Comment by Freedom2
11 days ago
I sometimes see the US referred to as a "post-rail" society, meaning that it has outgrown the need for rail for the more intimate, personal transportation methods we see today. I submit that, like other HN commenters say, the US doesn't need rail due to this society. How will US citizens help their friends move or do their large (in terms of volume) Costco grocery shopping without large trucks and only using rail?
I’m probably a top 5% train nerd for the U.S. I took trains to work primarily from 2012-2020, in NYC, Philly, Baltimore, and DC. I used to ride Amtrak from Baltimore to DC every morning. I love Tokyo’s train system. I go there every year and I always take the train. But when I went there with my wife and three kids, I took a lot of Ubers! You can’t fit our double stroller with big America bags of toys and snacks on a business hours subway in Tokyo.
Americans love choice and they love stuff. They fill their cars with their stuff drive around on their own schedule without having to watch a clock or think about what’s near a train line and what isn’t. (Even with Tokyo’s amazing railway network, you have to think about that!) My wife drives to three different grocery stores 20 miles apart to get exactly the products she wants. The idea of just accepting whatever brand of hamburger buns they have at the store that’s conveniently on the train line between our house and work is completely alien.
To live within a Japanese system, Americans would have to change a bunch of other things about their culture. We’d have to give our kids independence to take the train themselves, instead of spending every saturday driving them around to 3 different far flung activities. We’d have to learn to appreciate what’s conveniently available, instead of the exact thing we want.
And not even Tokyo’s amazing train network makes it convenient to juggle two working spouses and school drop off and pickup for three kids. What line is convenient to your house, both parents work, and all three kids’ schools? The Japanese don’t even try to solve that problem.
I lived for many years next to a train station in NJ. I could readily take the train in to Manhattan, but for the hours I'd be there in evenings and on weekends, it was much more convenient and faster to drive in. My town was far enough out that the cost was slightly cheaper to drive (before the congestion fee). I then had the freedom to leave at any time without concern for the schedule.
> My town was far enough out that the cost was slightly cheaper to drive (before the congestion fee)
Aside from culture, this is another aspect which they touch on in the article. Japan doesn't have public parking. You're only allowed to buy a car if you have access to a parking spot. Tokyo is full of lots but they're all paid lots that charge in 30-60 min increments. There's also a lot of congestion zones in Tokyo which make driving in the city very expensive. Companies that do deliveries in the city often have a company car (or fleet of such) which lets them drive to destinations.
Overnight workers who do spend significant times at work before/after the trains stop do drive in. Most Japanese families in Tokyo live in suburbs surrounding the city and will walk, bike, or drive to a nearest train station to commute in.
I'm fairly far out from Boston/Cambridge but I'm pretty much the same situation. Going in for a commute (or 9-5 event), the commuter rail is pretty good; I'm a 7 minute drive to the station. But it's basically unworkable for an evening event (or a day into evening event). Trains are maybe every 90 minutes outside of commuting hours and they're largely empty. I end up suffering the drive in, paying for parking as needed (which isn't an issue if I'm going in for my usual theater), and then a pretty easy drive home. Wouldn't even think about taking rail in for the weekend.
If Tokyo was in America, your situation would be like this: imagine going outside of your home and walk for 10 minutes to a small hamburger shop. It only has 10 seats and it’s run a by hamburger nerd who makes elite hamburgers. This guy grinds his own beef, bakes his own buns and pickles his own pickles and everything is perfect. The burgers are only 8 dollars and you can’t even imagine of making hamburgers yourself.
I know, I’m familiar with Tokyo. But my family would take up half the restaurant, only one of the three kids would like the burger, and the other two would throw a shit fit because the burger guy only sells burgers. Two different societies optimizing for different things.
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This happens in New Orleans but the burger is like 28 dollars.
The shock! The horror!
How could a family possibly survive! Imagine having to eat a different brand of hamburger buns! Truly, America is a shining beacon of modernity and convenience where I can get the exact, precise, industrially mass produced hamburger bun.
Maybe you misinterpreted the post you replied to? I don't think they were saying this stuff is a crazy proposal, just that it will be a different way of life for most Americans. No need to be so abrasive.
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You’re preaching to the choir. I loved working at a company with a company cafeteria because I hated going out into midtown manhattan every day to choose lunch. But convincing americans that all their “choice” is illusory isn’t a matter of transit policy, it’s something much harder.
> school drop off and pickup for three kids
When we were in Japan my son walked to school when he was 6. Parts of the walk close to the school were supervised. It wasn't just allowed, it was expected.
Damn, we get it, USA is a dystopia. No need to keep scaring us with those stories.
It just occurred to me that some of the car-hating comments on HN might be motivated by a yearning for a more communal way of life (the expression of which has been suppressed by the US's ethic of freedom for the individual).
The same way people in every other country do it (rental vans)
Rail <-> Road isn't an either or issue. It wasn't in 1850 and it isn't today. The only difference, at least in the US, is that poorly designed government intervention/policies forced low population densities.
Rail and other forms of public transport simply don't work with suburban sprawl. Large roadways also don't work - compare the state of US infrastructure against pretty much every other country out there - it's just that the financial bill from an unbelievable amount of deferred maintenance hasn't come due yet.
Japan happens to be the 4th largest market (by stores) for Costco (US, Canada, Mexico, Japan)
Apparently, it works just fine.
Trucks can be rented. When then-wife and I were remodelling the tired old house we lived in, we didn't own a truck. We talked about it (and in this instance, had space for one), and we mathed it a bit. The numbers quickly showed that it would be very expensive to own a truck, for only a little bit of added, occasional convenience.
When we needed a truck to move cabinets or drywall or whatever, we rented one for that. It didn't cost much.
When we moved houses, we rented a truck for that. It was easier and cheaper to move with one rented huge box truck, than to own something that would be useful for that.
Otherwise: Deliveries. We just had big stuff delivered. No problem. Things like appliances and TVs were simply delivered, and this never added any expense to the purchase.
These days, even Costco delivers stuff just fine. It does tend to cost more than in-store.
Rentals and deliveries can easily cost hundreds of dollars per year. It's not free; it might even be rationalized as being rather expensive.
But owning/insuring/maintaining/fuelling/parking a car (or a truck, just the same) can easily cost thousands. It's a different magnitude.
And you also realise that for most things a van is more practical than a pickup truck.
It is.
The work I do requires me to have things like tools and ladders with me. A sedan doesn't quite cut it (I've tried), and SUVs are awful for every practical road-going purpose.
So these tools and ladders are out in the van (a top-trim Honda Odyssey) right now. It does OK on gas, it's very comfortable, it keeps everything nice and dry with 3 zones of HVAC, and it's passively theft-deterrant: Nothing about it says "steal these tools" to a would-be thief at all.
It's really good.
If I did work that didn't require a vehicle like that then I'd just have a small sedan. (I live in a very car-centric area of Ohio, as do the people I'm fond of being near. I either need a car or I need to change my views about what I find important in life; that's the way the cookie crumbles.)
And if I lived in an area with actually-good public transportation and the kinds of neighborhood shops that this promotes, then I probably wouldn't even want a small sedan. I like walking and riding a bike. And I'd rather buy a transit pass and spend more time reading, than pay for all the things that having a car requires me to pay for.
Adding the occasional train ticket (that never needs new tires, or an oil change, or a timing belt) for longer trips would be cheaper than owning a car, too.
I ride my cargo bike to Costco. I can fit a full shopping cart on it, getting enough for a family of three regularly and easily. With a small hatchback car I could easily fit way more. If I had a convenient train I'd shop more frequently with a rolling 2 wheel cart.
It's really not difficult to shop large volume thongs without a giant car.
People in Japan also move and go shopping.
Rail for the US has always been more about moving goods than people. For overland long-haul freight it is significantly cheaper than trucking. Rail allows us to ship goods to places where we don’t have ports or river access. A place like Japan can make such good use of rail simply because it is so densely populated.
The US is also densely populated; when people are talking about high speed rail they are talking about connecting the major, close by metropolitan areas that most people live in.
The Midwest, as an example, has roughly the same size and population as France with a larger economy. In fact, if you overlay the French TGV network onto the Midwest with Chicago where Paris is, you get a pretty good approximation of where major Midwestern cities are located: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/NMr3J3gt8C
Even if it would serve the same population, I don’t think a system like this would have the same level of demand as France’s high speed rail.
Frankly, these don’t look like locations that that many people want to travel between.
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Who says anything about “only?” Japan is home to a thriving car industry.
If anything, right now America is tilted heavily to car-only.
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