
What a Real Train System Looks Like (2009) - apsec112
https://newworldeconomics.com/what-a-real-train-system-looks-like/
======
Animats
That's 2009. The Shinkansen goes to Hokkaido now, via underwater tunnel.[1]

Japan has a plan to run a superconducting maglev train between Tokyo, Nagoya,
and Osaka. It's a huge job. The "Japanese Alps" are in the way. Most of the
route would have to be in tunnels cut through hard rock.

It's not just talk. _The first section is already running_. At 500km/hr. There
are working trainsets running on 42km of track, mostly in tunnels. Stations
are under construction. Tunneling continues. Construction started in 2014.
Completion in 2027, to Nagoya. Osaka 10 years later.

Many Asian cities now have large new monorail systems. Daegu, 30 stations.
Mumbai, 17 stations. Chongqing, 64 stations. Many smaller systems, too.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido_Shinkansen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido_Shinkansen)

~~~
lostmsu
For comparison: here in West Seattle, we will get what essentially is a
tramway in 2033. It's less than 15km from downtown.

------
CaptainZapp
When you look at the Tokyo railway map it looks like a totally unnavigational
maze.

Actually, and despite the fact that services are provided by more than half a
dozen independent companies, it's quite easy to navigate. Even when you run
into vertigo when seeing it for the first time.

Each line, no matter if Tokyo metro, private metro, JR, private railway is
color coded and has a fixed one or more unique letter designation.

Say, you want to go to Ginza, to just take one example. You don't even have to
remember the station name. You just need to know the station codes. In this
case M16 (red), H08 (gray) or G9 (orange). The letter designates the metro
line, while the number represents the station for the respective line. And
each combination is unique.

That, in combination with a PASMO or SUICA smart card makes orientation very
straight forward and seamless.

~~~
oftenwrong
I was able to navigate the Tokyo system on my first visit better than I could
navigate the New York system, even though I had lived in New York for years. I
credit the high quality signage.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Yes, 100%. That, combined with Google Maps for routing made any sort of train
or metro interaction in all of Japan utterly painless.

The only time I got lost was when I couldn't immediately find a Tokyo Metro
station and Google Maps sent me to the JR station on the other end of the
mall. Even then, it only took me a few minutes of wandering around to find
what I was looking for.

------
elvinyung
Jane Jacobs talks about how cities generally fall into one of two different
kinds of equilibria: a public transit equilibrium, and a car equilibrium. In
each one, the preferred kind of mobility further shapes land use to make that
kind of mobility even more preferable.

Most of North America is so stuck in the car equilibrium that it seems
hopeless. There's not even a handful of cities that would be nice to get
around or live in without a car. This seems like it would take decades to
correct, even if most North Americans actually wanted to. As an semi-extremist
urbanite I'm incredibly pessimistic about this.

I'm somewhat hopeful about new mobility methods like bikeshare or even
rideshare, but none of them seem to be actively driving land use changes.

~~~
Retric
You don’t need a huge public transit system to make the jump. You need high
density + mixed use over a relatively small area with good public transit in
that area. Which lets two car families drop to one car family’s. This reduces
the need for public parking pushing up density and property values. It also
makes links to that core of good public transit more valuable.

The main problem in the US is you don’t get both high density and mixed use.

PS: His harping on Vienna Fairfax completely misses the point, it’s the last
stop on the orange line, the parking allows a vast area to commute via the
subway including many people just visiting DC. The Pentagon City and Crystal
City stops for example directly connect to shopping next to huge residential
sections and have minimal parking.

~~~
mikeash
I’m amused by the Fairfax bit. I used to live within walking distance of that
station. Almost all of the green space in the article’s image is now
designated for commercial use (the remainder has housing), has plans ready to
go, and is just waiting for the developer to start putting shovels into the
ground. But the developer apparently doesn’t think it would be worth the cost
of construction, so it just sits there.

I’m not sure what else you could do there, unless you want to have the
government heavily subsidize commercial development, which seems like a recipe
for empty, decaying buildings in a decade or two.

~~~
bobthepanda
The American fascination with single use zoning is so counterproductive. If
commercial doesn't work, just put housing next to it! Or build the housing
first, or something. Pair with a tax designed to disincentivize land
squatting.

And it doesn't need to be eight story apartments with elevator, garbage, the
whole shebang; a four-family house like this would still be a massive
improvement over most American suburbs. [https://activerain-
store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/upload...](https://activerain-
store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/uploads/1/5/4/4/9/ar137731682494451.jpg)
Plus with how expensive DC is, you could do worse than selling houses.

~~~
mikeash
This one is the opposite. The developers would be happy to build nothing but
housing, but the government wants offices and retail too. The developers built
as much housing as they were allowed to without doing the rest (my house was
one of them) and then basically bailed out.

~~~
bobthepanda
But what the government wants isn't necessarily what the market will support.
Fairfax has a very high office vacancy rate, particularly in newer buildings,
so I'm not surprised that developers don't want to build buildings that will
stay vacant. [1]

When I say single use, I'm not talking about the neighborhood, I'm talking
about the land itself; it sounds like the developer is restricted from
building anything other than commercial or retail on that particular portion
of the neighborhood. Even in the overheated property markets of New York, the
new all-office World Trade Center is struggling with vacancy, and Hudson Yards
had to be revamped from all-office to mixed-use because there's simply too
much office space on the market. And even after they did that, the city had to
offer tax breaks so that companies would populate the new district.

[1] - [https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2018/04/23/in-
fa...](https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2018/04/23/in-fairfax-
county-obsolete-office-buildings-are-in.html)

~~~
mikeash
That portion is supposed to be a mix of all three. It’s possbible that some
modification of the mix would be profitable, but supposedly the retail is non-
viable without a population of office workers to provide steady traffic.

Oddly, the massive success of mixed-use development at the nearby Dunn Loring
station is being used as an excuse to sit on this project, because they say
it’s too close and couldn’t compete. (Meanwhile, a massive new mixed use
development is going up just half a mile down the road.)

------
spikels
In these discussions there is always a lot of griping about the US’s poor rail
infrastructure when the US actually has the 2nd most used rail networks in the
world. It’s just almost entirely used for freight. An equally valid question
is why does Europe transport almost all of its freight by truck?

Obviously geography and population density - network effects scale with the
square of population in reasonable service area - are huge factors. A multi-
day freight trip is quite common while only a tiny fraction of passenger trips
are more than a few hours - the reasonable service areas are vastly different.

In Europe you have multiple overlapping country sized rail networks. While
this gives the impression of a continental sized network (especially to Eurail
pass riding in American tourists) very few people are taking trains journeys
more than a few hours even in Europe.

Another big issue is the incompatibility of freight and passenger rail
services. It is very difficult to run both services on the same tracks at high
service levels. The US focus on fright has hampered long distance and even
regional passenger rail services. While in France the government decided to
focus on passengers and eliminated all but a few freight routes. It would take
an additional complete parallel rail infrastructure to do both well which
would be quite expensive. So far the US and Europe haven’t thought this was
worth it. China might be going this way.

Perhaps this simply makes sense given the differing situations.

~~~
Symbiote
It's not a huge difference. By tonne-km, the EU uses rail for 17%, and the USA
for 31%.

So I accept that the USA uses the rail network almost entirely for freight,
but it's not true that the EU transfers "almost all" freight by truck.

Freight trains in Europe tend to run at much higher speeds than in the USA.
For example, in Britain container trains can run at up to 75mph, and 140km/h
in Germany. But compared to the USA, Europe already has a complete parallel
infrastructure: pretty much every route has two tracks. I've only been on one
long-distance passenger train in the USA, but there were long periods where
there was only a single track.

[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Freight_transport_statistics_-_modal_split)

[https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-
freight](https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight)

[https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight-
tr...](https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight-trains-in-
the-uk.16067/)

~~~
spikels
By your own references the EU28 transports around 75% of its freight by truck
while the US is around 40%. Seems like a huge difference to me.

And EU28 stats are distorted by Northern and Eastern Europe where rail freight
is big. Italy and France are over 80% truck and France and the UK are over
90%. Even Germany - famous for its freight rail network 150 years ago -
transports only about 19% of freight by rail and 72% by truck.

While I understand why US doesn’t have a national rail passenger network - the
distances are simply too far between most population concentrations - it is
somewhat of a mystery why so little freight travels by rail in Europe and so
much by truck. Did the passenger rail network cannibalize the previously
existing freight network?

If passenger trains just replaced freight trains and trucks replaced cars, is
this really the model to emulate?

~~~
Symbiote
>> Perhaps this simply makes sense given the differing situations.

I think that's the only reasonable conclusion. There are so many differences:
in economies, wealth distribution, consumer preference (e.g. for local
produce), population density, landmass shape (international shipping isn't in
the EU statistics, but is at least as significant as coastal shipping in the
USA), infrastructure (EU has no problem building new pipelines), ...

I can't find a good source of statistics, but it seems very possible that the
USA simply transfers far more goods for more km (overland) than the EU.

> Did the passenger rail network cannibalize the previously existing freight
> network?

I'm aware of a shortage of rail capacity in particular places, e.g.
traversing/avoiding London, but I don't think that's a general problem.

More likely, the same types of journey on both continents moved to road (e.g.
farmer to local market/distribution centre, factory to another factory in the
same general area), but in the US long distance transport of imports from Asia
increased.

------
bfrog
Lets get real here, its partially a chicken and egg problem, but the
population and density has to be there to support such a dense and useful
train system. Parts of my city (Chicago) support the kind of rail stations he
talks about. Some parts do not as the density here varies greatly but
generally speaking...

Tokyo has nearly 10 million people in about 1000 square miles of land

Chicago has nearly 3 million people in about 10000 square miles of land

Tokyo probably has at least 5 metropolitan cities of greater than 1 million
people within 600 miles.

Chicago has none, New York is about 730 miles away.

Clearly a world of difference in the sort of density and distances that just
don't necessarily support the same kind of rail system.

Even then parts of Chicago closely match his experience in Tokyo, though
certainly not to the same quantity and quality.

A picture of a far north chicago L stop I lived near at one point in my life,
right near the end of the line.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Morse/@42.0082879,-87.6681...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Morse/@42.0082879,-87.6681424,1178m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x880fd1ae5bbe3967:0x43666fdee150c8fd!8m2!3d42.0082839!4d-87.6659537)

Nearly every stop along that train route is in the center of a neighborhood at
least going north.

Where Chicago screwed up was putting L stops in the middle of freeways rather
than in the center of neighborhoods for certain sections and lines. It
honestly makes those areas feel like the heart of the neighborhood has been
cut out of it, there is no central spot where people have a reason to be. And
who really wants to live right next to a 12/8/6 lane free way? No one, and
certainly that's where Chicago neighborhoods no longer feel like the cozy
place where people hang out, eat, drink, and catch their ride into work.

~~~
froh
> Lets get real here ... > Tokyo probably has at least 5 metropolitan cities
> of greater than 1 million people within 600 miles.

Greater Tokyo is about 38 million people within 50-80 miles (5.200 sq mi)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area)

------
apexalpha
It's too bad he never mentions the Netherlands. We have few metros but take
his 'walk to the station' idea and introduced 'cycle to the station'. You can
always store your bike at a Dutch trainstation and coupled with good cycling
infrastructure this increases the area served by a station.

We also have cross-country trains every 10 minutes and if you get to a station
where you don't have a bike you can rent one from the train company. Or rent a
car if you're a bit further away.

There's always room for improvement but right now they have a 90% on time
record on an open rail system they share with competitors, foreign train
services, and freight trains.

Adding bikes to the equation could solve America's "but our urban communities
are too sparse to be served by a metro/train". A bike gets you quite far in 10
minutes. Let alone an e-bike or an electric scooter.

In Utrecht, the main station in our star-grid, they just opened a bicycle
parking with 22.000 spots!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8)

edit: this is what our national rail looks like: [https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp-
content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaar...](https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp-
content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaart-20181.jpg)

~~~
azag0
The Dutch and Danish approach to cycling is just from a different world. Even
cities that I consider decent for cycling, like Berlin, pale in comparison to
any larger Dutch or Danish city. And once you introduce cycling into commuting
systems at that scale, yes, it enables you to design those systems in new
ways.

~~~
bklaasen
It also requires a shift in focus away from prioritising cars to prioritising
pedestrians and cyclists. In the Netherlands, you can be sure that every town
planner owns a bicycle _and commutes on it frequently_. I live in Ireland.
I've met regional town planners here. None of them own a bicycle.

Traffic planners here call the traffic state when pedestrians are crossing the
road "dead time".

~~~
Fricken
One of these days when I've got nothing better to I'm going to put together a
little photo essay of the bike racks I know of in my city that don't even
work. Using a conventional U-lock you can't even lock your bike to them.

Some are too fat for a U-lock to fit around. Some are placed so close to a
wall that you can't fit your bike in. Others have these vertical slats that
you can stick your front tire in between, but you can't lock your frame to
anything secure.

The people who designed and implemented these things must have never used a
bicycle for practical purposes. The stupidity is mind boggling. It's not a
difficult thing to get right.

~~~
jononor
Stick your rear tyre into those slats, usually this allows locking frame and
rear wheel. Wirelock on the frontwheel if wanted. Also, the foldable locks are
much more practical than the U-style locks.

~~~
Fricken
I'm pretty loyal to the U-lock, it's the fastest. When I was a messenger,
locking and unlocking 50 times a day, we all used them. It takes 5 seconds
when you got your system down.

------
ydnaclementine
I feel like the argument weakens when he compares countries. I'm looking at
the railway maps of France and Japan thinking: 'this entire country is the
size of a single, largeish US state'.

Total land area is a problem to be solved in the US for train travel, and we
only have Russia and China to compare to.

City to city comparison makes much more sense

~~~
seszett
> _this entire country is the size of a single, largeish US state_

So why is there no comparable railway network in those largeish US states that
are comparable to EU countries? Or in the many (almost all of them) states
that are smaller than France and Japan?

~~~
rayiner
Because there would be nowhere to go. Imagine building a rail network in New
York. Where would it go? How often do people need to get from NYC to Syracuse?
And if you built a train to Syracuse, what would you do once you got there
(without a car)? The city is the centerpiece of a region with a million
people, less than 1/6 of whom live inside the city?

~~~
Sharlin
The northeast US conurbation is one of the densest conglomerations of urban
centres in the world. A proper high-speed rail system would take you from NYC
to Philadelphia in less than an hour and to Boston or DC in a couple of hours.
The ”US is so big and sparsely populated” excuse really doesn’t hold water.

~~~
dtwest
The US is designed differently than the other heavily developed areas of the
world. It's not about being "too big" or "not dense enough", it is more
complicated than that.

The Northeast US has a similar statistical density as areas of Europe but
looks so much physically different. Take some time on Google Earth and check
it out. There is a nonstop blob of suburbs that go almost all the way from DC
to Boston. In a proposed train network, most of the population has a long trip
to the central station before they can take the train to the other city. They
still need a car, and need somewhere to park it. In Europe or Asia cities are
more concentrated, and the countrysides are less populated.

Building a center-city to center-city train network in the US is not
impossible, but it simply wouldn't be as efficient as it would be in Europe or
Asia because of the way the cities are designed.

~~~
Sharlin
Sure. Obviously it would require a new approach to planning and zoning. As the
article says, rail corridors are obvious places for high-density mixed-use
development. That aside, driving to a station and taking a train from there is
still better than no trains at all.

~~~
dtwest
The article presents DC's park and ride station as "a perfect example of WHAT
NOT TO DO". But it's really all they can do if they must force a train system
into an area without the right kind of density.

I very much agree we need a new approach to planning an zoning. We need to
focus on that first. It could take longer than a generation to transition away
from the suburban model.

------
ken
> These days, it’s easy to make subway systems because we have amazing
> tunneling machines, which will bore a train-sized hole like a giant rock-
> eating worm. So, no excuses.

I wouldn't say "easy". It's possible. Here in Seattle, we're building a new
2-mile tunnel (for cars). It was originally scheduled to open 3 years ago, and
will finally open in 2019. It was planned to take 29 months, but took 67.

We're not so great at bridges, either. One of my managers observed "We've got
4 floating bridges, and we sank 2 of them." That was back when I was on the
Boeing 7E7 project (first flight: 28 months late).

Is it any wonder we can't get excited about the prospect of an "easy" new rail
project? We can't estimate big engineering projects to within 50%, and we
can't keep existing infrastructure afloat (literally). I always vote for
public transit on principle, but I'm also aware it's always going to take
longer and cost more than they claim, so I can't really blame people who
don't.

Want broad support for infrastructure projects? First, demonstrate you can
execute on them reliably. Nobody wants to agree to pay for a tunnel that might
end up being the next "Big Dig".

~~~
theedwood
> I wouldn't say "easy". It's possible. Here in Seattle, we're building a new
> 2-mile tunnel (for cars). It was originally scheduled to open 3 years ago,
> and will finally open in 2019. It was planned to take 29 months, but took
> 67.

To add to this, some areas are made of materials that are simply difficult to
bore through. Atlanta, for example, sits on top of a bunch of granite which at
least partially contributes to the difficulties of underground rail expansion.

------
krsdcbl
Adding one lesser known example of imho outstanding public transportation
service is Vienna, Austria - not the largest of cities, at 1.9 Mio
inhabitants, and about half the area of Berlin (or 1/4 of London), still the
6th largest city in Europe.

You can get almost anywhere within half an hour tops, the Metro runs till
after midnight weekdays and 24/7 on the weekends, there's an extensive system
of Tramways & Busses to cover anything a bit farther from a Metro station.

And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the
services for 1€/day, billed monthly.

This is mostly to stress the point of how much you take such a system for
granted when it's available and just works - since I've moved here owning a
car would be almost an inconvenience, and even London feels like a horrible
public transportation experience.

~~~
nhf
> And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the
> services for 1€/day, billed monthly.

This kind of thing is key - make it easy to use transit and lower the marginal
cost of doing so. Yearly subscriptions are good. London's approach—unify
almost all modes under the same payment system with automatically calculated
caps and discounts—also works quite well as you don't have to think about
buying passes, individual tickets, etc. Just tap and go and the system takes
care of it for you.

Not many places in the US have this level of integration yet. For instance,
the NYC Ferry, NYC Subway, LIRR, Metro North, PATH, and regional Amtrak
service all use disjoint ticketing methods. It'll slowly get integrated over
the next decade, but it greatly increases the mental effort needed to hop on
transit. Perhaps the closest in the US is the Bay Area's Clipper Card - they
managed to shoehorn over a dozen area agencies onto the same payment method -
but it's still not quite as good as something like London's Oyster.

~~~
tomjakubowski
The TAP card in Los Angeles is good for dozens of local public transport
companies. For quite a while, this was not the case; you could only use it on
Metro (County-level agency). The integration over the years has certainly
increased my use of transit in the area; there are many tiny, obscure transit
systems in Los Angeles County and I can ride almost all of them now without
having to carry any cash or change. Sometimes you can even get cross-company
transfer fares with the TAP. It's fantastic.

[https://www.taptogo.net/articles/Website_content/where-to-
ri...](https://www.taptogo.net/articles/Website_content/where-to-ride)

------
oftenwrong
The author, Nathan Lewis, makes frequent references to concepts he established
in detail in previous articles. For example, "Traditional City", "Place",
"19th Century Hypertrophic City".

All of his articles on cities:

[https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-
post...](https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post-heroic-
materialism/)

------
rwmj
It's a shame this article doesn't lay out any plan for how to get from where
the US is now to where the author would like it to be. You're not going to dig
up the existing train stations, so how could the parking be converted to shops
and housing? How can you persuade drivers and politicians to support whatever
other steps are necessary? (eg. converting roads to railways)

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
I wonder what changed in our mindset in the last 50 years that such projects
seem impossible now but possible back then. I mean subways were not any easier
to build 100 or 50 years ago than today. And it surely was not cheaper.

~~~
mikehollinger
My favorite theory is that the post WW2-era American value shifted to personal
liberty and the American dream: your home, your picket fence, and your car.
You choose where you go, when you go, and how you get there. Drive on those
new interstates! Take the family for a picnic. Go surfing!

How can you be truly independent and live that perfect magazine cover life if
you’ve got to wait on the 9:27 to take you to the B line so you won’t be late
to work?

~~~
michaelt
I think the_mitsuhiko is wondering not about rail projects specifically, but
about a loss of confidence about performing large-scale projects in the
abstract sense, independent of what the project is for.

For example, in 1930 it seemed feasible to build the Hoover dam; in 1950 it
seemed feasible to build the interstate highway system; in 1960 it seemed
feasible to land a man on the moon.

Now, in 2018, people think it isn't feasible to build some train stations. And
those people might be right! What happened to our ability (practically,
politically, and financially) to get such things done?

~~~
yourapostasy
> Now, in 2018, people think it isn't feasible to build some train stations.
> And those people might be right! What happened to our ability (practically,
> politically, and financially) to get such things done?

Over time and increasing population there is a evolutionary niche filling kind
of process that occurs within social, political, economic, cultural and other
axes/planes/spheres. After the density of these filled niches increase
sufficiently over some threshold, our civilization experiences a calcification
of movement across the niches.

Each niche acts as a middleman to extract some portion of energy to
successfully navigate across them. This takes the form of some kind of
concession, trade, grant, swap, boon, promise, _etc._ Fill a path with enough
niches that didn't use to exist before, and we experience it as "we can't get
it done" because the cumulative energetic cost rises above a tolerable amount.

Historically, the emergent property in most capitalist structures appears to
naturally tend towards influencing government agents via the principal agent
challenge to support/enforce increasingly rentier behavior over time and
deviate from capitalist structures; I personally believe this is due to
scaling issues (Adam Smith was not a fan of the kind of large-scale capitalism
we take for granted today). This wasn't supposed to happen according to some
economic schools of thought, but here we are. And niche filling, and use of
our government to enforce stakeholder extraction claims, appear as another
form that this behavior takes.

------
wink
The Westfriedhof station pictured is also in Munich, not Stockholm, guess it's
a copy/paste error. It _is_ kinda nice, but it's relatively young (15 years
maybe?) whereas most of our subway stations are from the 70s and not half as
nice.

Edit: it's 20 years old, not 15:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfriedhof_(Munich_U-
Bahn)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfriedhof_\(Munich_U-Bahn\)) and the
others pictured are also on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-
Brauchle-Ring_(Munich_U-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-Brauchle-
Ring_\(Munich_U-Bahn\)) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidplatz_(Munich_U-
Bahn)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidplatz_\(Munich_U-Bahn\))

~~~
the8472
Old does not mean it has to look shabby as the moscow stations demonstrate. Or
these from berlin:

[http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful-
under...](http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful-underground-
gems-of-the-berlin-u-bahn/)

~~~
wink
No of course not, but some stations here have this "this wall was modern in
the 70s, also it's kinda grimy and some of the tiles fell off" look - like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendlinger_Tor_(Munich_U-
Bahn)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendlinger_Tor_\(Munich_U-Bahn\)), but
some were worse. They are renovating some - and to be honest if it's
structurally sound I couldn't care less if it looks shabby, I was just trying
to point out the differences - because some of the newer ones look really nice
:)

------
jefurii
> This is the train map for Washington DC. As you can see, it is an irrelevant
> little fart of a train system.

I used to live in Japan, now I live in Southern California near the Gold Line,
which is the pride of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation
Authority. The Gold line is approximately as long as the dinky little private
Tawaramoto Line that cuts a triangle between JR Oji Stn and Kintetsu
Tawaramoto Stn in Nara Prefecture. Except the Tawaramoto Line always ran at
least four cars while MTA's Gold Line only runs that many during rush hour.
LA's crown jewel Union Station is approximately the size of a mid-size
suburban station in Japan. It's incredibly sad.

------
rdiddly
"These days, it’s easy to make subway systems because we have amazing
tunneling machines..."

 _-spits out coffee comically-_

I suppose compared to 1905 it's easier, but it's still not "easy." Tunneling
never goes off without some kind of hitch, and almost always goes over budget
or off-schedule.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacemen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacement_tunnel)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway)

I agree with the general thrust of the piece though.

~~~
x0x0
Nah, the super expensive and always goes way over budget are features of
subways only when Americans make them, unfortunately. That's not to say no one
else has construction projects that go over budget, but the rest of the world
-- more developed countries and less developed countries alike -- all manage
to build infra for way less money, and much closer to budget.

If we want nice things -- like trains that work! -- we have to figure this
out.

see, for example, [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-
ex...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-
build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/)

and

[https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction-c...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction-
costs-metro-stations/)

~~~
rdiddly
You're generally right and I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, but the one
example I thought of belatedly AFTER hitting "Add Comment" on the above, just
happened to be this... in a country that mostly seems to have its shit much
more together than the US, too:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Archive_of_the_City...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Archive_of_the_City_of_Cologne#Collapse_of_the_archive_in_2009)

------
alistairSH
As a DC resident, I partially agree with his conclusion on the DC metro. But,
the stations he chose are suburban, not downtown. Tokyo is a much larger city
than DC. so, it’s a bit apples to oranges.

It was designed to get people into the city from the suburbs. As such, it
completely fails today, where most jobs are also in the suburbs. It fails for
reverse commuting as well, because, as noted, most stations are not within
walking of commercial hubs.

That said, the expansion to Dulles came with lots of rezoning and denser
development. Arlington started this before the expansion with the Courthouse-
Clarendon-Ballston areas, with increased density and walkable zones. Reston
and Herndon are doing similar things.

Now, if we can figure out how to build a line from Tyson’s to Rockville or
Bethesda (without going all the way downtown and back out again).

~~~
Symbiote
> But, the stations he chose are suburban, not downtown.

Why? They could have been constructed downtown (assuming you mean in Vienna or
Fairfax, rather than in the middle of the motorway not-especially-near either
of them). Or they could have been surrounded by the shopping malls that
instead are nearish (but too far to walk).

The town (Vienna) is almost 2km to the north, and doesn't have a station — yet
it used to! There's a path/trail labelled "Washington and Old Dominion Trail",
which is obviously an old railway line, ripped up and replaced with a bike
path.

Since the article mentions Stockholm, I've chosen the metro station furthest
from the centre of Stockholm [1], and the station before it.

It's a suburban area, but the stations are still in the middle of the
'suburban centres'. They're within 150m of multiple schools/colleges, a
shopping mall, a culture centre and a theatre.

Stockholm also has commuter railway lines ("Pendeltåg") extending further from
the city, not shown by Google's map. These stop at some fairly small places,
but it will still be somewhere in the middle of each place.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8758039,-77.2713152,5435m/da...](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8758039,-77.2713152,5435m/data=!3m1!1e3)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@59.2443707,17.8132863,1092m/dat...](https://www.google.com/maps/@59.2443707,17.8132863,1092m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e2)

~~~
TheCoelacanth
The Orange line in Fairfax County was constructed in the median of I66 to save
money. That was a huge mistake. The difference between the Orange line in
Arlington where the locals lobbied to have it routed through actual
neighborhoods and the Orange line in Fairfax County where it sits in the
middle of an eight-lane highway is staggering.

------
mjevans
The US is indeed addicted to cars, and particularly for those living in the
suburbs this is a sunk investment. It really doesn't help that the cities are
(usually) NOT built to building codes that actually encourage privacy between
units, that needs to get fixed too.

However, an upgrade path would be a great idea. That path must allow for the
transit systems (either highly regulated utilities or community owned) to
spread.

    
    
        * New core has the target service level in place.
        * That service links to a PROPER parking structure at en edge.
        * Such structure should be SECURE (unfortunately monitored)
        * Also package transport services in addition to people.
    

Renting 'a spot' in that area, as part of a residence OR as part of visiting
should be low cost, and shouldn't /punish/ owning a car. The idea is you're
incentivizing use of the new zone as well as commerce within it. The parking
structures become a gateway as well as additional storage (and should convert
to that when use for parking decreases).

------
gok
One thing these articles nearly always gloss over is that these beautiful,
clean metro systems stay that way partially because they close down for
maintenance at night. The New York system runs 24/7, as does most of the
"sorry crap" in Chicago. I presume there's an article here scolding Americans
for staying up too late or something.

~~~
a-nikolaev
Well, the NYC subway is still grossly mismanaged, about 20-30% of it is down
even on the best days, with tens if not hundreds route changes and station
closures. On weekends and at night up to half of the system may not work.
Because the system is poorly maintained, the trains run slower than what they
should be, causing even more delays.

EDIT: edited percentage to 20-30%

~~~
rco8786
> about 70-80% of it is down even on the best days,

I’m not usually one to defend the MTA but this is wildly inaccurate.

~~~
a-nikolaev
thanks, I meant 70-80% is working

------
jorblumesea
In the 50s, the US made a big bet that car based transportation was the
future. It was, for awhile, but now it's clear that denser cities are the
future, not suburbs. Countries that invested in infrastructure that supported
dense cities are providing a higher quality of life compared to the "drive
everywhere" culture of the States.

------
8bitsrule
"most of the rest of the developed world has quite wonderful subways and
trains. They are clean, efficient, cheap, run on time, have as many as 20 or
even 25 trains an hour...."

We used to have a lot of railroads in the US. Then the automobile came along,
which started them going downhill, but there were still lots of them ... then
the interstate freeway system was built (with planning help from the CEO of
General Motors), and the railroad system couldn't compete for passengers.
Passenger service was mostly gone 50 years ago.

But, you ask, did noone plan for the future? Well ... this _is_ the U.S. We
only build it well once, then we argue about who should keep it repaired.
Which is why the majority of our bridges are in a dangerous state.

------
cuban-frisbee
It's kinda funny seing an outside perspective on this. I live in europe and
while we do have a decent rail system I always dream of a truly unified
european rail network that can eliminate much of the air trafic. I don't know
if that is possible with current technologies but a man can dream. Still it is
pretty good what we have as the author states. I will spend an equivelant of
about 50 us dollars to travel home and back for christmas, around 700 km
total, which is actually cheaper than the equivalent cost in just gas if I was
to drive (if I had a car that was, also not factoring bridge toll, which would
make it substantially more expensive).

------
kkm
Image captioned `Westfriedhof Station, Stockholm.` is actually `Westfriedhof
Station, Munich.`

------
sparrc
Does anyone have comprehensive information on typical transportation
department budgets in the US vs. some of these countries?

Anecdotally I had a civil engineer friend from Spain who always told me that
the transportation budgets in the USA were tiny compared to in Europe.

It'd be great if it was politically feasible for the US government to take
some money from the military and put it into ambitious public transportation
infrastructure. National rail probably doesn't make sense but there are
definitely regional and city systems that need some serious help.

~~~
jandrese
Rail projects have a lot of political pushback in the US. They're expected to
pay for themselves and realistically rarely manage to do so. They tend to be
costed compared to cars, and somehow the cost of building and maintaining the
roads is not included in that comparison, except for the relatively small
fraction that comes from the gas tax.

So rail projects somehow never look economically viable compared to a
magically free road system.

------
Sideloader
Very cool article. Somewhat surprised China wasn’t included on the list as
they have built a high speed rail network in the last several decades that
already has more track mileage than Europe’s.

Where there is a will there is a way, as the saying goes, and America, and the
UK, with their profit über alles obsession are happy to let infrastructure rot
and make people use woefully underfunded and overcrowded rail systems rather
than trying something “new.”

------
datenwolf
One picture is mistitled. The "Westfriedhof" Station is located in Munich, not
Stockholm (also it's the station closest to where I used to live in Munich for
almost 30 years). It's a very popular place among photographers.

------
wiz21c
Too bad the article doesn't talk about the not so sexy trains which _were_
numerous and allowed travellers to go from small cities to other small cities.

The big/speedy trains only cover a few paths...

------
bala529
subway stations from around the world, the second one is not Westfriedhof
Station, Stockholm, it is in Munich Westfriedhof station!

------
yazr
Lots of truths in the article.

BUT

Trains is always a system that picks winners & losers. The closer u r to the
nearest station - the bigger winner u r.

I lived in London. Any location not within 1km of a station is basically a
prison. Even if u have a car, you cant go anywhere (since no parking), and no
one will come to you.

This is a particular problem when you adding trains (and impeding car) in an
existing city.

~~~
danhon
Weird, so all the people taking the bus in London to and from stations must be
hallucinating while they’re trapped in their prisons?

~~~
yazr
A train+bus is a much higher threshold for many people.

Will you go to a lawyer that requires a bus+train? A restaurant? A party u r
not too sure about ?

Trains are relatively dependable. The last mile is a big problem.

(To be clear : i am pro public transport. I have a bike and ebike which i
love, and car i hate.)

~~~
tombot
Yes, millions of people do every single day in London and other cities across
the UK.

Not sure where you're going? Citymapper will route across both tube and bus,
it'll even tell you exactly when you get off.

You pay using a contactless card, apple pay or similar, it works.

