Comment by lmm

> I feel like the Japanese found the goose that lays the golden eggs (private trains with real-estate/hotels/supermarkets/shopping-centers). The parts form a virtuous cycle where better trains = more people come to use those other things, and those other things make more people take their trains. As such, the government doesn't have to fund the train systems and so they're not chronically underfunded like they are in so many countries.

The trains in dense cities are well funded. Those in less dense areas have all the same problems as elsewhere in the world - JR Shikoku in particular is withering away. Having your quasi-public railway company engage in aggressive real estate speculation is great when it works (JR Kyushu) but the flipside is what happens when it doesn't (JR Hokkaido) - do you then hang them out to dry?

> And yet, no one will copy them. There's always some excuse. LA is going down the excuse route and adding train lines with no chance of ever supporting themsevles. They are all designed as a handout to the people who are too poor to buy a car, rather than viable alternative to cars, and the fact that they aren't connected to all of those extra things means they'll also never be as compelling to use.

All transport is handouts, only governments can really organise it and no single entity could ever capture all the benefits. The stuff Japan is doing right is mostly not subsidising cars (no publicly funded freeways, no handouts of public street space to people who are too poor to store their car themselves, no tax breaks for employer-provided car parking or company cars), and having sensible by-right zoning laws that make it legal and practical to build dense cities. But even then the various governments of Japan give a bunch of direct and indirect support to railway companies, and outside of the Tokaido corridor they wouldn't be viable without that.