Roads are falling apart, lighting poles are falling down, our natural gas infrastructure is leaking like crazy. Why can't we just take care of our stuff?
[0] To pay for more car stuff which ended up being a boondoggle in its own right, of course https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/i-team-big-dig-root-mbta...
Transit is a mess because ... it became unprofitable as a private business about 100 years ago, was tricky to run way back then, and now politicians that run it only sometimes have goals aligned with riders.
Of course, there are less immediately tangible financial benefits of having public transit, such as improving a city's economy through moving labour efficiently compared to, say, roads.
I'm not sure it's really possible to have a totally profitable transit system of any kind, when accounting for all the infrastructure construction and acquisition costs. I don't think even a roadway system would work, if people had to pay-per-use. The cost would just be too high and people at the bottom wouldn't be able to use it, and then the whole society would just collapse, or you'd have people use it without paying like you see in a American cities now (faregate-jumping).
I agree with you though, profitability is an impossible goal simply because the benefits of an extensive rail network can't be captured by fares alone. It's the perfect case for taxation and public investment.
It's worth noting that not all of the systems in Japan are privately run.
I don't see how this is irrelevant in any way. Why should a transit service make all its profit purely from ridership fares, if it can instead make money with these other methods, which help keep the fares low for riders? It's a win-win-win. Maybe other transit systems should look at Japan's systems and learn something from them; I've never seen space in US stations rented out like this. And it's really great too: here, I can grab a confection or gift or something from one of these vendors while I'm passing through the station or waiting for a train.
>The ridership is also insanely high, partly due to how good the service is, and also partly due to the density (which is a virtuous cycle provided by good service).
Here again, other countries should try learning from this example. Making this system work this well required high density, which brings a feedback loop of more benefits. Meanwhile, some other countries are complaining about unaffordable housing because they insist on houses being far apart and driving cars everywhere.
I'd be curious to see if different lines/regions (in Japan) are profitable or not.
Japan: 327/km^2
England: 434/km^2
US Acela Corridor (Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-Baltimore-DC plus minor cities and outlying areas): 931/km^2 ... nearly 3x Japan!
Yet Japan's rail network is superior in every way to England's, which is in turn superior in every way to the Acela corridor. When I google "acela frequency", the first result is "12 kV 25 Hz AC", which really says it all, doesn't it?
Then there's Switzerland: 207/km^2 and much tougher terrain, yet their train network is Japan-tier. Compare that to California, with 250/km^2 and no serious rail connectivity at all, despite Sacramento-SF-San Jose-Los Angeles-San Diego sitting practically on a straight line. There are only 16 trains per day between San Fransisco and Los Angeles, and it takes over 10 hours. These are two of the most important cities on Earth, it's ridiculous! There should be at least 10 times as many trains, and 1/3rd the journey time.
Look at Texas: Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Austin, Houston, San Antonio; jointly they are 20 million people and all exist in a triangle less than 500km to a side. The region is perfect for high-speed rail. There should be hundreds of Shinkansens zooming back and forth across the desert each day. In the manner of Texans, they should be even bigger and even faster. But they don't exist.
The US as a whole is thinly populated, but it still has several extremely wealthy and dynamic mega-regions that have more than enough population density to support world-class high speed rail networks (plural).
You must demand better trains!
So a more fair comparison would be: why doesn't the UK have bullet trains stretching from Cornwall to northern Scotland (past Edinbugh), and another branch going to Belfast in Northern Ireland?
But yeah, your point is exactly right. Density has nothing to do with why Japan has the rail network it has. It's entirely because of political will. If it were just about density, you'd only see shinkansen lines connecting the 3 major metro areas: Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto), since they're the largest three metro areas, and they're all relatively close together. Instead, Japan is happy to build a shinkansen line even out to Kanazawa, which only has 500k inhabitants (but is a popular tourist spot), in addition to cities at the ends of the island chain (Fukuoka and Sapporo).
Because U.S. transit systems get Federal money for capital projects, but don't get Fed money for regular maintenance.
And that is why rail is so expensive in the States; transit decisions are not made on the basis of profitability.
(Note that in the case of Japan, some of these private rails were converted to "Third Sector" aka public-private rails, where they continue to be run by the private rail company under the financial subsidy of the local prefectures through which the rail line runs.)
I'm sure there are some differences, but this is true for Amtrak in the US too
It’s sometimes insane how lines are kept running in Japan.
The Japanese countryside is ageing and depopulating. Any railway operator, public or private, has to face this reality. You can either shut them down, or reduce service, or subsidize them; all three are painful in their own ways, and all three are done in different places, depending on local conditions.
Furthermore, a line may be "unprofitable" on paper, but still be worthwhile overall because of network effects.
The rural decline is at least being managed with more rationality than the senseless Beeching cuts[1] (and at that time, British Rail was wholly under state control).
It's just the private version of transit-oriented development[1]. It's a good way to align incentives. The railway increases the value of the land around the stations, so the railway company gets to enjoy some of that benefit. Having the most salient product/service as a loss-leader for the real money-maker behind the scenes is a very common business strategy. Hell, it's how American railroads got built in the old West. It's how London became Greater London.
Many governments seem to have forgotten this basic stuff ... they'll do silly things like keep restrictive low-density anti-retail zoning codes in the areas around train stations. And then they wonder why the promised benefits of the railway didn't arrive and people still drive everywhere. Or they won't see any benefit to pre-emptively expanding the network into new places because "nobody lives there", reversing cause and effect.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-oriented_development
Specifically about the bullet trains, they are absurdly efficient in speed, they had to outpace air travel. Absurd speeds incredibly early on, and to this day only really China has surpassed them in terms of nation coverage and speed - a dominance Japan held onto for a good 50 years.
Fascinating to learn about, but not so great to apply blindly to other places.
The average person is willing to spend an extra 10000 yen to save 2-3 hours and the hassle of a flight.
Funnily enough, the business travelers I know in Japan actually take the plane, because it's cheaper for the company and they can keep the miles.
Tokyo Metro: 100% owned by the Government of Japan and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
Toei Subway: 100% owned by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
JR East: The vast majority of their infra was built before privitisation using cheap or free gov't money. Also, during their 100+ year build-out, the Japanese gov't would regularly favour their own national system over private systems (grants, loans, approvals, etc.). This gives them a huge economic advantage that lasts today.
Better than British railways (and energy suppliers). Private companies with a government as the biggest shareholder. Just not the British government ...