tube and bus, it'll even tell you exactly when you get off. You pay using a contactless card, apple pay or similar, it works.
apexalpha 8y ago
It's too bad he never mentions the Netherlands. We have few metros but take his 'walk to the station' idea and introduced 'cycle to the station'. You can always store your bike at a Dutch trainstation and coupled with good cycling infrastructure this increases the area served by a station. We also have cross-country trains every 10 minutes and if you get to a station where you don't have a bike you can rent one from the train company. Or rent a car if you're a bit further away. There's always room for improvement but right now they have a 90% on time record on an open rail system they share with competitors, foreign train services, and freight trains. Adding bikes to the equation could solve America's "but our urban communities are too sparse to be served by a metro/train". A bike gets you quite far in 10 minutes. Let alone an e-bike or an electric scooter. In Utrecht, the main station in our star-grid, they just opened a bicycle parking with 22.000 spots! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8 edit: this is what our national rail looks like: https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaart-20181.jpg https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaar...
- azag0 8y ago
  The Dutch and Danish approach to cycling is just from a different world. Even cities that I consider decent for cycling, like Berlin, pale in comparison to any larger Dutch or Danish city. And once you introduce cycling into commuting systems at that scale, yes, it enables you to design those systems in new ways.
  - bklaasen 8y ago
    It also requires a shift in focus away from prioritising cars to prioritising pedestrians and cyclists. In the Netherlands, you can be sure that every town planner owns a bicycle and commutes on it frequently. I live in Ireland. I've met regional town planners here. None of them own a bicycle. Traffic planners here call the traffic state when pedestrians are crossing the road "dead time".
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      That's a good point. When I look at some stuff that's done for cyclists here in California I also have my doubts if any of the planners ever have used a bicycle.
ydnaclementine 8y ago
I feel like the argument weakens when he compares countries. I'm looking at the railway maps of France and Japan thinking: 'this entire country is the size of a single, largeish US state'. Total land area is a problem to be solved in the US for train travel, and we only have Russia and China to compare to. City to city comparison makes much more sense
- bencoder 8y ago
  >France Only Texas and Alaska are larger than France. I give you Alaska, due to the geography and low population, but Texas is just slightly larger and has half the population of France - not a massive difference. I think it could be reasonably fair to compare countries to single states at least?
  - lbriner 8y ago
    You can, of course, compare countries to states but sadly too many of these articles make sweeping generalisations and don't mention the compromises. Most people would much rather have the convenience of a car if possible and cheap but in Japan it is often neither due to space constraints and generally parking is illegal on most roads. Compare Texas, lots of open space and historical reasons necessitates car travel except for major urban to urban transport which could be done by train but why bother? As in the UK, the acceptance that cars be supported for some journeys means that on balance, they are better to use for most others. Even for me, the coach runs direct from my town to Heathrow airport in a similar time to a car and pretty cheap but it won't always run when I need it so why not drive (or get a lift)?
    - esotericn 8y ago
      This is an interesting comment. As a Londoner (have lived both centrally and in the suburbs) I think you're right that it's one or the other. If you design for cars (e.g. M25, UK motorway network and roads, towns like Swindon and MK) then cars are the uncontested king. In an area like London, it almost becomes an emergent phenomenon. The suburbs have car use because they're not very dense and it still beats sporadic bus routes. In the centre there's just no space. Forget parking, Uber might be slower than the tube in a no-congestion scenario simply due to traffic lights and giving way.
wiz21c 8y ago
Too bad the article doesn't talk about the not so sexy trains which were numerous and allowed travellers to go from small cities to other small cities. The big/speedy trains only cover a few paths...
bala529 8y ago
subway stations from around the world, the second one is not Westfriedhof Station, Stockholm, it is in Munich Westfriedhof station!
gok 8y ago
One thing these articles nearly always gloss over is that these beautiful, clean metro systems stay that way partially because they close down for maintenance at night. The New York system runs 24/7, as does most of the "sorry crap" in Chicago. I presume there's an article here scolding Americans for staying up too late or something.
- lstodd 8y ago
  In Moscow, for example, the last trains from the end stations depart at 0100 and arrive at 0200-0230 or so at the other end, and the first ones depart at 0500 or so depending on the line. I wouldn't call those 3-4 hours closing down for the night. Even so, this break is used mostly for track maintenance where one can't have trains rolling. Station cleaning and rolling stock maintenance is ongoing, construction/repairs that do not require cutting electric power to the trains are being done 24/7. So, no excuse for NY.
- a-nikolaev 8y ago
  Well, the NYC subway is still grossly mismanaged, about 20-30% of it is down even on the best days, with tens if not hundreds route changes and station closures. On weekends and at night up to half of the system may not work. Because the system is poorly maintained, the trains run slower than what they should be, causing even more delays. EDIT: edited percentage to 20-30%
  - lbriner 8y ago
    I've read lots of articles about mismanagement and unions pushing up costs for work but I wonder how much problem the 24/7 mentality creates? Even in London, the Tube is mostly shutdown for around 6 hours per night, not a lot of time but enough to make some fairly big inroads into the maintenance. I found the NYC subway to be fairly decent but I found the feeling of darkness in many stations to be more of a big deal. I wouldn't mind waiting in stations that were much lit much better.
  - rco8786 8y ago
    > about 70-80% of it is down even on the best days, I’m not usually one to defend the MTA but this is wildly inaccurate.
sparrc 8y ago
Does anyone have comprehensive information on typical transportation department budgets in the US vs. some of these countries? Anecdotally I had a civil engineer friend from Spain who always told me that the transportation budgets in the USA were tiny compared to in Europe. It'd be great if it was politically feasible for the US government to take some money from the military and put it into ambitious public transportation infrastructure. National rail probably doesn't make sense but there are definitely regional and city systems that need some serious help.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  One problem is that even if they spent as much, infrastructure construction costs in the US are way higher than elsewhere: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
- jandrese 8y ago
  Rail projects have a lot of political pushback in the US. They're expected to pay for themselves and realistically rarely manage to do so. They tend to be costed compared to cars, and somehow the cost of building and maintaining the roads is not included in that comparison, except for the relatively small fraction that comes from the gas tax. So rail projects somehow never look economically viable compared to a magically free road system.
krsdcbl 8y ago
Adding one lesser known example of imho outstanding public transportation service is Vienna, Austria - not the largest of cities, at 1.9 Mio inhabitants, and about half the area of Berlin (or 1/4 of London), still the 6th largest city in Europe. You can get almost anywhere within half an hour tops, the Metro runs till after midnight weekdays and 24/7 on the weekends, there's an extensive system of Tramways & Busses to cover anything a bit farther from a Metro station. And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the services for 1€/day, billed monthly. This is mostly to stress the point of how much you take such a system for granted when it's available and just works - since I've moved here owning a car would be almost an inconvenience, and even London feels like a horrible public transportation experience.
- nhf 8y ago
  > And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the services for 1€/day, billed monthly. This kind of thing is key - make it easy to use transit and lower the marginal cost of doing so. Yearly subscriptions are good. London's approach—unify almost all modes under the same payment system with automatically calculated caps and discounts—also works quite well as you don't have to think about buying passes, individual tickets, etc. Just tap and go and the system takes care of it for you. Not many places in the US have this level of integration yet. For instance, the NYC Ferry, NYC Subway, LIRR, Metro North, PATH, and regional Amtrak service all use disjoint ticketing methods. It'll slowly get integrated over the next decade, but it greatly increases the mental effort needed to hop on transit. Perhaps the closest in the US is the Bay Area's Clipper Card - they managed to shoehorn over a dozen area agencies onto the same payment method - but it's still not quite as good as something like London's Oyster.
  - tomjakubowski 8y ago
    The TAP card in Los Angeles is good for dozens of local public transport companies. For quite a while, this was not the case; you could only use it on Metro (County-level agency). The integration over the years has certainly increased my use of transit in the area; there are many tiny, obscure transit systems in Los Angeles County and I can ride almost all of them now without having to carry any cash or change. Sometimes you can even get cross-company transfer fares with the TAP. It's fantastic. https://www.taptogo.net/articles/Website_content/where-to-ride https://www.taptogo.net/articles/Website_content/where-to-ri...
spikels 8y ago
In these discussions there is always a lot of griping about the US’s poor rail infrastructure when the US actually has the 2nd most used rail networks in the world. It’s just almost entirely used for freight. An equally valid question is why does Europe transport almost all of its freight by truck? Obviously geography and population density - network effects scale with the square of population in reasonable service area - are huge factors. A multi-day freight trip is quite common while only a tiny fraction of passenger trips are more than a few hours - the reasonable service areas are vastly different. In Europe you have multiple overlapping country sized rail networks. While this gives the impression of a continental sized network (especially to Eurail pass riding in American tourists) very few people are taking trains journeys more than a few hours even in Europe. Another big issue is the incompatibility of freight and passenger rail services. It is very difficult to run both services on the same tracks at high service levels. The US focus on fright has hampered long distance and even regional passenger rail services. While in France the government decided to focus on passengers and eliminated all but a few freight routes. It would take an additional complete parallel rail infrastructure to do both well which would be quite expensive. So far the US and Europe haven’t thought this was worth it. China might be going this way. Perhaps this simply makes sense given the differing situations.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Out of curiosity: 2nd most used by what metric? Ton-miles? And who has the most-used?
- Symbiote 8y ago
  It's not a huge difference. By tonne-km, the EU uses rail for 17%, and the USA for 31%. So I accept that the USA uses the rail network almost entirely for freight, but it's not true that the EU transfers "almost all" freight by truck. Freight trains in Europe tend to run at much higher speeds than in the USA. For example, in Britain container trains can run at up to 75mph, and 140km/h in Germany. But compared to the USA, Europe already has a complete parallel infrastructure: pretty much every route has two tracks. I've only been on one long-distance passenger train in the USA, but there were long periods where there was only a single track. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Freight_transport_statistics_-_modal_split https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight-trains-in-the-uk.16067/ https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight-tr...
jorblumesea 8y ago
In the 50s, the US made a big bet that car based transportation was the future. It was, for awhile, but now it's clear that denser cities are the future, not suburbs. Countries that invested in infrastructure that supported dense cities are providing a higher quality of life compared to the "drive everywhere" culture of the States.
Animats 8y ago
That's 2009. The Shinkansen goes to Hokkaido now, via underwater tunnel.[1] Japan has a plan to run a superconducting maglev train between Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. It's a huge job. The "Japanese Alps" are in the way. Most of the route would have to be in tunnels cut through hard rock. It's not just talk. The first section is already running. At 500km/hr. There are working trainsets running on 42km of track, mostly in tunnels. Stations are under construction. Tunneling continues. Construction started in 2014. Completion in 2027, to Nagoya. Osaka 10 years later. Many Asian cities now have large new monorail systems. Daegu, 30 stations. Mumbai, 17 stations. Chongqing, 64 stations. Many smaller systems, too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido_Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido_Shinkansen
- kalleboo 8y ago
  Thier map is also missing the Kyushu shinkansen down to Kagoshima which opened partially in 2004 and fully in 2011
- lostmsu 8y ago
  For comparison: here in West Seattle, we will get what essentially is a tramway in 2033. It's less than 15km from downtown.
bfrog 8y ago
Lets get real here, its partially a chicken and egg problem, but the population and density has to be there to support such a dense and useful train system. Parts of my city (Chicago) support the kind of rail stations he talks about. Some parts do not as the density here varies greatly but generally speaking... Tokyo has nearly 10 million people in about 1000 square miles of land Chicago has nearly 3 million people in about 10000 square miles of land Tokyo probably has at least 5 metropolitan cities of greater than 1 million people within 600 miles. Chicago has none, New York is about 730 miles away. Clearly a world of difference in the sort of density and distances that just don't necessarily support the same kind of rail system. Even then parts of Chicago closely match his experience in Tokyo, though certainly not to the same quantity and quality. A picture of a far north chicago L stop I lived near at one point in my life, right near the end of the line. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Morse/@42.0082879,-87.6681424,1178m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x880fd1ae5bbe3967:0x43666fdee150c8fd!8m2!3d42.0082839!4d-87.6659537 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Morse/@42.0082879,-87.6681... Nearly every stop along that train route is in the center of a neighborhood at least going north. Where Chicago screwed up was putting L stops in the middle of freeways rather than in the center of neighborhoods for certain sections and lines. It honestly makes those areas feel like the heart of the neighborhood has been cut out of it, there is no central spot where people have a reason to be. And who really wants to live right next to a 12/8/6 lane free way? No one, and certainly that's where Chicago neighborhoods no longer feel like the cozy place where people hang out, eat, drink, and catch their ride into work.
- froh 8y ago
  > Lets get real here ... > Tokyo probably has at least 5 metropolitan cities of greater than 1 million people within 600 miles. Greater Tokyo is about 38 million people within 50-80 miles (5.200 sq mi) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area
deleted 8y ago
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jefurii 8y ago
> This is the train map for Washington DC. As you can see, it is an irrelevant little fart of a train system. I used to live in Japan, now I live in Southern California near the Gold Line, which is the pride of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The Gold line is approximately as long as the dinky little private Tawaramoto Line that cuts a triangle between JR Oji Stn and Kintetsu Tawaramoto Stn in Nara Prefecture. Except the Tawaramoto Line always ran at least four cars while MTA's Gold Line only runs that many during rush hour. LA's crown jewel Union Station is approximately the size of a mid-size suburban station in Japan. It's incredibly sad.
rdiddly 8y ago
"These days, it’s easy to make subway systems because we have amazing tunneling machines..." -spits out coffee comically- I suppose compared to 1905 it's easier, but it's still not "easy." Tunneling never goes off without some kind of hitch, and almost always goes over budget or off-schedule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacement_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacemen... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway I agree with the general thrust of the piece though.
- x0x0 8y ago
  Nah, the super expensive and always goes way over budget are features of subways only when Americans make them, unfortunately. That's not to say no one else has construction projects that go over budget, but the rest of the world -- more developed countries and less developed countries alike -- all manage to build infra for way less money, and much closer to budget. If we want nice things -- like trains that work! -- we have to figure this out. see, for example, https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex... and https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction-costs-metro-stations/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction-c...
  - rdiddly 8y ago
    You're generally right and I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, but the one example I thought of belatedly AFTER hitting "Add Comment" on the above, just happened to be this... in a country that mostly seems to have its shit much more together than the US, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Archive_of_the_City_of_Cologne#Collapse_of_the_archive_in_2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Archive_of_the_City...
cuban-frisbee 8y ago
It's kinda funny seing an outside perspective on this. I live in europe and while we do have a decent rail system I always dream of a truly unified european rail network that can eliminate much of the air trafic. I don't know if that is possible with current technologies but a man can dream. Still it is pretty good what we have as the author states. I will spend an equivelant of about 50 us dollars to travel home and back for christmas, around 700 km total, which is actually cheaper than the equivalent cost in just gas if I was to drive (if I had a car that was, also not factoring bridge toll, which would make it substantially more expensive).
datenwolf 8y ago
One picture is mistitled. The "Westfriedhof" Station is located in Munich, not Stockholm (also it's the station closest to where I used to live in Munich for almost 30 years). It's a very popular place among photographers.
Sideloader 8y ago
Very cool article. Somewhat surprised China wasn’t included on the list as they have built a high speed rail network in the last several decades that already has more track mileage than Europe’s. Where there is a will there is a way, as the saying goes, and America, and the UK, with their profit über alles obsession are happy to let infrastructure rot and make people use woefully underfunded and overcrowded rail systems rather than trying something “new.”
ken 8y ago
> These days, it’s easy to make subway systems because we have amazing tunneling machines, which will bore a train-sized hole like a giant rock-eating worm. So, no excuses. I wouldn't say "easy". It's possible. Here in Seattle, we're building a new 2-mile tunnel (for cars). It was originally scheduled to open 3 years ago, and will finally open in 2019. It was planned to take 29 months, but took 67. We're not so great at bridges, either. One of my managers observed "We've got 4 floating bridges, and we sank 2 of them." That was back when I was on the Boeing 7E7 project (first flight: 28 months late). Is it any wonder we can't get excited about the prospect of an "easy" new rail project? We can't estimate big engineering projects to within 50%, and we can't keep existing infrastructure afloat (literally). I always vote for public transit on principle, but I'm also aware it's always going to take longer and cost more than they claim, so I can't really blame people who don't. Want broad support for infrastructure projects? First, demonstrate you can execute on them reliably. Nobody wants to agree to pay for a tunnel that might end up being the next "Big Dig".
- theedwood 8y ago
  > I wouldn't say "easy". It's possible. Here in Seattle, we're building a new 2-mile tunnel (for cars). It was originally scheduled to open 3 years ago, and will finally open in 2019. It was planned to take 29 months, but took 67. To add to this, some areas are made of materials that are simply difficult to bore through. Atlanta, for example, sits on top of a bunch of granite which at least partially contributes to the difficulties of underground rail expansion.
mjevans 8y ago
The US is indeed addicted to cars, and particularly for those living in the suburbs this is a sunk investment. It really doesn't help that the cities are (usually) NOT built to building codes that actually encourage privacy between units, that needs to get fixed too. However, an upgrade path would be a great idea. That path must allow for the transit systems (either highly regulated utilities or community owned) to spread. * New core has the target service level in place. * That service links to a PROPER parking structure at en edge. * Such structure should be SECURE (unfortunately monitored) * Also package transport services in addition to people. Renting 'a spot' in that area, as part of a residence OR as part of visiting should be low cost, and shouldn't /punish/ owning a car. The idea is you're incentivizing use of the new zone as well as commerce within it. The parking structures become a gateway as well as additional storage (and should convert to that when use for parking decreases).
8bitsrule 8y ago
"most of the rest of the developed world has quite wonderful subways and trains. They are clean, efficient, cheap, run on time, have as many as 20 or even 25 trains an hour...." We used to have a lot of railroads in the US. Then the automobile came along, which started them going downhill, but there were still lots of them ... then the interstate freeway system was built (with planning help from the CEO of General Motors), and the railroad system couldn't compete for passengers. Passenger service was mostly gone 50 years ago. But, you ask, did noone plan for the future? Well ... this is the U.S. We only build it well once, then we argue about who should keep it repaired. Which is why the majority of our bridges are in a dangerous state.

240 points by apsec112 8y ago

Jane Jacobs talks about how cities generally fall into one of two different kinds of equilibria: a public transit equilibrium, and a car equilibrium. In each one, the preferred kind of mobility further shapes land use to make that kind of mobility even more preferable. Most of North America is so stuck in the car equilibrium that it seems hopeless. There's not even a handful of cities that would be nice to get around or live in without a car. This seems like it would take decades to correct, even if most North Americans actually wanted to. As an semi-extremist urbanite I'm incredibly pessimistic about this. I'm somewhat hopeful about new mobility methods like bikeshare or even rideshare, but none of them seem to be actively driving land use changes.

Retric 8y ago
You don’t need a huge public transit system to make the jump. You need high density + mixed use over a relatively small area with good public transit in that area. Which lets two car families drop to one car family’s. This reduces the need for public parking pushing up density and property values. It also makes links to that core of good public transit more valuable. The main problem in the US is you don’t get both high density and mixed use. PS: His harping on Vienna Fairfax completely misses the point, it’s the last stop on the orange line, the parking allows a vast area to commute via the subway including many people just visiting DC. The Pentagon City and Crystal City stops for example directly connect to shopping next to huge residential sections and have minimal parking.
- elvinyung 8y ago
  Well, that does fit into what I meant -- Outside North America, it seems to be generally (more) taken for granted that public transit and density/mixed-use feed into each other (such that either can be a prerequsite for the other), whereas in North America, because we're in such a car equilibrium, public transit mostly just spends most of its time apologizing for the poor land use. Although it is probably worth noting that e.g. Los Angeles has some places (kind of) like what you're talking about [1], but it's basically a drop in the bucket. [1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/11/11/meme-weeding-los-angeles-density/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/11/11/meme-weeding-l...
- mikeash 8y ago
  I’m amused by the Fairfax bit. I used to live within walking distance of that station. Almost all of the green space in the article’s image is now designated for commercial use (the remainder has housing), has plans ready to go, and is just waiting for the developer to start putting shovels into the ground. But the developer apparently doesn’t think it would be worth the cost of construction, so it just sits there. I’m not sure what else you could do there, unless you want to have the government heavily subsidize commercial development, which seems like a recipe for empty, decaying buildings in a decade or two.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    The American fascination with single use zoning is so counterproductive. If commercial doesn't work, just put housing next to it! Or build the housing first, or something. Pair with a tax designed to disincentivize land squatting. And it doesn't need to be eight story apartments with elevator, garbage, the whole shebang; a four-family house like this would still be a massive improvement over most American suburbs. https://activerain-store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/uploads/1/5/4/4/9/ar137731682494451.jpg https://activerain-store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/upload... Plus with how expensive DC is, you could do worse than selling houses.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      This one is the opposite. The developers would be happy to build nothing but housing, but the government wants offices and retail too. The developers built as much housing as they were allowed to without doing the rest (my house was one of them) and then basically bailed out.
      - donarb 8y ago
        In Seattle there are lots of buildings going up that are residential with commercial space on the ground floor. Residential is so profitable that the commercial space can sit empty for quite awhile and still make a profit. They then cover the vacant storefronts with colorful graphics.
adrianN 8y ago
Any urban change takes decades, especially if you have to build things. For example it takes years from proposal to completion of a single bike lane. Digging subway tunnels is much slower. Here in Berlin we're still debating plans that were originally drafted in the seventies. I think the most effective tool cities have is zoning regulations. Getting them right enables the city to harvest organic change as opposed to having to plan every single project. Reducing free parking and allowing mixed commercial and residential use seems to me like the easiest way towards a public transit centric city. In Tokyo for example there is basically no curbside parking and shops are always within walking distance.
- elvinyung 8y ago
  Totally, but in the North America it seems like we are culturally nowhere near aligned on changing this for the better. The cultural opinion seems to be slowly improving, but it still seems like most of North America has very agrarian/suburban tendencies. P.S. Japanese zoning is fascinating [1], but not without its faults. For example, the relatively laissez-faire zoning policies can be seen as to blame for the lack of bike lane infrastructure in most of Japan [2]. That said, 東京がとてもすきです :) [1] http://devonzuegel.com/post/north-american-vs-japanese-zoning http://devonzuegel.com/post/north-american-vs-japanese-zonin... [2] https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_Urban_Japan.html?id=KprPdsSvGyoC https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_Urban_Jap...
- lbriner 8y ago
  The other problem with zoning is that it is not a decision made in isolation. When governments are under financial pressure (aren't they all?), why not zone for what makes the most short-term or long term cash? The environmental benefits of mass transit or even the idea of high density living doesn't necessarily appeal much financially.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    How do gigantic parking lots make most cash in the short term?
oftenwrong 8y ago
Daniel Herriges wrote some great articles about the "activation energy" of walkability, and what significance that has for suburban America: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/14/the-activation-energy-of-a-walkable-place https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/14/the-activation... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/17/the-catch-22-of-retrofitting-the-suburbs https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/17/the-catch-22-o...
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
> There's not even a handful of cities that would be nice to get around or live in without a car. > As an semi-extremist urbanite Don't call yourself an extremist. There's plenty of people that live without a car in big cities (outside of the US).

rwmj 8y ago

It's a shame this article doesn't lay out any plan for how to get from where the US is now to where the author would like it to be. You're not going to dig up the existing train stations, so how could the parking be converted to shops and housing? How can you persuade drivers and politicians to support whatever other steps are necessary? (eg. converting roads to railways)

the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
I wonder what changed in our mindset in the last 50 years that such projects seem impossible now but possible back then. I mean subways were not any easier to build 100 or 50 years ago than today. And it surely was not cheaper.
- mikehollinger 8y ago
  My favorite theory is that the post WW2-era American value shifted to personal liberty and the American dream: your home, your picket fence, and your car. You choose where you go, when you go, and how you get there. Drive on those new interstates! Take the family for a picnic. Go surfing! How can you be truly independent and live that perfect magazine cover life if you’ve got to wait on the 9:27 to take you to the B line so you won’t be late to work?
  - michaelt 8y ago
    I think the_mitsuhiko is wondering not about rail projects specifically, but about a loss of confidence about performing large-scale projects in the abstract sense, independent of what the project is for. For example, in 1930 it seemed feasible to build the Hoover dam; in 1950 it seemed feasible to build the interstate highway system; in 1960 it seemed feasible to land a man on the moon. Now, in 2018, people think it isn't feasible to build some train stations. And those people might be right! What happened to our ability (practically, politically, and financially) to get such things done?
    - yourapostasy 8y ago

CaptainZapp 8y ago

When you look at the Tokyo railway map it looks like a totally unnavigational maze. Actually, and despite the fact that services are provided by more than half a dozen independent companies, it's quite easy to navigate. Even when you run into vertigo when seeing it for the first time. Each line, no matter if Tokyo metro, private metro, JR, private railway is color coded and has a fixed one or more unique letter designation. Say, you want to go to Ginza, to just take one example. You don't even have to remember the station name. You just need to know the station codes. In this case M16 (red), H08 (gray) or G9 (orange). The letter designates the metro line, while the number represents the station for the respective line. And each combination is unique. That, in combination with a PASMO or SUICA smart card makes orientation very straight forward and seamless.

oftenwrong 8y ago
I was able to navigate the Tokyo system on my first visit better than I could navigate the New York system, even though I had lived in New York for years. I credit the high quality signage.
- have_faith 8y ago
  Second this. Tokyo was extremely easy to navigate considering I had done no planning until I arrived.
- mynameisvlad 8y ago
  Yes, 100%. That, combined with Google Maps for routing made any sort of train or metro interaction in all of Japan utterly painless. The only time I got lost was when I couldn't immediately find a Tokyo Metro station and Google Maps sent me to the JR station on the other end of the mall. Even then, it only took me a few minutes of wandering around to find what I was looking for.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
kalleboo 8y ago

oftenwrong 8y ago

The author, Nathan Lewis, makes frequent references to concepts he established in detail in previous articles. For example, "Traditional City", "Place", "19th Century Hypertrophic City". All of his articles on cities: https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post-heroic-materialism/ https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post...

kkm 8y ago

Image captioned `Westfriedhof Station, Stockholm.` is actually `Westfriedhof Station, Munich.`

wink 8y ago

The Westfriedhof station pictured is also in Munich, not Stockholm, guess it's a copy/paste error. It is kinda nice, but it's relatively young (15 years maybe?) whereas most of our subway stations are from the 70s and not half as nice. Edit: it's 20 years old, not 15: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfriedhof_(Munich_U-Bahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfriedhof_(Munich_U-Bahn) and the others pictured are also on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-Brauchle-Ring_(Munich_U-Bahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-Brauchle-Ring_(Munich_U-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidplatz_(Munich_U-Bahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidplatz_(Munich_U-Bahn)

the8472 8y ago
Old does not mean it has to look shabby as the moscow stations demonstrate. Or these from berlin: http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful-underground-gems-of-the-berlin-u-bahn/ http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful-under...
- wink 8y ago
  No of course not, but some stations here have this "this wall was modern in the 70s, also it's kinda grimy and some of the tiles fell off" look - like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendlinger_Tor_(Munich_U-Bahn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendlinger_Tor_(Munich_U-Bahn), but some were worse. They are renovating some - and to be honest if it's structurally sound I couldn't care less if it looks shabby, I was just trying to point out the differences - because some of the newer ones look really nice :)

alistairSH 8y ago

As a DC resident, I partially agree with his conclusion on the DC metro. But, the stations he chose are suburban, not downtown. Tokyo is a much larger city than DC. so, it’s a bit apples to oranges. It was designed to get people into the city from the suburbs. As such, it completely fails today, where most jobs are also in the suburbs. It fails for reverse commuting as well, because, as noted, most stations are not within walking of commercial hubs. That said, the expansion to Dulles came with lots of rezoning and denser development. Arlington started this before the expansion with the Courthouse-Clarendon-Ballston areas, with increased density and walkable zones. Reston and Herndon are doing similar things. Now, if we can figure out how to build a line from Tyson’s to Rockville or Bethesda (without going all the way downtown and back out again).

Symbiote 8y ago
> But, the stations he chose are suburban, not downtown. Why? They could have been constructed downtown (assuming you mean in Vienna or Fairfax, rather than in the middle of the motorway not-especially-near either of them). Or they could have been surrounded by the shopping malls that instead are nearish (but too far to walk). The town (Vienna) is almost 2km to the north, and doesn't have a station — yet it used to! There's a path/trail labelled "Washington and Old Dominion Trail", which is obviously an old railway line, ripped up and replaced with a bike path. Since the article mentions Stockholm, I've chosen the metro station furthest from the centre of Stockholm [1], and the station before it. It's a suburban area, but the stations are still in the middle of the 'suburban centres'. They're within 150m of multiple schools/colleges, a shopping mall, a culture centre and a theatre. Stockholm also has commuter railway lines ("Pendeltåg") extending further from the city, not shown by Google's map. These stop at some fairly small places, but it will still be somewhere in the middle of each place. [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8758039,-77.2713152,5435m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8758039,-77.2713152,5435m/da... [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@59.2443707,17.8132863,1092m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e2 https://www.google.com/maps/@59.2443707,17.8132863,1092m/dat...
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  The Orange line in Fairfax County was constructed in the median of I66 to save money. That was a huge mistake. The difference between the Orange line in Arlington where the locals lobbied to have it routed through actual neighborhoods and the Orange line in Fairfax County where it sits in the middle of an eight-lane highway is staggering.

yazr 8y ago

Lots of truths in the article. BUT Trains is always a system that picks winners & losers. The closer u r to the nearest station - the bigger winner u r. I lived in London. Any location not within 1km of a station is basically a prison. Even if u have a car, you cant go anywhere (since no parking), and no one will come to you. This is a particular problem when you adding trains (and impeding car) in an existing city.

systemtest 8y ago
Isn't it possible to rent a bike at the station?
- tombot 8y ago
  Yup, apps like CityMapper will even provide direction based on a Train and Bike hire route.
danhon 8y ago
Weird, so all the people taking the bus in London to and from stations must be hallucinating while they’re trapped in their prisons?
- yazr 8y ago
  A train+bus is a much higher threshold for many people. Will you go to a lawyer that requires a bus+train? A restaurant? A party u r not too sure about ? Trains are relatively dependable. The last mile is a big problem. (To be clear : i am pro public transport. I have a bike and ebike which i love, and car i hate.)
  - tombot 8y ago
    Yes, millions of people do every single day in London and other cities across the UK. Not sure where you're going? Citymapper will route across both tube and bus, it'll even tell you exactly when you get off. You pay using a contactless card, apple pay or similar, it works.

apexalpha 8y ago

It's too bad he never mentions the Netherlands. We have few metros but take his 'walk to the station' idea and introduced 'cycle to the station'. You can always store your bike at a Dutch trainstation and coupled with good cycling infrastructure this increases the area served by a station. We also have cross-country trains every 10 minutes and if you get to a station where you don't have a bike you can rent one from the train company. Or rent a car if you're a bit further away. There's always room for improvement but right now they have a 90% on time record on an open rail system they share with competitors, foreign train services, and freight trains. Adding bikes to the equation could solve America's "but our urban communities are too sparse to be served by a metro/train". A bike gets you quite far in 10 minutes. Let alone an e-bike or an electric scooter. In Utrecht, the main station in our star-grid, they just opened a bicycle parking with 22.000 spots! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8 edit: this is what our national rail looks like: https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaart-20181.jpg https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaar...

azag0 8y ago
The Dutch and Danish approach to cycling is just from a different world. Even cities that I consider decent for cycling, like Berlin, pale in comparison to any larger Dutch or Danish city. And once you introduce cycling into commuting systems at that scale, yes, it enables you to design those systems in new ways.
- bklaasen 8y ago
  It also requires a shift in focus away from prioritising cars to prioritising pedestrians and cyclists. In the Netherlands, you can be sure that every town planner owns a bicycle and commutes on it frequently. I live in Ireland. I've met regional town planners here. None of them own a bicycle. Traffic planners here call the traffic state when pedestrians are crossing the road "dead time".
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    That's a good point. When I look at some stuff that's done for cyclists here in California I also have my doubts if any of the planners ever have used a bicycle.

ydnaclementine 8y ago

I feel like the argument weakens when he compares countries. I'm looking at the railway maps of France and Japan thinking: 'this entire country is the size of a single, largeish US state'. Total land area is a problem to be solved in the US for train travel, and we only have Russia and China to compare to. City to city comparison makes much more sense

bencoder 8y ago
>France Only Texas and Alaska are larger than France. I give you Alaska, due to the geography and low population, but Texas is just slightly larger and has half the population of France - not a massive difference. I think it could be reasonably fair to compare countries to single states at least?
- lbriner 8y ago
  You can, of course, compare countries to states but sadly too many of these articles make sweeping generalisations and don't mention the compromises. Most people would much rather have the convenience of a car if possible and cheap but in Japan it is often neither due to space constraints and generally parking is illegal on most roads. Compare Texas, lots of open space and historical reasons necessitates car travel except for major urban to urban transport which could be done by train but why bother? As in the UK, the acceptance that cars be supported for some journeys means that on balance, they are better to use for most others. Even for me, the coach runs direct from my town to Heathrow airport in a similar time to a car and pretty cheap but it won't always run when I need it so why not drive (or get a lift)?
  - esotericn 8y ago
    This is an interesting comment. As a Londoner (have lived both centrally and in the suburbs) I think you're right that it's one or the other. If you design for cars (e.g. M25, UK motorway network and roads, towns like Swindon and MK) then cars are the uncontested king. In an area like London, it almost becomes an emergent phenomenon. The suburbs have car use because they're not very dense and it still beats sporadic bus routes. In the centre there's just no space. Forget parking, Uber might be slower than the tube in a no-congestion scenario simply due to traffic lights and giving way.

wiz21c 8y ago

Too bad the article doesn't talk about the not so sexy trains which were numerous and allowed travellers to go from small cities to other small cities. The big/speedy trains only cover a few paths...

bala529 8y ago

subway stations from around the world, the second one is not Westfriedhof Station, Stockholm, it is in Munich Westfriedhof station!

gok 8y ago

One thing these articles nearly always gloss over is that these beautiful, clean metro systems stay that way partially because they close down for maintenance at night. The New York system runs 24/7, as does most of the "sorry crap" in Chicago. I presume there's an article here scolding Americans for staying up too late or something.

lstodd 8y ago
In Moscow, for example, the last trains from the end stations depart at 0100 and arrive at 0200-0230 or so at the other end, and the first ones depart at 0500 or so depending on the line. I wouldn't call those 3-4 hours closing down for the night. Even so, this break is used mostly for track maintenance where one can't have trains rolling. Station cleaning and rolling stock maintenance is ongoing, construction/repairs that do not require cutting electric power to the trains are being done 24/7. So, no excuse for NY.
a-nikolaev 8y ago
Well, the NYC subway is still grossly mismanaged, about 20-30% of it is down even on the best days, with tens if not hundreds route changes and station closures. On weekends and at night up to half of the system may not work. Because the system is poorly maintained, the trains run slower than what they should be, causing even more delays. EDIT: edited percentage to 20-30%
- lbriner 8y ago
  I've read lots of articles about mismanagement and unions pushing up costs for work but I wonder how much problem the 24/7 mentality creates? Even in London, the Tube is mostly shutdown for around 6 hours per night, not a lot of time but enough to make some fairly big inroads into the maintenance. I found the NYC subway to be fairly decent but I found the feeling of darkness in many stations to be more of a big deal. I wouldn't mind waiting in stations that were much lit much better.
- rco8786 8y ago
  > about 70-80% of it is down even on the best days, I’m not usually one to defend the MTA but this is wildly inaccurate.

sparrc 8y ago

Does anyone have comprehensive information on typical transportation department budgets in the US vs. some of these countries? Anecdotally I had a civil engineer friend from Spain who always told me that the transportation budgets in the USA were tiny compared to in Europe. It'd be great if it was politically feasible for the US government to take some money from the military and put it into ambitious public transportation infrastructure. National rail probably doesn't make sense but there are definitely regional and city systems that need some serious help.

kalleboo 8y ago
One problem is that even if they spent as much, infrastructure construction costs in the US are way higher than elsewhere: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
jandrese 8y ago
Rail projects have a lot of political pushback in the US. They're expected to pay for themselves and realistically rarely manage to do so. They tend to be costed compared to cars, and somehow the cost of building and maintaining the roads is not included in that comparison, except for the relatively small fraction that comes from the gas tax. So rail projects somehow never look economically viable compared to a magically free road system.

krsdcbl 8y ago

Adding one lesser known example of imho outstanding public transportation service is Vienna, Austria - not the largest of cities, at 1.9 Mio inhabitants, and about half the area of Berlin (or 1/4 of London), still the 6th largest city in Europe. You can get almost anywhere within half an hour tops, the Metro runs till after midnight weekdays and 24/7 on the weekends, there's an extensive system of Tramways & Busses to cover anything a bit farther from a Metro station. And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the services for 1€/day, billed monthly. This is mostly to stress the point of how much you take such a system for granted when it's available and just works - since I've moved here owning a car would be almost an inconvenience, and even London feels like a horrible public transportation experience.

nhf 8y ago
> And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the services for 1€/day, billed monthly. This kind of thing is key - make it easy to use transit and lower the marginal cost of doing so. Yearly subscriptions are good. London's approach—unify almost all modes under the same payment system with automatically calculated caps and discounts—also works quite well as you don't have to think about buying passes, individual tickets, etc. Just tap and go and the system takes care of it for you. Not many places in the US have this level of integration yet. For instance, the NYC Ferry, NYC Subway, LIRR, Metro North, PATH, and regional Amtrak service all use disjoint ticketing methods. It'll slowly get integrated over the next decade, but it greatly increases the mental effort needed to hop on transit. Perhaps the closest in the US is the Bay Area's Clipper Card - they managed to shoehorn over a dozen area agencies onto the same payment method - but it's still not quite as good as something like London's Oyster.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  The TAP card in Los Angeles is good for dozens of local public transport companies. For quite a while, this was not the case; you could only use it on Metro (County-level agency). The integration over the years has certainly increased my use of transit in the area; there are many tiny, obscure transit systems in Los Angeles County and I can ride almost all of them now without having to carry any cash or change. Sometimes you can even get cross-company transfer fares with the TAP. It's fantastic. https://www.taptogo.net/articles/Website_content/where-to-ride https://www.taptogo.net/articles/Website_content/where-to-ri...

spikels 8y ago

In these discussions there is always a lot of griping about the US’s poor rail infrastructure when the US actually has the 2nd most used rail networks in the world. It’s just almost entirely used for freight. An equally valid question is why does Europe transport almost all of its freight by truck? Obviously geography and population density - network effects scale with the square of population in reasonable service area - are huge factors. A multi-day freight trip is quite common while only a tiny fraction of passenger trips are more than a few hours - the reasonable service areas are vastly different. In Europe you have multiple overlapping country sized rail networks. While this gives the impression of a continental sized network (especially to Eurail pass riding in American tourists) very few people are taking trains journeys more than a few hours even in Europe. Another big issue is the incompatibility of freight and passenger rail services. It is very difficult to run both services on the same tracks at high service levels. The US focus on fright has hampered long distance and even regional passenger rail services. While in France the government decided to focus on passengers and eliminated all but a few freight routes. It would take an additional complete parallel rail infrastructure to do both well which would be quite expensive. So far the US and Europe haven’t thought this was worth it. China might be going this way. Perhaps this simply makes sense given the differing situations.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Out of curiosity: 2nd most used by what metric? Ton-miles? And who has the most-used?
Symbiote 8y ago
It's not a huge difference. By tonne-km, the EU uses rail for 17%, and the USA for 31%. So I accept that the USA uses the rail network almost entirely for freight, but it's not true that the EU transfers "almost all" freight by truck. Freight trains in Europe tend to run at much higher speeds than in the USA. For example, in Britain container trains can run at up to 75mph, and 140km/h in Germany. But compared to the USA, Europe already has a complete parallel infrastructure: pretty much every route has two tracks. I've only been on one long-distance passenger train in the USA, but there were long periods where there was only a single track. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Freight_transport_statistics_-_modal_split https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight-trains-in-the-uk.16067/ https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight-tr...

jorblumesea 8y ago

In the 50s, the US made a big bet that car based transportation was the future. It was, for awhile, but now it's clear that denser cities are the future, not suburbs. Countries that invested in infrastructure that supported dense cities are providing a higher quality of life compared to the "drive everywhere" culture of the States.

Animats 8y ago

That's 2009. The Shinkansen goes to Hokkaido now, via underwater tunnel.[1] Japan has a plan to run a superconducting maglev train between Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. It's a huge job. The "Japanese Alps" are in the way. Most of the route would have to be in tunnels cut through hard rock. It's not just talk. The first section is already running. At 500km/hr. There are working trainsets running on 42km of track, mostly in tunnels. Stations are under construction. Tunneling continues. Construction started in 2014. Completion in 2027, to Nagoya. Osaka 10 years later. Many Asian cities now have large new monorail systems. Daegu, 30 stations. Mumbai, 17 stations. Chongqing, 64 stations. Many smaller systems, too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido_Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido_Shinkansen

kalleboo 8y ago
Thier map is also missing the Kyushu shinkansen down to Kagoshima which opened partially in 2004 and fully in 2011
lostmsu 8y ago
For comparison: here in West Seattle, we will get what essentially is a tramway in 2033. It's less than 15km from downtown.

bfrog 8y ago

Lets get real here, its partially a chicken and egg problem, but the population and density has to be there to support such a dense and useful train system. Parts of my city (Chicago) support the kind of rail stations he talks about. Some parts do not as the density here varies greatly but generally speaking... Tokyo has nearly 10 million people in about 1000 square miles of land Chicago has nearly 3 million people in about 10000 square miles of land Tokyo probably has at least 5 metropolitan cities of greater than 1 million people within 600 miles. Chicago has none, New York is about 730 miles away. Clearly a world of difference in the sort of density and distances that just don't necessarily support the same kind of rail system. Even then parts of Chicago closely match his experience in Tokyo, though certainly not to the same quantity and quality. A picture of a far north chicago L stop I lived near at one point in my life, right near the end of the line. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Morse/@42.0082879,-87.6681424,1178m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x880fd1ae5bbe3967:0x43666fdee150c8fd!8m2!3d42.0082839!4d-87.6659537 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Morse/@42.0082879,-87.6681... Nearly every stop along that train route is in the center of a neighborhood at least going north. Where Chicago screwed up was putting L stops in the middle of freeways rather than in the center of neighborhoods for certain sections and lines. It honestly makes those areas feel like the heart of the neighborhood has been cut out of it, there is no central spot where people have a reason to be. And who really wants to live right next to a 12/8/6 lane free way? No one, and certainly that's where Chicago neighborhoods no longer feel like the cozy place where people hang out, eat, drink, and catch their ride into work.

froh 8y ago
> Lets get real here ... > Tokyo probably has at least 5 metropolitan cities of greater than 1 million people within 600 miles. Greater Tokyo is about 38 million people within 50-80 miles (5.200 sq mi) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jefurii 8y ago

> This is the train map for Washington DC. As you can see, it is an irrelevant little fart of a train system. I used to live in Japan, now I live in Southern California near the Gold Line, which is the pride of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The Gold line is approximately as long as the dinky little private Tawaramoto Line that cuts a triangle between JR Oji Stn and Kintetsu Tawaramoto Stn in Nara Prefecture. Except the Tawaramoto Line always ran at least four cars while MTA's Gold Line only runs that many during rush hour. LA's crown jewel Union Station is approximately the size of a mid-size suburban station in Japan. It's incredibly sad.

rdiddly 8y ago

"These days, it’s easy to make subway systems because we have amazing tunneling machines..." -spits out coffee comically- I suppose compared to 1905 it's easier, but it's still not "easy." Tunneling never goes off without some kind of hitch, and almost always goes over budget or off-schedule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacement_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacemen... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway I agree with the general thrust of the piece though.

x0x0 8y ago
Nah, the super expensive and always goes way over budget are features of subways only when Americans make them, unfortunately. That's not to say no one else has construction projects that go over budget, but the rest of the world -- more developed countries and less developed countries alike -- all manage to build infra for way less money, and much closer to budget. If we want nice things -- like trains that work! -- we have to figure this out. see, for example, https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex... and https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction-costs-metro-stations/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction-c...
- rdiddly 8y ago
  You're generally right and I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, but the one example I thought of belatedly AFTER hitting "Add Comment" on the above, just happened to be this... in a country that mostly seems to have its shit much more together than the US, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Archive_of_the_City_of_Cologne#Collapse_of_the_archive_in_2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Archive_of_the_City...

cuban-frisbee 8y ago

It's kinda funny seing an outside perspective on this. I live in europe and while we do have a decent rail system I always dream of a truly unified european rail network that can eliminate much of the air trafic. I don't know if that is possible with current technologies but a man can dream. Still it is pretty good what we have as the author states. I will spend an equivelant of about 50 us dollars to travel home and back for christmas, around 700 km total, which is actually cheaper than the equivalent cost in just gas if I was to drive (if I had a car that was, also not factoring bridge toll, which would make it substantially more expensive).

datenwolf 8y ago

One picture is mistitled. The "Westfriedhof" Station is located in Munich, not Stockholm (also it's the station closest to where I used to live in Munich for almost 30 years). It's a very popular place among photographers.

Sideloader 8y ago

Very cool article. Somewhat surprised China wasn’t included on the list as they have built a high speed rail network in the last several decades that already has more track mileage than Europe’s. Where there is a will there is a way, as the saying goes, and America, and the UK, with their profit über alles obsession are happy to let infrastructure rot and make people use woefully underfunded and overcrowded rail systems rather than trying something “new.”

ken 8y ago

> These days, it’s easy to make subway systems because we have amazing tunneling machines, which will bore a train-sized hole like a giant rock-eating worm. So, no excuses. I wouldn't say "easy". It's possible. Here in Seattle, we're building a new 2-mile tunnel (for cars). It was originally scheduled to open 3 years ago, and will finally open in 2019. It was planned to take 29 months, but took 67. We're not so great at bridges, either. One of my managers observed "We've got 4 floating bridges, and we sank 2 of them." That was back when I was on the Boeing 7E7 project (first flight: 28 months late). Is it any wonder we can't get excited about the prospect of an "easy" new rail project? We can't estimate big engineering projects to within 50%, and we can't keep existing infrastructure afloat (literally). I always vote for public transit on principle, but I'm also aware it's always going to take longer and cost more than they claim, so I can't really blame people who don't. Want broad support for infrastructure projects? First, demonstrate you can execute on them reliably. Nobody wants to agree to pay for a tunnel that might end up being the next "Big Dig".

theedwood 8y ago
> I wouldn't say "easy". It's possible. Here in Seattle, we're building a new 2-mile tunnel (for cars). It was originally scheduled to open 3 years ago, and will finally open in 2019. It was planned to take 29 months, but took 67. To add to this, some areas are made of materials that are simply difficult to bore through. Atlanta, for example, sits on top of a bunch of granite which at least partially contributes to the difficulties of underground rail expansion.

mjevans 8y ago

The US is indeed addicted to cars, and particularly for those living in the suburbs this is a sunk investment. It really doesn't help that the cities are (usually) NOT built to building codes that actually encourage privacy between units, that needs to get fixed too. However, an upgrade path would be a great idea. That path must allow for the transit systems (either highly regulated utilities or community owned) to spread. * New core has the target service level in place. * That service links to a PROPER parking structure at en edge. * Such structure should be SECURE (unfortunately monitored) * Also package transport services in addition to people. Renting 'a spot' in that area, as part of a residence OR as part of visiting should be low cost, and shouldn't /punish/ owning a car. The idea is you're incentivizing use of the new zone as well as commerce within it. The parking structures become a gateway as well as additional storage (and should convert to that when use for parking decreases).

8bitsrule 8y ago

"most of the rest of the developed world has quite wonderful subways and trains. They are clean, efficient, cheap, run on time, have as many as 20 or even 25 trains an hour...." We used to have a lot of railroads in the US. Then the automobile came along, which started them going downhill, but there were still lots of them ... then the interstate freeway system was built (with planning help from the CEO of General Motors), and the railroad system couldn't compete for passengers. Passenger service was mostly gone 50 years ago. But, you ask, did noone plan for the future? Well ... this is the U.S. We only build it well once, then we argue about who should keep it repaired. Which is why the majority of our bridges are in a dangerous state.