Comment by ricardobeat
10 days ago
This is completely ignoring the entire piece. Zoning, rail companies having large real estate interest and revenue, profitability, vertical integration, public policy.
If having train service to remote areas and 400-year flood prevention systems are signs of dysfunction, things are going pretty great. Not all public utilities have to be profitable on their own.
I'm not ignoring the piece at all. What I'm saying is the underlying reason Japan built so much rail has nothing to do with what the author is claiming.
And yes, overbuilding infrastructure is a sign of dysfunction. The money to build all that stuff came from people who would have stimulated the economy in other ways, and it isn't free to maintain what you've built. It's really inefficient to build a rail line and then shut it down because you can't afford to maintain it.