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Comment by unyttigfjelltol | Hacker News Reader

More accurately, Boston prioritized capital projects and let existing infrastructure decay until it became a proper capital project. And, when it came to capital projects the ones that were prioritized were only the ones required by law, which didn't make the system safer, faster, or more reliable for most riders.

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.

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Boston prioritized capital projects

Because U.S. transit systems get Federal money for capital projects, but don't get Fed money for regular maintenance.

Transit is unprofitable only in North America. Everywhere else public transit makes money.

Not sure if this is satire, but most places lose money on public transit (at least, the ticket fares don't cover operating and capital costs). A few places make money off public transit, such as Hong Kong's MTR, because they own the land around the stations and build shopping malls on the land and profit from the rent.

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.

Could you share some examples in Europe, Middle East, or Latin America? I'm pretty sure that 100% of them lose money, but they serve an important purpose. The same can be said for expressway/highway/freeway systems. They are a public good and very useful for the economy.

The systems in Japan are profitable, and run by private companies.

That's leaving out the part where they were privatized and the government ate the entire cost of building the infrastructure up to that point

Perhaps, but the claim was that 100% of transit systems "lose money". Japan's systems don't lose money (any more): they're profitable. They take in more money from ridership than they cost to run.

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).

Idk, that feels like an accounting trick to me. Sure, it's technically profitable now, but only because they get to reap the benefit of a network effect without paying for it.

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.

They make a lot of that profit from renting space in the stations and along the underneath of the lines (where the train is elevated and outside). 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).

It's worth noting that not all of the systems in Japan are privately run.

>They make a lot of that profit from...

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.

It is interesting that you chose to answer about Japan. My original question specifically avoided East Asia, where urbanization and population density is unmatched in the world. I'm trying to demonstrate that mass transit is almost always a money loser when you don't have the nexus of cheap gov't money, preferential planning, and ultra high urban density.

Profitable as a whole, but I reckon as a conglomerate. Private rails in Japan all has real estate divisions. They're not just collecting profit by running metal boxes back and forth, but by running an ecosystem of distributed pseudo kingdoms within the nation.

Japan also has an extremely high population density, and there are not really alternatives for most. It's not really a fair comparison to systems that have to handle urban sprawl and car cultures.

I'd be curious to see if different lines/regions (in Japan) are profitable or not.

Whatever is holding back your trains, it's not lack of density. Here are the population densities of some places:

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!

It's weird that you chose Japan, which includes lots of rural places, including the island of Hokkaido, but you chose "England", instead of the United Kingdom. It would be much more informative to select the area inside M25, then overlay in central Tokyo. It won't even be close. I guess central Tokyo is 2x the density of central London.

Fair. I picked England because transport in Scotland and Wales are devolved matters. A better comparison in Japan might be the island of Honshu, which is only slightly denser than England (447 vs 434). So I think my overall conclusion stands, that density isn't that related to rail network quality. That extra 13/km^2 isn't why Honshu is full of bullet trains and England isn't.

No, I think it's unfair. If you look at a map of the shinkansen lines in Japan, they're not just in Honshu; they span the entire length of the main islands (not including Okinawa, of course). They go all the way from Sapporo in Hokkaido down to Nagasaki in Kyushu, and beyond. The one to Sapporo goes through a deep tunnel under the strait.

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).

For context, Tokyo's population density is 6158/km^2

This probably includes suburban and rural areas. If you look on Google maps sky view, you will see the western half of Tokyo-to province is mostly rural (forest, mountains, and farms). The central part is made up of 23 "ku's" (cities). According to Wiki, the density is about 16,000/km.

The relevant comparison to the city of Tokyo is London (5,598/km^2) and New York City (11,300/km^2).

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