To be fair, most Asian cities have stuff like this. It never caught on in the west due to cultural and political reasons e.g. urban planning in western nations

To be fair, most Asian cities have stuff like this. It never caught on in the west due to cultural and political reasons e.g. urban planning in western nations are designed with cars as the preferred mode of transport and most housing densities are several magnitudes lower than places like Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. Just two days ago HN was lamenting about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19769292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19769292 Other than urban planning, the abundance of street food and lack of tipping culture in Asia also probably helps.