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Comment by amazingamazing | Hacker News Reader

the railways are excellent, but it's funny. I was just in Kyoto and saw flyers seemingly at every single temple opposing the Hokuriku Shinkansen extension. apparently this type of opposition has always existed (I looked at the history of trains in Japan and originally most Japanese did NOT want it at all because they thought it looked really ugly), like nimbys in USA, but such decisions are apparently federalized according to some Japanese nationals I spoke to, so the nimbys have no power.

USA should do the same (well, the current federal government is volatile to say, the least, but in general I think it'd be improvement).

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They still have influence in Japan. The maglev train has been delayed for years because a small portion passes through Shizuoka, and the local government wouldn't approve construction due to it making no stops in the prefecture and potentially affecting water supplies there.

This delayed the opening of it from 2027 to 2035 at the earliest.

Shizuoka as a whole is unusually screwed by the Shinkansen system. Large cities like Hamamatsu, with 800k people, are passed over by a lot of the Hikari (mid-speed Shinkansen), and the Nozomi (high speed Shinkansen) passes through the prefecture with zero stops whatsoever. However, it stops it cities like Tokuyama, with a whopping population of 100k.

is this because of the federal government capitulating or is it because the small group inherently has influence structurally?

The federal government has no influence. Prefectures approve their own construction. Japan's railways are built and operated by corporations, not the government, so the federal government has zero say in the matter.

ah interesting. I wonder why that person mentioned the federal government then. couldn't a single person just refuse to sell their land and block the entire thing then?

Funny how people always endlessly worry about water supply, its one of those things that is very easy to claim but very hard to prove an in 99.9% of times there really isn't an issue.

People can live without a high speed train. They cannot live without a clean water supply

Seems to me that the priorities are correct

Hard to imagine how a train that has no emissions itself as its catenary powered causes your water supply to be unclean.

Trains bring people who drink water.

If the train doesn't make stops in your prefecture, it sure doesn't bring people.

pretty sure it's the tunneling not the train itself

Ok but here is the thing, Japan had great civil engineering for 100 years, they have made lots and lots and lots of tunnels. Japan overall has fantastic water quality and is globally known for clean and safe bathrooms.

So the argument that 'new train X will destroy the water supply' really needs to be based on a whole stack of good evidence.

The burden of proof should be on not contaminating the water supply. That is too dangerous to risk.

> Japan had great civil engineering for 100 years, they have made lots and lots and lots of tunnels. Japan overall has fantastic water quality ...

Does it? And if so, maybe that's because they make sure projects like this one don't contaminate the water supply.

> ... globally known for clean and safe bathrooms

What does this have to do with water supply? One suspects that you know very little if that's the best evidence you have.

Maybe if the only person that thinks that the water supply is being destroyed is a local politician with a massive axe to grind who is trying to extort a local stop, then maybe we should question that over the engineers who have built tunnels their whole lives.

This is specially true when these tunnel goes along many different areas and seemingly the only that complains and believes is unsafe is also the one that is trying to get a transit station in the district.

I'm sure they have plenty of evidence on why it is safe, like historical examples and such. But how do you 'prove' this to a point a politician can't just say, sure its 99.9999% safe but we can't risk it.

> What does this have to do with water supply? One suspects that you know very little if that's the best evidence you have.

The point is that Japan tends to take safety and cleanness very seriously. And they have built many train-lines and tunnels.

At one point to you personally consider the source of a claim?

At one point to you personally consider the source of a claim?

You like to throw around assertions like "99.9% of times there really isn't an issue" with absolutely zero proof, but have a big problem with someone saying "I don't agree". I don't think you understand what sources, claims and truth actually mean.

Japan has some of the most horrific pollution disasters of the 20th century and had tremendously polluted water. The clean Japan thing is only true because Japan got very serious about safety after companies were ignoring issues and polluting water.

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

And I don't even get the clean bathrooms connection. Sounds like a random TikTok meme with zero relevance. Half the bathrooms don't even have soap.

> And I don't even get the clean bathrooms connection

It's simple. If it is Japan, someone will glaze it.

It's a bit ridiculous to imply Tokuyama gets better shinkansen service than Hamamatsu, because it has Nozomi service.

Looking at the schedule towards Tokyo for Monday, April 27th: Tokuyama has: 4 16 car Nozomi trains to Tokyo 19 8 car Kodoma/Sakura trains to Shin-Osaka 9 8 car Kodoma/Sakura to Okayama

Hamamatsu has: 31 16 car Kodoma to Tokyo 19 16 car Hikari to Tokyo

Keep in mind the fastest Kodoma seems to only take around 1 hr 40 mins to Tokyo, and the fastest Hikaru is only 1 hr 20 mins.

I'm sure it's nice getting a 1 seat ride to Tokyo from Tokuyama if you can get on one of the 4 Nozomis, and unfortunate you can't get a one seat ride past Shin-Osaka from Hanamatsu, but the service levels seem pretty proportionate to me.

Looking only at connections to Tokyo is a bit reductionist (difficult to believe, but yes, there are cities outside of Tokyo that people go to!). As a mere matter of geography, there are unavoidably fewer trains to Tokyo (it's on the opposite side of the island). Using that same methodology, it would be good to see how many trains from Hamamatsu have a direct connection to the biggest metropolis near Tokuyama: Fukuoka. That way we can measure which city is the best for getting to the opposite side.

The total number of trains with a direct connection from Hamamatsu to Fukuoka is, at least based on all the info I can find, zero.

Or even a much closer city that people in Hamamatsu would frequently go to: Hiroshima. Also zero direct connections without a transfer.

People in Tokuyama can go direct to Fukuoka and Tokyo. They can do a transfer at Osaka in the case of non-direct trains. They're very much better set up than Hamamatsu.

It can’t work in the US, because it’s not a society that works together for the collective good, or to raise everyone’s quality of life.

It’s a bunch of individuals in a dog eat dog situation who happen to live nearby.

I was just thinking about this, this morning.

In the US, we have had a pretty wide-open nation, for much of our history. Population density was low, and many folks were forced to be extremely self-sufficient.

This has resulted in a fiercely independent national zeitgeist.

Asian nations, on the other hand, have been very crowded, for a very long time.

This has resulted in a much more interdependent mindset.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. There's really no nation on Earth that is as good at "ganging up" on a problem, as Japan. Korea and China are catching up quick, though. The US is very good at manufacturing footguns. We don't tend to play well with others.

It really is hard for exceptional people to make their way, in Japanese society, though. They have a saying "The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down."

>In the US, we have had a pretty wide-open nation, for much of our history. Population density was low, and many folks were forced to be extremely self-sufficient. This has resulted in a fiercely independent national zeitgeist.

Australia is much less dense and more remote that the US (I drove 1,050 miles in Australia through the desert without seeing a vehicle or person, in the US you can’t get more than 100 miles from McDonald’s) but Australian’s work together and don’t have this “ fiercely independent “ nonsense that keeps everyone at each others throats.

I don’t know.

Most Aussies I’ve known are quite independent.

I really like them; maybe because we share so many traits.

Also, the US was where the British sent their convicts, until we had a big prison riot.

Yes, but Aussies work together for the collective good of society. High taxes. Universal Healthcare. Higher education, etc etc.

Aussies are friendly and kind, not locked in a dog eat dog world.

The USA was founded in rebellion against high taxes and heavy-handed central government. That is still an essential component of our philosophy.

Agree. Which is why I

, at the top of this comment chain, that it can’t work in the US because people don’t work together.

Australia also has many issues the US had. Car dependence. They also don't have high speed rail despite their cities being near perfect for it.

Also in Australia the waste majority of the population arrived much later and most were always attached to coastal cities. These cities were dominated by British aristocrat early on and later the British labor movement and reflects the culture of London. Australia politically was a part of Britain in many ways for 100s of years after the US had gone its own way.

The same is true to a lesser degree for the North East Coast in the US, arguably it works more like Britain/Australia but the South and everything West is quite different.

Australia has higher taxes, universal healthcare, higher education, etc etc.

Aussies work together, not against each other

I have no strong opinion on the original thesis but your fact doesn't make the point you think it does; you're right that no one lives in most of Australia, nearly everyone is concentrated together on the coast. Australia is a bit more urban than the USA overall from a population perspective, despite being vastly less dense overall due to the areas that no one lives in. So there would be fewer people to carry the cultural individualism.

https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1nbrov9/australi...

About 9 out of 10 Americans live in cities (incl burbs) and the same holds for Australians. Sure, there's fewer notable population centers in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and you got nearly everyone), but there's also just 10x fewer people than in the US so that kind of matches too. I think the picture you link to distorts this, it does not account for the fact that there's simply way fewer Australians.

I'm not convinced that if there were 300m Australians, that they'd still all live in those 5 cities (with every city being 10x bigger). I think there'd be more of them.

> I'm not convinced that if there were 300m Australians, that they'd still all live in those 5 cities (with every city being 10x bigger). I think there'd be more of them.

I don't think so either, but because of the climate and geography, I also don't think there'd be 10x more cities, similar populations, I think you might end up with 2-3x more, really, at most.

Fair. It'd turn into a Japan and a half (big one on the right, small one the left)

That's a rather expansive view of cities based on what the US Census categorizes as urban vs. rural. Between myself and a couple neighbors, we're on close to 100 acres, but that's urban according to the census because we're not that far from a major city and fairly close to some smaller ones.

Grain culture vs rice culture.

Rice cultivation requires collective water management, so you get more collectivist cultures. Growing grain mostly depends on rain, so your harvest depends on your own work.

That's an interesting theory. Makes just as much sense as mine.

It’s really hard to be empirical, in these types of things.

There was an experiment in China [1].

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44770-w

I think this is not a smart read of the situation. The US has built a tremendous amount of rail and other transit (eg NYC subway) back when it was an even more individualistic society than today.

In fact they country was clearly able to come together for the public good many times throughout their history.

You could consider other causes.

Francis Fukuyama is now arguing that the US in now a substantiantively lower trust society than it was in 1995 when he published his second book "Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity."

>In it I argued that trust is among the most precious of social qualities, because it is the basis for human cooperation. In the economy, trust is like a lubricant that facilitates the workings of firms, transactions, and markets. In politics it is the basis for what is called “social capital”—the ability of citizens to cohere in groups and organizations to seek common ends and participate actively in democratic politics.

>Societies differ greatly in overall levels of trust. In the 1990s, Harvard’s Robert Putnam wrote a classic study of Italy which contrasted the country’s high-trust north with its distrustful south. Northern Italy was full of civic associations, sports clubs, newspapers, and other organizations that gave texture to public life. The south, by contrast, was characterized by what an earlier social scientist, Edward Banfield, labeled “amoral familism”: a society in which you trust primarily members of your immediate family and have a wary attitude towards outsiders who are, for the most part, out to get you.

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-world-simply-does-not...

I didn't realize the link but I agree with the decline in trust.

One obvious axis is that in 1995 (I came to the US right around then) the country had a high church attendance rate, racial homogeneity, % of people who are parents, and % of people who were born here.

In the 30 years that passed all of these numbers had become significantly lower and obviously each factor on its own contributed to a decline in societal trust.

Most all of that old rail was done by private companies seeking to make a profit. Just like Japan. Look at nyc subway building rates after it was publicly owned. Almost zero expansion. Contractions even.

I agree w that and disagree what the person's I replied to dumb premise.

Same in The Netherlands. There are companies that buy plots of lands near existing rail just to massively screw over the government if they ever want to expend rail. Double digit million euro deals over small patches of land.

Objections to large projects exist everywhere all over the world.

The reason the US has such an issue with this is because of state autonomy (and corruption). Most other places in the world don’t allow subregions of the country to do whatever they want and make up laws etc

Switzerland is even more regional than the US. Yet they seem to have built an excellent rail system.

The US interstate system is incredible extensive, uniform, and well-maintained (relatively speaking). States love federal dollars, and if there were federal dollars for train lines, they'd fall over themselves to get them. That doesn't seem to happen for a lot of reasons. It seems like there are a lot of corruption problems that seem to eat up train projects, but for some reason the interstate system, though replete with plenty of boondoggles, is an unstoppable road-spreading machine.

The interstate system only succeeded because the federal government took the very rare step of steamrolling all the states and individual landowners. It was done in service of putting people to work and stimulating the economy. But it was not a well-liked project.

Today, it is well-regarded, but when it was being done? No way.

My impression is it's more to do with being able to sue for everything under the sun and block things almost indefinitely under different forms of review, usually environmental.

We need to stop pretending it isn't corruption and conflict of interest

I am a big infrastructure nerd but I believe they are right, it does change the way idyllic landscapes and towns can look.

But I'm not sure it's a valid reason to block such practical projects. It's the same for cities with building height restrictions (or really very many types of restrictions). It will make an old city look a bit less romantic for sure, but also people have to live and work here. Cities aren't for looking at.

I’m not American, so only have an outsider perspective, but I’m not convinced that’s possible in the US to do the same, because the country has a completely different perspective on individual rights. Land ownership seems to be seen as something sacred that cannot be infringed in any way, meaning a small group of people who own some parts of the land can block any development that would benefit the public at large

land rights aren't exactly a constitutional right, but the 5th amendment makes it hard to take it, so in practice would probably require a constitutional amendment.

The 5th amendment isn't exactly recent. But a lot of factors make it harder--for better or worse--to exercise eminent domain today than in the past. You could probably never reasonably build the equivalent of the interstate highway system today. (Though even at the time, there were compromises made because of strong community pushback in some cases and there was less developed space than today as well.)

The US is the country that originated Georgism.

You’d think so, but in fact it’s almost the opposite! You can own your land all you want but your neighbor has a final say on what’s allowed on your land.

This is mostly true until it's time to build an interstate.

Good luck building a bunch of new interstates today. Opposition was already coming in at the end of the interstate system buildout. Drill down and you'll find various odd connections (or lack thereof) throughout the system that resulted from community opposition.

a small group of people who own some parts of the land can block any development

Almost all NIMBY opposition to development comes from people who do not own the land in question.

Eminent domain is designed for this. People are compelled to sell.

And you'd better be prepared to fight for it through the courts. Might take a decade or more if someone is really opposed to selling.

People say that but I’m not sure, it seems state of california manages to pull it off pretty well, thinking in terms of recent history it was used a couple years ago for highway expansion in bakersfield for example, using it on 900 homes. Pretty sure they must have used it recently in the owens valley when they widened 395 as well.

There's a 'build the Japanese train system' board game "1889" -- https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23540/shikoku-1889 -- https://www.amazon.com/Shikoku-1889-Railways-Players-Minute/...

Japan isn’t a federal government, so the decision can happen at the national level because prefectural and local governments zoning ability came from the national government.

I don’t think the federal government could de facto change this, though in practice they have levers available.

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