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Comment by swampthinker | Hacker News Reader

One thing I want to point out is that if I am reading the reports correctly, the JR system is actually a very profitable corporation.

What would it take to get a profitable train system in the US?

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Rail companies in Japan turn profit due to these factors: 1. Transportation by road in large Japanese cities is a complete nightmare. People really can't take the bus or drive if they want to arrive on time. 2. JR companies have been privatized in the 80s. They are free to set fares without political interference. 3. JR companies were allowed to shut down unprofitable lines to remote regions or demand the local governments subsidize them if they want to keep the lines running 4. Japanese rail companies own the land the stations sit on and were allowed to develop the stations into massive retail and office properties from which they earn rental income. Some rail companies even have department store subsidiaries.

Even then, JR Hokkaido, which serves the relatively sparsely populated Hokkaido region, has been unprofitable for a long time.

Intercity rail in the US was destroyed by an Iron Triangle. At present the passenger rail infrastructure is pitiful, since it hasn't had significant investment since about the 1950s. For example, back in 1999 Amtrak tried to resume passenger service between Louisville and Indianapolis by running freight and passenger cars on the same train. But since the track was so old, the trains were limited to 30 mph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Cardinal

Try to imagine what the market is like for intercity transportation that is more expensive than driving or taking a Greyhound and yet more than twice as slow, and doesn't connect you to an effective intracity transportation network once you arrive. There weren't many passengers.

Rail transportation is very important in the US, but it's all for freight, which takes up a similar proportion of rail as passenger does in other countries.

Amtrak does run some profitable passenger rail lines in the US, including some places you wouldn't expect, like the Oklahoma City-Dallas line IIRC. There is an interstate connecting those cities, and the population density isn't exactly really high there so IDK.

People transport and freight transport are typically segregated on different tracks in Europe and Japan, allowing for each to be optimized (you don’t need huge trains to carry people if you don’t have to worry about colliding with heavy freight trains!). The USA is messed up because we never did that.

This is only the case for the high-speed rail systems in Japan, France, Spain and possibly Germany.

Other countries (e.g. Britain) share most tracks between passengers and freight, and therefore need to maintain the track to a very high standard, and run freight trains at a much higher speed than is seen in the USA. (e.g. 80km/h or 55mph for a coal train isn't unreasonable, or 120km/h = 75mph for a container train)

Even in Germany, much of the distance covered by their high-speed services aren't on the dedicated passenger-only high-speed track.

How do they handle safety? The reason American passenger trains are so huge is that they have to be mass competetive with freight trains who they share tracks with (all the time, it isn’t even time multiplexed).

Links are to British resources, since I only read English, and the UK has the safest railways in the world.

* Upgrading signalling systems at technology progresses.

The latest systems use in-cab signalling, so the driver can't fail to see a signal due to fog etc, and the train's computer is aware if a signal is missed and will stop the train. (These systems are decades old, but I've read that they're not common in the USA. It took a couple of major accidents in the UK for them to be installed.) [Search ETRMS rail, or in-cab signalling].

GSM-R, i.e. the railway version of the original European mobile phone system, provides a big red button. If pressed, all trains in the area are immediately stopped. A driver would press this if the train is expected to crash, or has crashed. That can stop an oncoming train on the opposite track. [Search GSM-R]

* Maintaining the track to a high standard

Running a measurement train [1] over the whole rail network regularly, which accurately measures "the track geometry and other features such as overhead line height and stagger, and the track gauge, twist and cant". Changes in this can show where maintenance is needed much earlier than a visual inspection, and the data can be inspected retrospectively if there is a problem.

Machine learning is probably the newest/next step for this [2].

* Thoroughly investigating any accident or "near miss"

An independent group [3] investigates accidents, with the aim of preventing future accidents rather than assigning blame. The most recent report [3A], for example, finds problems with project management and recommends, "Network Rail should review its project assurance process as applied to the CASR scheme". The depth of these investigations is comparable to most western countries' investigations of aircraft accidents.

Investigations like this are what leads to posters in stations saying "don't run down the stairs" or "mind the gap" announcements. Falling down escalators or under a train in a platform is much more likely than being involved in a crash while a passenger on a train.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train

[2] http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/print/volume-20/issue...

[3] https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports

[3A] https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/serious-irregularity-at-card...

The Amtrak Downeaster runs right outside my window. During a 24 hour period, about fifty cars go by, almost empty, usually six or less cars per train.

Every single freight train that goes by has at least fifty cars, and they roll all night....

Massive population density increases.

JR also has a decent income from real estate. Train stations are in prime locations, and have a lot of foot traffic, so they build malls around them.

I suspect it's more of a cultural/political problem than a density problem. NYC has a considerably higher population density than Tokyo and has an abysmally expensive/inefficient rail system.

American public transportation systems, even here in the densest part of the country, are easy political whipping boys. Blame whatever you'd like (cars, highways, unions, politicians, etc), it appears that Americans don't care too much about fixing their transportation infrastructure if those fixes don't involve cars.

> NYC has a considerably higher population density than Tokyo

It's the other way around, Tokyo has higher population density:

New York City: Land area: 784 km2 Population density: 10,431 ppl / km2

The Special Wards of Tokyo: Land area: 619 km2 Population density: 15,146 ppl / km2

This comparison seems a bit unfair -- the special wards are the most densely populated parts of Tokyo. You should compare either New York City <-> Tokyo Metro Area, or Special Wards of Tokyo <-> Manhattan.

"This comparison seems a bit unfair"

It's not just unfair, it's completely absurd. Tokyo sprawls like crazy, and a big percentage of the population lives in the outer wards. The special wards are high density, but expensive.

As soon as you go outside of the Yamanote line, the population density of Tokyo falls dramatically (probably to Brooklyn levels). Take the train 10-15 minutes outside of that, and you find lots of detached houses and open land. Yet it's all "Tokyo", and this land area is counted when you see the huge population of the city referenced online.

Tokyo has become a fantasy for people in America who think that urban density solves all problems. Most of these people have not ventured outside of the tourist regions of the city.

To be fair, NYC technically includes Long Island. It isn’t obvious how to compare the two cities at all.

Only a small part of Long Island. Are you thinking of Staten Island?

This is an interesting comparison in its own right.

Manhattan: 27,799/km2 and 59.13 km2

So that's denser than the overall special wards area, but also vastly smaller in both land and total population. Basically 1.6 million people vs 9.4 million people.

Probably significantly easier to have an extensive train network when you're consistently dense for that large an area.

But I would agree that the main reason the US's public transit infrastructure is lacking is just that we like our cars too much. I expect this to get even more pro-car in a self-driving-car world, too.

All around Europe train stations are turning into malls for the same reason.

> JR also has a decent income from real estate

This is actually a big money maker for them. Train stations are malls in many cases and JR makes a lot of money from them.

> Train stations are in prime locations

In Japan, in general, the closer your land is to the station, the more expensive it is. So, therefore, the stations are on the most expensive land of each area. ;)

Population density is also proportional, a lot of times, to the distance to the nearest station.

One thing that prevents me from using the trains in my area is that driving takes 1/3rd the time to get to my destination. In Japan, riding the train is typically faster. Considering that I have to drive to get to the train station anyway, it just seems easier to drive to my destination.

Train schedules are another issue. The slow, stop-at-every-station trains in my area only come every 15 minutes (most often late), and the express train only comes every 30 minutes during the morning and evening commutes, and then every hour outside of those times. In Japan, if I miss a train, I know another will be along in 3 to 8 minutes, so it isn't a big deal. Where I currently live, if I miss the express train, I might as well go home and call it a day.

If the trains where I live came more often, were on time, and could get me to my destination faster than driving, I'd use them. Until then, it is just more convenient to drive, even though I absolutely loath driving.

It would take a complete overhaul of our political processes combined with a massively different transportation culture and an increase in population density. Lobbying at all levels maintains the status quo in the train industry, low population densities make a profitable human train transportation industry very difficult, and a culture that views those who use alternative modes of transportation as poor means even if the infrastructure was made, only the poor would use it to any reasonable extent.

Couldn't "the culture that views alternative transportation as poor people transportation" be solved easily???

We could just make the new Transportation super expensive at first and then gradually reduce the price until the correct amount of people can participate. This is essentially how TELSA got rid of the hippie stink from electric cars.

We could accelerate the transition even more by putting an Apple logo on the side of the train.

Increasing population density to Japan-like levels (and also removing governmental subsidy for roads, but that's a relatively small amount).

The Tokaido Shinkansen is around 520km long and connects Kobe (pop 1.5M), Osaka (2.7M), Kyoto (1.5M), Nagoya (2.3M), Yokohama (3.7M) and Tokyo (8.9M). Where could a US railway of similar length connect anything remotely like that many people?

Boston - New York - Philadelphia - Washington

San Diego - Los Angeles - Silicon Valley - San Francisco

The Boston<->Washington line you mentioned there is one of the only reliably profitable lines for AmTrak.

And yet somehow it's more expensive and slower than flying (incl. getting to the airport and going through security).

The Acela is more expensive than a plane ticket, but the NE Regional is usually cheaper and just about as fast as the Acela. The Acela got dicked over by some NIMBY types pretty hard and doesn't really deserve the HSR appellation.

I guess it depends on which leg you're traveling but I've found flying from New York to Boston is almost always cheaper. You can get a flight from LGA to BOS two weeks ahead of time for under $60.

California is not nearly as dense as the area along the Tokaido line. More to the point, those cities aren’t as integrated as the eastern Boston-DC megapolis.

It doesn't need to be just as dense, it has enough people. SF area and LA have massive growing population and economy, don't you think high speed train connecting those in under 2 hours would have enough ridership?

There's no way you're connecting San Diego to San Francisco directly via 323mi of track, let alone via LA and SJ/MV.

That's a 520-550mi ride, buddy.

You can drop San Diego, even that would be enough, pal.

Still over the limit by about 70mi, friend.

And you cut out the second largest city in the state, to do so.

Depends on how you define 'connecting' cities, and we aren't talking about rigid boundaries on the railroad, just "comparable". And LA->SF route has enough people to be profitable, mate.

> By 1987, JNR's debt was over ¥27 trillion ($280 billion at 2009 exchange rates) and the company was spending ¥147 for every ¥100 earned. By an act of the Diet of Japan, on April 1, 1987 JNR was privatized and divided into seven railway companies, six passenger and one freight, collectively called the Japan Railways Group or JR Group. Long-term liabilities of JNR were taken over by the JNR Settlement Corporation. That corporation was subsequently disbanded on October 22, 1998, and its remaining debts were transferred to the national budget's general accounting. By this time the debt has risen to ¥30 trillion ($310 billion in 2009 dollars). — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_National_Railways

My understanding is that the car manufacturers pushed the train system to convert to combustion over electric, as combustion was less reliable/costlier to maintain/etc.

Thus rail lost a significant competitive edge.

So basically blame capitalism.

The main issue is probably NIMBY.

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