Americans love choice and they love stuff. They fill their cars with their stuff drive around on their own schedule without having to watch a clock or think about what’s near a train line and what isn’t. (Even with Tokyo’s amazing railway network, you have to think about that!) My wife drives to three different grocery stores 20 miles apart to get exactly the products she wants. The idea of just accepting whatever brand of hamburger buns they have at the store that’s conveniently on the train line between our house and work is completely alien.
To live within a Japanese system, Americans would have to change a bunch of other things about their culture. We’d have to give our kids independence to take the train themselves, instead of spending every saturday driving them around to 3 different far flung activities. We’d have to learn to appreciate what’s conveniently available, instead of the exact thing we want.
And not even Tokyo’s amazing train network makes it convenient to juggle two working spouses and school drop off and pickup for three kids. What line is convenient to your house, both parents work, and all three kids’ schools? The Japanese don’t even try to solve that problem.
Aside from culture, this is another aspect which they touch on in the article. Japan doesn't have public parking. You're only allowed to buy a car if you have access to a parking spot. Tokyo is full of lots but they're all paid lots that charge in 30-60 min increments. There's also a lot of congestion zones in Tokyo which make driving in the city very expensive. Companies that do deliveries in the city often have a company car (or fleet of such) which lets them drive to destinations.
Overnight workers who do spend significant times at work before/after the trains stop do drive in. Most Japanese families in Tokyo live in suburbs surrounding the city and will walk, bike, or drive to a nearest train station to commute in.
> We’d have to give our kids independence to take the train themselves, instead of spending every saturday driving them around to 3 different far flung activities.
> The idea of just accepting whatever brand of hamburger buns they have at the store...
When we were in Japan my son walked to school when he was 6. Parts of the walk close to the school were supervised. It wasn't just allowed, it was expected.
Rail <-> Road isn't an either or issue. It wasn't in 1850 and it isn't today. The only difference, at least in the US, is that poorly designed government intervention/policies forced low population densities.
Rail and other forms of public transport simply don't work with suburban sprawl. Large roadways also don't work - compare the state of US infrastructure against pretty much every other country out there - it's just that the financial bill from an unbelievable amount of deferred maintenance hasn't come due yet.
> How will US citizens help their friends move or do their large (in terms of volume) Costco grocery shopping without large trucks and only using rail?
Apparently, it works just fine.
When we needed a truck to move cabinets or drywall or whatever, we rented one for that. It didn't cost much.
When we moved houses, we rented a truck for that. It was easier and cheaper to move with one rented huge box truck, than to own something that would be useful for that.
Otherwise: Deliveries. We just had big stuff delivered. No problem. Things like appliances and TVs were simply delivered, and this never added any expense to the purchase.
These days, even Costco delivers stuff just fine. It does tend to cost more than in-store.
Rentals and deliveries can easily cost hundreds of dollars per year. It's not free; it might even be rationalized as being rather expensive.
But owning/insuring/maintaining/fuelling/parking a car (or a truck, just the same) can easily cost thousands. It's a different magnitude.
The work I do requires me to have things like tools and ladders with me. A sedan doesn't quite cut it (I've tried), and SUVs are awful for every practical road-going purpose.
So these tools and ladders are out in the van (a top-trim Honda Odyssey) right now. It does OK on gas, it's very comfortable, it keeps everything nice and dry with 3 zones of HVAC, and it's passively theft-deterrant: Nothing about it says "steal these tools" to a would-be thief at all.
It's really good.
If I did work that didn't require a vehicle like that then I'd just have a small sedan. (I live in a very car-centric area of Ohio, as do the people I'm fond of being near. I either need a car or I need to change my views about what I find important in life; that's the way the cookie crumbles.)
And if I lived in an area with actually-good public transportation and the kinds of neighborhood shops that this promotes, then I probably wouldn't even want a small sedan. I like walking and riding a bike. And I'd rather buy a transit pass and spend more time reading, than pay for all the things that having a car requires me to pay for.
Adding the occasional train ticket (that never needs new tires, or an oil change, or a timing belt) for longer trips would be cheaper than owning a car, too.
It's really not difficult to shop large volume thongs without a giant car.
The Midwest, as an example, has roughly the same size and population as France with a larger economy. In fact, if you overlay the French TGV network onto the Midwest with Chicago where Paris is, you get a pretty good approximation of where major Midwestern cities are located: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/NMr3J3gt8C
Frankly, these don’t look like locations that that many people want to travel between.
The French urban areas on the TGV aren’t very big; Montpelier, for example, has a total of 600,000 people in its metro area, which is roughly the same size as Toledo, OH or Wichita, KS.
And yeah, there would be a fair amount of demand just to Chicago the same way there is a fair amount of demand to Paris, in that they’re both the regional powerhouses with finance, HQs, etc.
If anything, right now America is tilted heavily to car-only.