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Comment by jankotek | Hacker News Reader

Japan has very good public transport, and does not really need cars.

In america the question is why invest in carbon based transportation? It is "obsolete technology"! In japan cars are "obsolete"!

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This isn’t correct. My family live in the countryside and they’re more than an hour drive from the nearest rail station. There are buses but only a couple a day and they take a very long time. Their situation is pretty common.

Yeah, usually people who talk about good public transport in any country are talking about the (big) cities (probably the only place they visited).

In cities in Portugal and Spain the public transport is good as well, but I lived outside those in both countries and you have no chance without a car if you have any urgency to get somewhere. A bus once a day (early morning) to pick up and once (early evening) to drop off; so if you rely on public transport, you lose 1 entire day if you go shopping.

Nobody drives in Tokyo. There’s too much traffic.

Less than half the population of Japan lives in Tokyo.

Those two sentences seem a bit contradictory

“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” -Yogi Berra

well if traffic is generated by 1% of the population and if that traffic is already very crowded, it's almost true. that would mean the streets are very narrow.

It's a quote from Futurama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIrlZSYB6tE

(Nobody drove in New York, there was too much traffic)

That's the joke.

It's not a great joke because it's easy for both of those things to be true as long as you don't try to read "nobody" literally.

While US has a lot more cars, per capita Japan isn't that far behind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...

Totally inaccurate. While yes, you can get in densely populated areas almost anywhere near jy with a public transport, in countryside more and more lines are being stopped and car is a necessity

Not really.. Japan ranks among the top 10-15 countries in terms of cars per capita.

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