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.
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.
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.
It's SO good, in fact, that when I was visiting Tokyo with my 12 year old a few years ago and he was bored of looking at guitars with me in Ochanomizu, I just let him take the train back to our accommodations without me.
Tokyo is so safe, friendly and easily navigable I didn't give it a second thought.
After a recent visit to London I've really come to appreciate how fantastic the signage is in the Tokyo railway system. In London I often had trouble finding exits or connections (often following signs only to seemingly run out of directions), but in Tokyo it always seems seamless.
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.
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.
Any urban change takes decades, especially if you have to build things. For example it takes years from proposal to completion of a single bike lane. Digging subway tunnels is much slower. Here in Berlin we're still debating plans that were originally drafted in the seventies.
I think the most effective tool cities have is zoning regulations. Getting them right enables the city to harvest organic change as opposed to having to plan every single project. Reducing free parking and allowing mixed commercial and residential use seems to me like the easiest way towards a public transit centric city. In Tokyo for example there is basically no curbside parking and shops are always within walking distance.
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.
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.
I'm not sure if Russia's rail meets your criteria of proper service, but it has both passenger and freight transport in abundance, and I haven't heard of problems with that. Both long-distance and commuter passenger services are used extensively. However, freight service is mostly used for industrial materials while finished goods are mostly delivered by trucks (afaik), so that might be the difference.
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.
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.
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.
The model is indeed great, but the situation in Amsterdam is not that good. Metro lines are crowded daily, not that clean (especially 51), often delayed, sometimes out of reach for commuting even with cycling. The 52 line is a dream but at that pace it will take half a century to be half as good as Tokyo’s.
Intercity (or even longer distance trips within the city) are not available nearly often or connected enough. The Ring roads are chock-full of cars even with massive 5-6 lane express ways all around.
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.
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.
> 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?
This argument doesn't hold water. Why is there no decent regional train system in the US then? Your point explains why there is no coast to coast NYC-SF bullet train, fair enough. Each US megaregion [0] could have a decent train system like France, Germany or Japan.
>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'.
Not that old tired chessnut again.
First, all of Europe is connected by trains. You can go from any country to any country in EU by train -- if you wish so. That's equally large to the US (and the train lines even continue down to Moscow and further down to Beijing).
Second, it's not like you need to hook up all of the US or nothing. Where is a comparable and equally nice metro/train solution within a single small state (dozens of which are smaller than most European countries) or even within a city?
Even Chicago or Manhattan are worse than anything shown train/subway wise.
That the whole of USA is a large land mass is no excuse for individual cities having bad public transport.
To take the analogy over the top, Greenland is a part of Denmark, I don't hear them saying that because of that, they should start investing only in freeways for cars in Copenhagen?
Only Texas and Alaska are larger than France. I give you Alaska, due to the geography and low population, but Texas is just slightly larger and has half the population of France - not a massive difference.
I think it could be reasonably fair to compare countries to single states at least?
Germany and California are in the same ballpark when it comes to size and economic power. The state's internal transportation network should be just as developed but it is not. It's not only the size of the country, it's also the philosophy of the people and society.
When they talk about the train in Russia, they really only talk about the train in Moscow. Everyone I know says stations are very nice, and schedule during peak hours is like a train/min. BUT, at the same time, it's much much more packed than here in new york. Even during rush hour I don't feel pressed against other passengers here.
You can't claim that a high-speed line between Boston, Providence, CT cities, NYC, Philly, and down to Washington is not sensible. For many other states like Illinois, where there's one big city without much else near it, yes it's sensible to not have a great network of rails. However, there is really no geographic excuse for not having high-speed rail in the basically linear east coast corridor.
Having traveled many times from Boston to NYC via car, which is about 5x cheaper than Amtrak and yes actually comparable in cost to the bus, depending on your MPG, it's kind of ridiculous to me that we don't have a better version of Amtrak by now.
TO be fair, despite the US having some large emptier states, the US has nodes of very high urban density - most notably the Northeast corridor. From Boston to Washington there's around 50 million people, with - depending how you define it - a density of around 390/sqkm, three times that of France's 120/sqkm.
Of course not representative, but you can definitely see the influence of the automobile in how these cities have grown. Compare to say, Moscow - another major urban city in a fairly sparse city - New York City has only added a few km of subway lines in the past 20 years compared to 150+km.
> 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".
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Nitpick: AFAIR it's only 1 EUR per day if you pay the whole 365 EUR for the year at once. If you pay monthly, it's 396 EUR for the whole year. This is a pet peeve of mine as it's a good example of how expensive it can be to be poor.
However if you're getting used to the subway system running every 3-5 minutes you get agitated if you have to wait 15 minutes (or even need to plan when to arrive at the station)
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".
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 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.
> 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.
"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.
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).
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).
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.
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.
"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.
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).
[+] [-] Animats|7 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] lostmsu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalleboo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CaptainZapp|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrPhish|7 years ago|reply
Tokyo is so safe, friendly and easily navigable I didn't give it a second thought.
[+] [-] shawnps|7 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/53yuxd/heres_a_ful...
Quite impressive! It even includes the Disney Resort Line (small orange loop toward the right-hand side).
[+] [-] kalleboo|7 years ago|reply
After a recent visit to London I've really come to appreciate how fantastic the signage is in the Tokyo railway system. In London I often had trouble finding exits or connections (often following signs only to seemingly run out of directions), but in Tokyo it always seems seamless.
[+] [-] elvinyung|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] adrianN|7 years ago|reply
I think the most effective tool cities have is zoning regulations. Getting them right enables the city to harvest organic change as opposed to having to plan every single project. Reducing free parking and allowing mixed commercial and residential use seems to me like the easiest way towards a public transit centric city. In Tokyo for example there is basically no curbside parking and shops are always within walking distance.
[+] [-] oftenwrong|7 years ago|reply
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/14/the-activation...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/17/the-catch-22-o...
[+] [-] eeZah7Ux|7 years ago|reply
Don't call yourself an extremist. There's plenty of people that live without a car in big cities (outside of the US).
[+] [-] spikels|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
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://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight-tr...
[+] [-] aasasd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bfrog|7 years ago|reply
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...
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.
[+] [-] apexalpha|7 years ago|reply
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
edit: this is what our national rail looks like: https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaar...
[+] [-] ricardobeat|7 years ago|reply
Intercity (or even longer distance trips within the city) are not available nearly often or connected enough. The Ring roads are chock-full of cars even with massive 5-6 lane express ways all around.
[+] [-] mcphage|7 years ago|reply
Not when there's a foot of snow on the ground, it doesn't.
[+] [-] azag0|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ydnaclementine|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] pouetpouet|7 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_Stat...
[+] [-] coldtea|7 years ago|reply
Not that old tired chessnut again.
First, all of Europe is connected by trains. You can go from any country to any country in EU by train -- if you wish so. That's equally large to the US (and the train lines even continue down to Moscow and further down to Beijing).
Second, it's not like you need to hook up all of the US or nothing. Where is a comparable and equally nice metro/train solution within a single small state (dozens of which are smaller than most European countries) or even within a city?
Even Chicago or Manhattan are worse than anything shown train/subway wise.
[+] [-] Gravityloss|7 years ago|reply
To take the analogy over the top, Greenland is a part of Denmark, I don't hear them saying that because of that, they should start investing only in freeways for cars in Copenhagen?
[+] [-] bencoder|7 years ago|reply
Only Texas and Alaska are larger than France. I give you Alaska, due to the geography and low population, but Texas is just slightly larger and has half the population of France - not a massive difference.
I think it could be reasonably fair to compare countries to single states at least?
[+] [-] close04|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amoitnga|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|7 years ago|reply
Having traveled many times from Boston to NYC via car, which is about 5x cheaper than Amtrak and yes actually comparable in cost to the bus, depending on your MPG, it's kind of ridiculous to me that we don't have a better version of Amtrak by now.
[+] [-] jpatokal|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yitianjian|7 years ago|reply
Of course not representative, but you can definitely see the influence of the automobile in how these cities have grown. Compare to say, Moscow - another major urban city in a fairly sparse city - New York City has only added a few km of subway lines in the past 20 years compared to 150+km.
[+] [-] ken|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tom_mellior|7 years ago|reply
Nitpick: AFAIR it's only 1 EUR per day if you pay the whole 365 EUR for the year at once. If you pay monthly, it's 396 EUR for the whole year. This is a pet peeve of mine as it's a good example of how expensive it can be to be poor.
[+] [-] ComSubVie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oftenwrong|7 years ago|reply
All of his articles on cities:
https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post...
[+] [-] rwmj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wink|7 years ago|reply
Edit: it's 20 years old, not 15: 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/Candidplatz_(Munich_U-Bahn)
[+] [-] the8472|7 years ago|reply
http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful-under...
[+] [-] jefurii|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply
-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/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacemen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway
I agree with the general thrust of the piece though.
[+] [-] alistairSH|7 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] mjevans|7 years ago|reply
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.
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|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorblumesea|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|7 years ago|reply
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|7 years ago|reply