Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Honestly the biggest reason might be the population density and structure in Japan. People live and travel between large metropolises, and those are relatively close, so this makes train travel more cost-effective.
Otherwise, this "only" makes the shinkansen great. Because regional and local trains are pretty much the same as any developed country ( albeit very very punctual ). Great train networks aren't limited to Japan. European trains fare the same except some lack of punctuality, and the lack of central backbone, due to the amount of international borders. Chinese high speed rail is actually better quality-wise and more connected than in Japan, but local trains are meh and extremely crowded. Honestly it feels like the US is the outlier here, because they had decent rail and managed to fuck it up in favour of road traffic.
The author mentioned that keeping those railways around, instead of just getting rid of them for cars like the US did, allowed the cities in Japan to become that dense in the first place. It's not because Tokyo and Osaka were always this populated. Even then,
Of course there are plenty of people who live in Tokyo proper, like I do, but most people I know actually live on its periphery, where the density isn't as crazy.
68.4% of Japans population lives in cities(50k+), whereas only 40% of Europes population does that. Not to mention the rural population(below 5000) is nearly three times higher in Europe.
Are unmanned platforms uncommon outside Japan? I genuinely don't know, but its the only place I've noticed them.