7 ms·

The secrets of the Shinkansen

159 points by WillDaSilva 6mo ago

marak830 6mo ago
Title should be "The secrets of the Shinkansen" which is odd for a (very well written) piece about Japanese commuter trains (non-shinkansen versions). Maybe it's a carry on though "This is the third article we have released from Issue 23".
- limitedfrom 6mo ago
  On the magazine itself, it seems to be labeled "Why Japan has such good railways"[1] instead [1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-japan-has-such-good-railways/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-japan-has-such-good-rai...
  - marak830 6mo ago
    That makes so much more sense
0x3f 6mo ago
It's a good article, but I think the "it's not culture, just good governance" idea is a little hand wavy. The two bleed into each other greatly. The fact that houses are more disposable and wealth is less intergenerational in Japan does a lot to tamp down the NIMBY issues that plague e.g. the UK. The UK is so far gone that the transport authority in it's largest city can't revamp stations or do add-on development without literal years of hand wringing. And even then it's often rejected or reduced in the end.
- keiferski 6mo ago
  The idea that culture can be divorced from other aspects of society seems like one of the biggest misconceptions of the 20th century.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
- walthamstow 6mo ago
  London is probably the worst-governed, or worst-planned, city of its peers. NYC has famously bad governance but at least it actually has its own government. The national government controls all London budgets, the Mayor has no power, there's no legislative body for the city (GLA is not one), and there are 33 different borough councils that don't owe the Mayor anything.
- tonyedgecombe 6mo ago
  >The UK is so far gone that the transport authority in it's largest city can't revamp stations or do add-on development without literal years of hand wringing. And even then it's often rejected or reduced in the end. They just finished a line that traverses the whole city. It's 73 miles from end to end and carries one seventh of the UK's rail journeys (600,000 trips per day).
  - 0x3f 6mo ago
    The Elizabeth Line is basically at the bare minimum for a global Asian city. It's not even that good by comparison. It's really a joke that London only has one line of that caliber and it took them literally decades to build. So it's touted as some great success but to me it's a sign of failure. They'll say similar things if they ever finish HSR in California. Yeah I'm sure the end product will be fine but the whole process is disgraceful. Never mind the fact that the Elizabeth Line is only so over-utilized because London completely fails at building density in and around its center. So it has to make its people live in zone 30 and sit on the train for two hours every day.
    - tonyedgecombe 6mo ago
      I guess your glass is half empty.
      - 0x3f 6mo ago
        No, it's entirely factual, not a matter of outlook. Otherwise please explain why one new line at this standard per 20-40 years is acceptable for a city that sees itself as world-leading.
l5870uoo9y 6mo ago
It’s fascinating to read but I have a hard time imagining a public western railway provider could evolve into a train based mega corporation doing real estate and health services.
- dkdbejwi383 6mo ago
  Transport for London (TfL) have a fledgling property development arm called Places for London which aims to try and replicate some of the successes of Japanese railway companies. They propose the mooted Bakerloo line extension is partially subsidised by over-station developments.
  - 0x3f 6mo ago
    TfL can barely build some flats in Zone 2 without the locals rioting like they're destroying a Cotswolds village. Actually, it can barely fix the literal busiest station in the country without a bunch of minor celebrity detractors riling up everyone about how much of a travesty it is that we're doing it. Without the public or central government support, the efforts you're talking about amount to very little.
    - objclxt 6mo ago
      > Actually, it can barely fix the literal busiest station in the country Liverpool Street isn't managed by TfL, it's managed by Network Rail.
      - 0x3f 6mo ago
        Ah yes, was too into the screed. Same problem though.
- steve1977 6mo ago
  The Swiss SBB also has a real estate division, which makes them a lot of money actually (I think a lot of that comes from leases from shops in train stations). They also have an energy company which runs some hydroelectric power stations.
razorbeamz 6mo ago
These mixed companies can be very confusing to tourists especially. I'm always answering questions from tourists who are confused why they can't buy a ticket to where they want to go.
- the-smug-one 6mo ago
  It's basically one card for everything, independent of company, in Japan. Only certain trips require tickets from specific companies.
- 0x3f 6mo ago
  Almost everything works with Suica, no? Although to be fair I guess tourists are _more_ likely to use the heritage lines with slightly different rules.
  - razorbeamz 6mo ago
    Tourists are often buying paper tickets. There's no way for a foreign Android phone to use a digital Suica, so people with Android are stuck with a physical card or paper tickets, and there's a lot of outdated information online that the physical cards are in low supply (They were last year but this year they're not).
    - kevmo314 6mo ago
      Is this an Android thing? My US iOS works fine with digital Suica.
      - Conan_Kudo 6mo ago
        Apple doesn't make regional variants of the phone, so all models have the technology built-in, even if it's disabled by default. Android phones outside of Japan lack Suica support.
        razorbeamz 6mo ago
veltas 6mo ago
.
- the-smug-one 6mo ago
  Read the article.
Animats 6mo ago
Japan's railroad system has a big geographic advantage - the country is long and narrow. The railroad system is primarily a long end to end line with short crosswise branches.[1] That's an efficient structure. The branch lines don't have to be fast. Many are still narrow gauge, at 3 ft 6 in. The US had to fill a huge area in the railroad era. That left a lot of underutilized track once the road network got good. [1] https://www.jrailpass.com/pdf/maps/JRP_japan.pdf https://www.jrailpass.com/pdf/maps/JRP_japan.pdf
- Gigachad 6mo ago
  There is no excuse for the US’s failure. Many countries have large areas to cover. China is a similar size and has massive HSR coverage. The US could too if they didn’t waste all the money on corruption.
  - Conan_Kudo 6mo ago
    China also has nationalized rail systems. The major reason for the failure in the US is that the rail lines are not publicly owned. The reason the rail systems never got upgraded and Amtrak couldn't deploy high speed rail everywhere (despite it being a national priority in the 70s, 80s, and 90s) is that outside of the northeast corridor, Amtrak doesn't own the lines and couldn't get the owners to allow Amtrak to upgrade them for passenger high speed rail.
    - jabl 6mo ago
      > China also has nationalized rail systems. The major reason for the failure in the US is that the rail lines are not publicly owned. The article we're discussing explains that Japan has the best passenger rail system in the world, and which happens to be privatized, along with privately owned track. So which one is it? Go figure.
      - Tor3 6mo ago
        I believe the Japanese private rail companies also own the lines where their traffic is. This would explain a lot. There are other countries (including my native one) where the trains are run by one company and the lines are owned by another. This does.not.work. For what seems like obvious reasons. There's no economic gain for the owner of the infrastructure to spend money, quite the opposite in fact.
ekianjo 6mo ago
> At its most extreme, three separate commuter lines compete for the traffic between Osaka and the port city of Kobe, running in parallel, sometimes fewer than 500 meters apart. Sometimes fewer than 100 meters apart. Or connecting to each other's with a bridge.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
sparkie 6mo ago
The subway system in Kyoto (Karasuma line) is operated by the local government. I visited during the busiest time of the year (Gion matsuri), and the trains were not overcrowded, were frequent and arrived on the dot. The subway system is nicely air conditioned which was pleasant as I visited during a heatwave. I'm mostly in favor of privatization, but this is an example where the local government provide an exceptional service which is in no way inferior to the privately operated ones.
dogscatstrees 6mo ago
I'm drawn by the style and aesthetics of the charts in combination with the fonts used in them.
littlestymaar 6mo ago
> the most striking institutional feature of Japanese rail is that it is privately owned by a throng of competing companies. Knowing the author I knew it was going to be his main argument before even opening the blog post. And it's obviously wrong, these companies don't compete with one another, they all have a local monopoly. (The article itself acknowledges that and even acknowledges the organizational benefits of such monopolies, but the author could refrain himself from praising the virtue of competition nonetheless…)
- pipe01 6mo ago
  There are many places in Japan where multiple companies compete over the same area
  - littlestymaar 6mo ago
    I don't know Japan but the author has a whole paragraph about how it's not the case, and how a big part of Japan success comes from the fact that this is not the case, so the author must be wrong one way or the other: > Unlike other countries, Japan simply returned to the traditional private railway model of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: tracks, trains, stations, and yards were owned by vertically integrated regional conglomerates. > There are substantial advantages to vertical integration. Railways are a closed system that has to be planned as a single unit. Changing the timetable at station A can affect the timetable at station Z; buying new trains that can travel faster might require changes to the infrastructure so they can reach their top speed, which in turn requires rewriting the timetables. This becomes especially complicated if different services share tracks. To prevent delays from propagating from one service to another, the timetable needs to be carefully designed to make best use of the available infrastructure. > […] > By maintaining and restoring the institutions that built the first railway systems in the nineteenth century, the Japanese have created the mightiest railway system of the twenty-first.
Tor3 6mo ago
"The Japanese love cars, but they take trains because they have the best railway system in the world" That's exactly it. It's not because of some cultural bias or whatever. I'm in Japan. I use trains because it's so very easy and it's so very reliable. It's simply the best option for travelling. If I wish to go to Tokyo? I check a website quickly, I look up the best connection for my schedule (easy to find), I may pay in advance, or not. I take my bicycle and go ten minutes to the nearest station, park the bicycle in the bicycle parking there, and off I go. As it's a small station I change to a limited express train (where I've booked a seat) after ten minutes, then, after another forty minutes I reach a big station and I switch to the Shinkansen and I'm off to Tokyo. I'm relaxed all the time. I buy a coffee on the train, and/or I buy coffee and lunch at the station and bring on the train. Every other way of getting there is way more complex, and would take way more time.
- phrotoma 6mo ago
  > “An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.”
  - JKCalhoun 6mo ago
    On the JR line in Tokyo, standing with a friend who motions to me with his glance to a salaryman standing next to us. "Hand-stitched suit", my friend whispers. Which is when I notices this guy's "threads" (literally). Perhaps not Warren Buffett, but no doubt an executive of some stature riding with the rest of us plebes.
- Gravityloss 6mo ago
  Maybe some trains could be more redneck coded somehow? Steam trains with sweaty stokers and buffalo shooting from the windows of course had plenty of that, but how to bring something from that aesthetic to the present? Bar carriage with sports screens still sounds still a bit passive and cliche. Maybe a gym car? There are already kid and pet cars after all at least here. In German trains you get a real glass pint for your beer, I think that's a big plus.
DocTomoe 6mo ago
I was hoping for some 'technical' secrets. Like: you can actually change the lightbulbs for the headlights of the Series 0 train while it being underway - there is a service hatch that opens to a human-sized service area accessible from the driver's cabin which allows such repairs.
barney54 6mo ago
What is seldom mentioned in these conversations is that the United States has a very good rail system—-for freight. That’s what the U.S. system did well, not passengers. From the article it isn’t obvious how Japan moves freight, but they obviously aren’t moving a lot of freight on the Shinkansen.
- asutekku 6mo ago
  They actually started doing that very recently, converting old Shinkansen into a freight trains. Obviously you can't fit large cargo, but it's a good option for fast transport of parcels etc. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/03/24/companies/freight-only-shinkansen/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/03/24/companies/f...
decimalenough 6mo ago
There's a bunch of claims in the article that are misleading or just wrong. > Core rail operations are profitable for every Japanese private railway company Only the urban, legacy private railways that benefited from the "build a suburb and trains to it" system. Rural lines, private or not, all hemorrhage money, as do many of the newer private lines (often built by government and private only in name). > Japanese cities have the lowest residential density in Asia This is because Japanese "cities" (市) are administrative units, not actual cities. Particularly in the rapidly depopulating countryside, it's common for a bunch of dying villages that can't afford to duplicate their services anymore to get more or less forcibly merged into a "city" like Miyoshi in Shikoku that, in satellite view, looks like untouched forest: https://maps.app.goo.gl/tRtdQisJCUMsqivv7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/tRtdQisJCUMsqivv7 > The urban area of Tokyo, the densest Japanese city, has a weighted population density less than that of many European cities, This is only true for Tokyo Prefecture, which encompasses a vast slab of mountains. Actual Tokyo (23-ku) packs in over 15k people/km2, 50% more than inner London (10k) and nearly 2.5x Greater London (6k).
dgroshev 6mo ago
The article correctly identifies positive externalities of railways: > The railway can capture the value it creates for me by charging me a fare, but it cannot capture the value it creates for those at my destination. As transport infrastructure creates benefits that produce no revenue for providers, free markets rarely build enough of it. …but then very confusingly argues that railways should be profitable, including on per-passenger basis. A profitable transport system with positive externalities is inevitably either too expensive or under-investing (or maybe both) with respect to maximising the total economic productivity. Ancillary monopolies in real estate and retail might offset that somewhat, but only to an extent. Similarly, I don't understand why the article speaks positively of the closure of 83 "loss-making lines". The lines being loss-making for the rail company doesn't mean they aren't improving total productivity, as the very same article argues! Further, they mention the over-crowding in Tokyo later on > Tokyo’s infamously crammed trains are a symptom of underpriced rush hour traffic …but somehow blame it on the price being too low, and not under-investment into more capacity by the commercial companies! People commuting less because they can't afford it would be bad for the businesses on the other side of their commute! I suppose this is the centre-right ideological slant of Works in Progress showing, which is a bit of a shame when it leads to those self-contradictions in the usually quite rigorous publication.

159 points by WillDaSilva 6mo ago

Title should be "The secrets of the Shinkansen" which is odd for a (very well written) piece about Japanese commuter trains (non-shinkansen versions). Maybe it's a carry on though "This is the third article we have released from Issue 23".

limitedfrom 6mo ago
On the magazine itself, it seems to be labeled "Why Japan has such good railways"[1] instead [1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-japan-has-such-good-railways/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-japan-has-such-good-rai...
- marak830 6mo ago
  That makes so much more sense

0x3f 6mo ago

It's a good article, but I think the "it's not culture, just good governance" idea is a little hand wavy. The two bleed into each other greatly. The fact that houses are more disposable and wealth is less intergenerational in Japan does a lot to tamp down the NIMBY issues that plague e.g. the UK. The UK is so far gone that the transport authority in it's largest city can't revamp stations or do add-on development without literal years of hand wringing. And even then it's often rejected or reduced in the end.

keiferski 6mo ago
The idea that culture can be divorced from other aspects of society seems like one of the biggest misconceptions of the 20th century.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
walthamstow 6mo ago
London is probably the worst-governed, or worst-planned, city of its peers. NYC has famously bad governance but at least it actually has its own government. The national government controls all London budgets, the Mayor has no power, there's no legislative body for the city (GLA is not one), and there are 33 different borough councils that don't owe the Mayor anything.
tonyedgecombe 6mo ago
>The UK is so far gone that the transport authority in it's largest city can't revamp stations or do add-on development without literal years of hand wringing. And even then it's often rejected or reduced in the end. They just finished a line that traverses the whole city. It's 73 miles from end to end and carries one seventh of the UK's rail journeys (600,000 trips per day).
- 0x3f 6mo ago
  The Elizabeth Line is basically at the bare minimum for a global Asian city. It's not even that good by comparison. It's really a joke that London only has one line of that caliber and it took them literally decades to build. So it's touted as some great success but to me it's a sign of failure. They'll say similar things if they ever finish HSR in California. Yeah I'm sure the end product will be fine but the whole process is disgraceful. Never mind the fact that the Elizabeth Line is only so over-utilized because London completely fails at building density in and around its center. So it has to make its people live in zone 30 and sit on the train for two hours every day.
  - tonyedgecombe 6mo ago
    I guess your glass is half empty.
    - 0x3f 6mo ago
      No, it's entirely factual, not a matter of outlook. Otherwise please explain why one new line at this standard per 20-40 years is acceptable for a city that sees itself as world-leading.

l5870uoo9y 6mo ago

It’s fascinating to read but I have a hard time imagining a public western railway provider could evolve into a train based mega corporation doing real estate and health services.

dkdbejwi383 6mo ago
Transport for London (TfL) have a fledgling property development arm called Places for London which aims to try and replicate some of the successes of Japanese railway companies. They propose the mooted Bakerloo line extension is partially subsidised by over-station developments.
- 0x3f 6mo ago
  TfL can barely build some flats in Zone 2 without the locals rioting like they're destroying a Cotswolds village. Actually, it can barely fix the literal busiest station in the country without a bunch of minor celebrity detractors riling up everyone about how much of a travesty it is that we're doing it. Without the public or central government support, the efforts you're talking about amount to very little.
  - objclxt 6mo ago
    > Actually, it can barely fix the literal busiest station in the country Liverpool Street isn't managed by TfL, it's managed by Network Rail.
    - 0x3f 6mo ago
      Ah yes, was too into the screed. Same problem though.
steve1977 6mo ago
The Swiss SBB also has a real estate division, which makes them a lot of money actually (I think a lot of that comes from leases from shops in train stations). They also have an energy company which runs some hydroelectric power stations.

razorbeamz 6mo ago

These mixed companies can be very confusing to tourists especially. I'm always answering questions from tourists who are confused why they can't buy a ticket to where they want to go.

the-smug-one 6mo ago
It's basically one card for everything, independent of company, in Japan. Only certain trips require tickets from specific companies.
0x3f 6mo ago
Almost everything works with Suica, no? Although to be fair I guess tourists are _more_ likely to use the heritage lines with slightly different rules.
- razorbeamz 6mo ago
  Tourists are often buying paper tickets. There's no way for a foreign Android phone to use a digital Suica, so people with Android are stuck with a physical card or paper tickets, and there's a lot of outdated information online that the physical cards are in low supply (They were last year but this year they're not).
  - kevmo314 6mo ago
    Is this an Android thing? My US iOS works fine with digital Suica.
    - Conan_Kudo 6mo ago
      Apple doesn't make regional variants of the phone, so all models have the technology built-in, even if it's disabled by default. Android phones outside of Japan lack Suica support.
      - razorbeamz 6mo ago

veltas 6mo ago

the-smug-one 6mo ago
Read the article.

Animats 6mo ago

Japan's railroad system has a big geographic advantage - the country is long and narrow. The railroad system is primarily a long end to end line with short crosswise branches.[1] That's an efficient structure. The branch lines don't have to be fast. Many are still narrow gauge, at 3 ft 6 in. The US had to fill a huge area in the railroad era. That left a lot of underutilized track once the road network got good. [1] https://www.jrailpass.com/pdf/maps/JRP_japan.pdf https://www.jrailpass.com/pdf/maps/JRP_japan.pdf

Gigachad 6mo ago
There is no excuse for the US’s failure. Many countries have large areas to cover. China is a similar size and has massive HSR coverage. The US could too if they didn’t waste all the money on corruption.
- Conan_Kudo 6mo ago
  China also has nationalized rail systems. The major reason for the failure in the US is that the rail lines are not publicly owned. The reason the rail systems never got upgraded and Amtrak couldn't deploy high speed rail everywhere (despite it being a national priority in the 70s, 80s, and 90s) is that outside of the northeast corridor, Amtrak doesn't own the lines and couldn't get the owners to allow Amtrak to upgrade them for passenger high speed rail.
  - jabl 6mo ago
    > China also has nationalized rail systems. The major reason for the failure in the US is that the rail lines are not publicly owned. The article we're discussing explains that Japan has the best passenger rail system in the world, and which happens to be privatized, along with privately owned track. So which one is it? Go figure.
    - Tor3 6mo ago
      I believe the Japanese private rail companies also own the lines where their traffic is. This would explain a lot. There are other countries (including my native one) where the trains are run by one company and the lines are owned by another. This does.not.work. For what seems like obvious reasons. There's no economic gain for the owner of the infrastructure to spend money, quite the opposite in fact.

ekianjo 6mo ago

> At its most extreme, three separate commuter lines compete for the traffic between Osaka and the port city of Kobe, running in parallel, sometimes fewer than 500 meters apart. Sometimes fewer than 100 meters apart. Or connecting to each other's with a bridge.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

sparkie 6mo ago

The subway system in Kyoto (Karasuma line) is operated by the local government. I visited during the busiest time of the year (Gion matsuri), and the trains were not overcrowded, were frequent and arrived on the dot. The subway system is nicely air conditioned which was pleasant as I visited during a heatwave. I'm mostly in favor of privatization, but this is an example where the local government provide an exceptional service which is in no way inferior to the privately operated ones.

dogscatstrees 6mo ago

I'm drawn by the style and aesthetics of the charts in combination with the fonts used in them.

littlestymaar 6mo ago

> the most striking institutional feature of Japanese rail is that it is privately owned by a throng of competing companies. Knowing the author I knew it was going to be his main argument before even opening the blog post. And it's obviously wrong, these companies don't compete with one another, they all have a local monopoly. (The article itself acknowledges that and even acknowledges the organizational benefits of such monopolies, but the author could refrain himself from praising the virtue of competition nonetheless…)

pipe01 6mo ago
There are many places in Japan where multiple companies compete over the same area
- littlestymaar 6mo ago
  I don't know Japan but the author has a whole paragraph about how it's not the case, and how a big part of Japan success comes from the fact that this is not the case, so the author must be wrong one way or the other: > Unlike other countries, Japan simply returned to the traditional private railway model of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: tracks, trains, stations, and yards were owned by vertically integrated regional conglomerates. > There are substantial advantages to vertical integration. Railways are a closed system that has to be planned as a single unit. Changing the timetable at station A can affect the timetable at station Z; buying new trains that can travel faster might require changes to the infrastructure so they can reach their top speed, which in turn requires rewriting the timetables. This becomes especially complicated if different services share tracks. To prevent delays from propagating from one service to another, the timetable needs to be carefully designed to make best use of the available infrastructure. > […] > By maintaining and restoring the institutions that built the first railway systems in the nineteenth century, the Japanese have created the mightiest railway system of the twenty-first.

Tor3 6mo ago

"The Japanese love cars, but they take trains because they have the best railway system in the world" That's exactly it. It's not because of some cultural bias or whatever. I'm in Japan. I use trains because it's so very easy and it's so very reliable. It's simply the best option for travelling. If I wish to go to Tokyo? I check a website quickly, I look up the best connection for my schedule (easy to find), I may pay in advance, or not. I take my bicycle and go ten minutes to the nearest station, park the bicycle in the bicycle parking there, and off I go. As it's a small station I change to a limited express train (where I've booked a seat) after ten minutes, then, after another forty minutes I reach a big station and I switch to the Shinkansen and I'm off to Tokyo. I'm relaxed all the time. I buy a coffee on the train, and/or I buy coffee and lunch at the station and bring on the train. Every other way of getting there is way more complex, and would take way more time.

phrotoma 6mo ago
> “An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.”
- JKCalhoun 6mo ago
  On the JR line in Tokyo, standing with a friend who motions to me with his glance to a salaryman standing next to us. "Hand-stitched suit", my friend whispers. Which is when I notices this guy's "threads" (literally). Perhaps not Warren Buffett, but no doubt an executive of some stature riding with the rest of us plebes.
Gravityloss 6mo ago
Maybe some trains could be more redneck coded somehow? Steam trains with sweaty stokers and buffalo shooting from the windows of course had plenty of that, but how to bring something from that aesthetic to the present? Bar carriage with sports screens still sounds still a bit passive and cliche. Maybe a gym car? There are already kid and pet cars after all at least here. In German trains you get a real glass pint for your beer, I think that's a big plus.

DocTomoe 6mo ago

I was hoping for some 'technical' secrets. Like: you can actually change the lightbulbs for the headlights of the Series 0 train while it being underway - there is a service hatch that opens to a human-sized service area accessible from the driver's cabin which allows such repairs.

barney54 6mo ago

What is seldom mentioned in these conversations is that the United States has a very good rail system—-for freight. That’s what the U.S. system did well, not passengers. From the article it isn’t obvious how Japan moves freight, but they obviously aren’t moving a lot of freight on the Shinkansen.

asutekku 6mo ago
They actually started doing that very recently, converting old Shinkansen into a freight trains. Obviously you can't fit large cargo, but it's a good option for fast transport of parcels etc. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/03/24/companies/freight-only-shinkansen/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/03/24/companies/f...

decimalenough 6mo ago

There's a bunch of claims in the article that are misleading or just wrong. > Core rail operations are profitable for every Japanese private railway company Only the urban, legacy private railways that benefited from the "build a suburb and trains to it" system. Rural lines, private or not, all hemorrhage money, as do many of the newer private lines (often built by government and private only in name). > Japanese cities have the lowest residential density in Asia This is because Japanese "cities" (市) are administrative units, not actual cities. Particularly in the rapidly depopulating countryside, it's common for a bunch of dying villages that can't afford to duplicate their services anymore to get more or less forcibly merged into a "city" like Miyoshi in Shikoku that, in satellite view, looks like untouched forest: https://maps.app.goo.gl/tRtdQisJCUMsqivv7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/tRtdQisJCUMsqivv7 > The urban area of Tokyo, the densest Japanese city, has a weighted population density less than that of many European cities, This is only true for Tokyo Prefecture, which encompasses a vast slab of mountains. Actual Tokyo (23-ku) packs in over 15k people/km2, 50% more than inner London (10k) and nearly 2.5x Greater London (6k).

dgroshev 6mo ago

The article correctly identifies positive externalities of railways: > The railway can capture the value it creates for me by charging me a fare, but it cannot capture the value it creates for those at my destination. As transport infrastructure creates benefits that produce no revenue for providers, free markets rarely build enough of it. …but then very confusingly argues that railways should be profitable, including on per-passenger basis. A profitable transport system with positive externalities is inevitably either too expensive or under-investing (or maybe both) with respect to maximising the total economic productivity. Ancillary monopolies in real estate and retail might offset that somewhat, but only to an extent. Similarly, I don't understand why the article speaks positively of the closure of 83 "loss-making lines". The lines being loss-making for the rail company doesn't mean they aren't improving total productivity, as the very same article argues! Further, they mention the over-crowding in Tokyo later on > Tokyo’s infamously crammed trains are a symptom of underpriced rush hour traffic …but somehow blame it on the price being too low, and not under-investment into more capacity by the commercial companies! People commuting less because they can't afford it would be bad for the businesses on the other side of their commute! I suppose this is the centre-right ideological slant of Works in Progress showing, which is a bit of a shame when it leads to those self-contradictions in the usually quite rigorous publication.