This issue was compounded by the death of streetcar lines across America, being replaced with buses. In Tokyo some of these streetcar lines evolved into subway

This issue was compounded by the death of streetcar lines across America, being replaced with buses. In Tokyo some of these streetcar lines evolved into subway and train lines. For example, the stretch of the modern Tokyu Den-en-Toshi Line that goes from Shibuya to Futakotamagawa (where Rakuten’s global headquarters are located) replaced the old Tokyu Tamagawa Line, which was a streetcar line. In an alternate universe, Los Angeles’ once-extensive streetcar system, which I believe was operated by private companies (though I could be wrong), could’ve been upgraded to become an extensive train and subway system. I believe the company that built the streetcar connecting Los Angeles with Pasadena also developed real estate along the route to encourage the use of the streetcar. This is exactly Tokyu’s business model; Tokyu played a major role in the development of “garden suburbs” influenced by the garden city movement of the early 1900s: first with the Den-en-Chofu neighborhood of Tokyo in the 1920s (which is served by the Tokyu Toyoko Line), and then with the development of Tama Den-en-Toshi (Tama Garden Cities) in once-rural parts of Kawasaki and Yokohama beginning in the 1960s. Of course, a crucial difference between the original garden city concept versus Tokyu’s implementation of it is that Tokyu’s garden suburbs are generally not job centers; while there are plenty of service jobs there, the majority of good-paying professional jobs are located in the city center (such as near Shibuya Station, which conveniently is heavily influenced by Tokyu), hence contributing to Tokyo’s legendary train congestion.