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It’s an incentives problem in the United States. In Japan, for example, the railways are private (so they need to turn a profit) and you usually have supermarke
by jacquesl 7y ago
It’s an incentives problem in the United States. In Japan, for example, the railways are private (so they need to turn a profit) and you usually have supermarkets and department stores on the stations. The stations are the hub. When you look at commuter lines into large cities in the US, you are driving hours to a parking lot with nothing but a platform near by.
- adrianN 7y agoAs I understand it, railway companies in Japan are real estate companies in disguise. They own the land around the stations and make a significant chunk of their money from that. Real estate around train stations is quite valuable.
- barry-cotter 7y agoIsn’t that model illegal in the US?
- manigandham 7y agoNo, why would it be? Any company can own real estate. Here's a more in-depth article explaining it: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/05/secret-tokyos-rail-success/2044/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/05/secret-tokyos...
- alteria 7y agoThe big transcontinental railroads own several feet around the railroad, which is prime real estate for cables and the like.
- vidanay 7y agoHistorical note: A significant portion of that land was granted by the US government in the 19th century to incentivize westward expansion.
- beerandt 7y agoI think you mean several miles. Which is why the PLSS grid looks like a checkerboard out west. Alternating sections for the public and the RR companies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_(land) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_(land)
- evanelias 7y agoIt's legal and it's a model being increasingly adopted in the US, for better or worse. In the NYC metro area, both Port Authority and NJ Transit are visibly leaning on this model to drive revenue.
- manigandham 7y agoIt's also a geographic, real-estate, and political problem. There's not enough density in enough areas with enough last-mile coverage for trains to work like other countries.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoMany cities solve this chicken and egg problem by building the necessary density next to the train station. Hong Kong and Japan are the most famous examples, but it works in Singapore and large chunks of Europe as well (although Parisian banlieues may not be the best model of urban planning for other reasons...).
- arcticbull 7y agoYes it’s sad to see America’s giving up before even trying. Defeatism I believe.
- manigandham 7y agoIt's not useful to generalize like that. America is far bigger than most can imagine and the current challenges are much greater than the benefits. The US doesn't just need trains as good as Japan, it needs them to be at least twice as good for the investments to make sense.
- arcticbull 7y agoI have no idea why you think it has to be “twice as good” or what all that even means. With that behind us, nobody’s proposing high speed rail from San Diego to Boston, just LA to SF and along the eastern corridor. And we can’t event have that. Let’s start small.
- manigandham 7y agoIt means that unless the trains are moving at 400mph with perfect comfort, free wifi, and a price of $20, nobody cares. LA to SF is a 1 hour flight as cheap as $50, with the same last-mile effort and total trip time as a train. Airlines are also elastic to meet demand without major capex. So who's going to spend the 100s of billions to buy the land and build a line for a 2-3x slower travel option that will take a century to be paid back? California is actually trying to do this and has failed miserably because the land and infrastructure costs alone make the project infeasible.