How the Shinkansen bullet train made Tokyo into the monster it is today
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The CapEx cost, which the government essentially wrote off when they privatized JR, was north of half a trillion dollars.
Traveling from SFO to LAX on high speed rail is far preferable to me than driving for 5 hours or a 5-hour airport experience.
Mythbuster's recently tested this, and the actual difference between driving and flying door-to-door was like 15 minutes.
A 2.5 hr train ride would not only be faster, it would be far more pleasant in terms of getting on/off, and in terms of comfort and space onboard.
Airport construction follows a similar system. Most airports in the United States are public-private partnerships. They issue Airport Revenue Bonds, which are similar to municipal bonds from a tax perspective, but they're backed by airport revenues, not municipal tax revenue.[2] The airport authority has to pay back the debt through the fees they collect from operators or concessions. The latter is why everything from bottled water to rental cars is more expensive in an airport. It's not just that they have a captive audience, it's that concession sales actually pay for the operation and expansion of the facility.
In both cases - the FAA and capital expenditures - it's mostly paid for by the users, not the taxpayer.
[1] - https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ap... [2] - http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=14041&page=12
Since the subsidy you link to, varied between 70% and 80%, it could still be the case that the Airport system in California got subsidies within a small multiplicative factor over it's entire lifespan compared to the proposed costs of the high speed rail system.
The objections to high speed rail IMHO, aren't 100% based on economics or funding, because other things have gotten massive subsidies, they're also based on a kind of weird political tribe association people have against trains.
Let me quote George Will as an example: "To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!” or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!”"
So, to some people, trains are a Euro-socialist kind of thing, anti-freedom.
That doesn't seem to actually be true. To quote Alon Levy (from http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/high-...):
"... there’s a myth going around that the Shinkansen isn’t really profitable because the government wiped its construction debt. While it’s true that the government wiped JNR’s debt, that debt was predominantly operating losses before restructuring; since JNR got few subsidies, it had to keep borrowing to cover its losses. Construction was only one eighth of the debt burden, and that part the JRs did have to pay.[1] In other words, the government really just subsidize JNR’s operating losses from its inefficient pre-restructuring days."
[1] From Wikipedia: JNR's Shinkansen-fueled debt eventually ballooned to ¥28 trillion [...] The privatized JRs eventually paid a total of only ¥9.2 trillion to acquire JNR's Shinkansen network.
Not to mention the national economic benefit of those train lines quite aside from OpEx probably makes them worthwhile
Nonsense. Narita airport is about an hour away from central Tokyo (by one of two express trains, probably longer by car), and Haneda about 30-40 minutes (by monorail, probably longer by car). Then you get to deal with being in an airport. Both run more smoothly than the ones in the US, but still require early arrival for boarding. Flights are _far_ more likely to have delays. Then you get to deal with another airport again after landing, especially if you checked luggage.
Contrast with the shinkansen: trains leave every 10-15 minutes from the center of the city, have better seats (and green or first-class costs a fraction of a first-class plane ticket), and no dealing with airport security or lines at all.
It would take a 4-5 hour trip minimum for me to fly rather than take a train in Japan.
That's probably true, but it does it a lot longer.
It feels a lot like a train except it flies and it's a lot harder to bring a gun onto it.
Note that the upcoming maglev train will have airport-like security.
Even in a place like China the benefits are dubious. It is still often more cost effective to fly from Beijing to Shanghai than take the bullet train.
The price of flying has been driven down in China thanks to the bullet train.
Bullet trains are a very long term investment so they look terrible up-front - they are much more energy efficient per journey, however, so amortizing the cost of billions of passengers they're often a MUCH, MUCH better deal even though the upfront cost is very high. There are a couple of possible Boondoggles in China (I'm a bit dubious of the Wuhan-Guangzhou route), but Beijing-Shanghai along with many other routes makes perfect sense, much like LA - SF or the Northeastern Corridor.
Additional benefits include creating infrastructure that will let you wean yourself off oil and thus aid a reduction in global warming, not to mention reducing the country's exposure to the vicissitudes of the global oil markets and instability in the middle east.
The US would probably have a lot more of it by now if the upper echelons of power weren't infested with austerity/inflation hawks and oil company executives shaping policy for their own personal benefit.
That's assuming there are no technological improvements in transportation in the long, long term. Which is, honestly, in this time and age, ridiculous.
You're kidding right? This is not a substitute for high speed rail. Cars are SLOW.
>potentially faster planes (some are in development)
You mean like the Concorde?
>maybe better train technologies
Or maybe not. Especially since without large scale investment train technology basically doesn't go anywhere. You could have said this in the 1960s yet we're still running the same shitty passenger Amtrak lines we did back then.
hahaha! You forgot that trains only go to a single place, and you often have to take other transportations means after to get to where you need to be. Cars can go directly everywhere you need, and once they are automated I'm pretty sure we will see at some point motorways for automated cars where cars will go way above current speed limits AND bring you right where you have to be without moving out of the vehicle. And if you want to work during transportation, cars will be the best way to do it, really. Nobody looking over your shoulder, more space, more comfort. If you are just saving 1 or 2 hours with the train but losing much more in productivity, the calculation is quickly done.
> You mean like the Concorde?
http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-branson-supersonic-pl...
By the way, you didn't really address "Cars are SLOW" part.
Not scientific but: Top Gear's race in Japan for example.
Car absolutely obliterated the public transportation network which included the Shinkansen (ignoring the "I turned the satnav off accidentally and lost an hour" bit).
Although hard to determine just how much Clarkson was breaking the speed limits..
But it shows that direct point to point travel can make up for slower average speed.
Really ?
> I'm pretty sure we will see at some point motorways for automated cars where cars will go way above current speed limits
>Although he wouldn’t give a timeframe to when it could be done — hopefully “within my lifetime,”
In other words "don't hold your breath" and "I wouldn't make any long term economic decisions based upon this guys' pie in the sky notions".
The fact that this technology has regressed (can't cross the atlantic in 3 hours any more!) means that your assumption that future forms of transportation will always be better, faster and cheaper is horribly shortsighted and wrong.
You'd have told us in the 80s that we'd have something better than that by now. We don't. Actually what we have now is slower, and while planes like the A380 are more fuel efficient, isn't efficient enough to mitigate the rising cost of oil.
But aside from that, I suspect we'll see at least a doubling of car travel speeds in the next few decades.
Speed limits are an artificial constraint in the name of fuel efficiency and safety. With automated cars, the safety limit is at a much higher speed, and even fuel efficiency can be improved with computer controlled 'trains' of cars drafting and reducing wind resistance overall (made possible by automation making the idea safe).
Still a long way from bullet trains and aircraft, but much better than car speeds today.
When things change, things change. Highways today aren't rutted dirt wagon roads.
The "train of cars" proposal is just absurdly inefficient. Carting on or two individuals in one-ton steel cages on highly inefficient rubber tires, versus a train running on a steel track. All the inefficiencies in play go up dramatically with velocity: energy lost due to deformation of the tire, energy lost due to friction, wear on the road, etc.
That's just not how things work.
Roads are made the way they are as balance of various tradeoffs. When one part of that equation changes, other parts will change as well to adjust to the new balance.
For example, if all cars were fully automated, safety margins would allow roads to be notably narrower, requiring less construction and maintenance costs all around. In addition, increased throughput could have much the same effect- no need for so many lanes.
And of course cars themselves are the same way- a system of tradeoffs balanced to optimize for current constraints. Change one of the constraints and the system changes. Cars won't be "one-ton steel cages" if they don't need to be. And lighter cars will reduce road wear, as vehicle weight is a primary factor. Tires formulated for optimal performance at current speeds (and weights for that matter) will be reformulated.
Systems are complex, and changing one variable means the rest will adjust.
There is a reason advances in transportation (or energy) technology are so slow and expensive. The physics really are not in your favor.
Current systems are optimized for current constraints. When a constraint changes, the entire system changes.
You can keep saying "Physics! Physics!", but the entire point is that once you change the one input in the physics equations, you can change all the others to keep the balance.
More concretely, replacing a human driver with an automated one isn't going to change all the physical constraints that make it inefficient to have cars that cruise at 100+ mph: http://energy-ecology.blogspot.com/2010/05/optimal-vehicle-s.... Whether you're in a Honda Civic or a Ford Explorer, doubling speed from 90 kph to 180 kph triples fuel consumption.
Even if self-driving cars can be a little lighter, that's not going to change the shape of the curve.
And that's with current designs.
Optimize your cars to maximize drafting effects and you can see greater improvements.
I understand what you're saying and you might be right. But you could just as easily have said the same thing in the 1960s ("we'll have flying cars"), and yet here we are in 2014 and the places that built and maintained mass-transit systems are on average doing better than those that haven't (Richard Florida discusses this in a couple of books; so does Edward Glaeser in The Triumph of the City.)
That's dumb. Japan has invested in it since the war and has reaped the benefits despite (relatively steady) technological improvements in HSR.
Assuming that there will be sufficient unknown black-swan technological breakthroughs to render it uneconomic is frankly, absurd.
What benefits, exactly?
EDIT: I mean, what obvious economic benefits is Japan getting from spending so much on train lines?
* Greater social interconnectivity between cities, enabling denser, richer industrial networks. The Keiretsu economic structure to which Japan owes so much of its industrial success would not have worked nearly as well without easy long distance intercity travel. Horizontal networks of large numbers of small businesses spread across large distances that combine together to form, e.g. a Nikon digital camera, would not be possible if executives in these businesses did not have easy access to one another and one another's factories.
* Lower trade deficit - it's better for Japan's economy that the money spent by its citizens on long distance travel isn't filtered overseas into the pockets of rich Arab dictators via oil purchases (who then spend it on gambling in Parisian casinos or American fighter jets). Instead, it is spent at home, generating additional economic activity, enriching Japanese rather than Arab princes.
* It serves as a good form of Keynesian stimulus - keeping people employed and levels of economic activity stable during debt-crisis driven economic slumps.
All of these are economic benefits that occur in addition to the cost savings.
Yeah, except that electricity in Japan is mostly not nuclear, so you consume CO2 to produce electricity to run your trains anyway.
> Greater social interconnectivity between cities, enabling denser, richer industrial networks.
Most of the fabric of the industrial world in Japan is around Tokyo - that is the main point of the article, too, by the way. Most of the other cities in Japan are underdeveloped compared to Tokyo. Not sure where you get the idea the train is making things better for everyone.
> long distance travel isn't filtered overseas into the pockets of rich Arab dictators via oil purchases
Electricity is produced with petrol and gas in Japan mostly. You are feeding the same rich Arab dictators anyway.
> It serves as a good form of Keynesian stimulus
Yeah and we all know how well Keynesian stimulus works. It works as long as you spend, and then poof, nothing, and people get back to unemployment - it's a loss for everyone.
It's MORE energy efficient - not zero emission (yet):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Energy_efficie...
"Even using electricity generated from coal or oil, high-speed trains are significantly more fuel-efficient per passenger per kilometre traveled than the typical automobile because of economies of scale in generator technology[42] as well as lower air friction at the same speed."
Nonetheless, it will also make it easier to reduce emissions as renewable energy output ramps up. You can run HSR on hydro, wind and solar power - you can't run planes on electricity.
>Most of the fabric of the industrial world in Japan is around Tokyo
Japan's industry stretches a LOT further than just Tokyo, as do its Keiretsu, and MANY of its household-name brands (not to mention most factories) are not headquartered there (e.g. Toyota, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Sharp, Nintendo, etc.). Japan is NOT just Tokyo.
>Most of the other cities in Japan are underdeveloped compared to Tokyo. Not sure where you get the idea the train is making things better for everyone.
I've no idea where you got the idea that the rest of Japan is undeveloped. Perhaps you should pay a visit to Osaka.
>Electricity is produced with petrol and gas in Japan mostly. You are feeding the same rich Arab dictators anyway.
Since Fukushima, yeah, but A) it is STILL more energy efficient and B) it's easier to move on to renewables (currently cheaper than oil) if your long distance travel depends largely on electricity rather than kerosine.
>Yeah and we all know how well Keynesian stimulus works. It works as long as you spend, and then poof, nothing,
It works perfectly well as a way of stabilizing demand and employment until the private sector works through a bad debt overhang and demand picks up again. This has been proven time and time again despite many economic junk-science attempts to disprove it.
If the stimulus is large enough (c.f. WW2 spending in US or Nazi public works programs pre-WW2) it ends depressions.
Japan's stimulus was enough to prevent widespread unemployment the likes of which Spain has right now, but not enough to end its serial economic malaise.
Haha, I live next to Osaka. But you're gonna tell me I dont know the place where I live, I guess?
I won't go into the debate about stimulus BS, because that's another entire topic, but as a side note Japan has been doing Keynesian stimulus for like 20 years with no effect whatsoever on the economy, so yeah, great proof of concept.
>I won't go into the debate about stimulus BS
That's probably best for you.
Japan has managed to keep its unemployment level pretty low and has had a protracted albeit mild depression over the last 20 years. This is undeniable.
The alternative (no stimulus at all / spiraling self-reinforcing depression) would have resulted in ending up like Greece or Spain. This is also undeniable.
I guess you think 50% youth unemployment vs. 5% counts as "no effect whatsoever"? I would beg to differ.
Underdeveloped vs Tokyo, certainly. Look at the number of companies and major industries and revenues in both areas and you'll be in for a good laugh. And in case you did not know, many large companies are leaving Kansai. Not to return.
> Japan has managed to keep its unemployment level pretty low and has had a protracted albeit mild depression over the last 20 years. This is undeniable.
Low unemployment in Asia is not hard. Ever seen how many people are working for super low salaries, doing nothing but making sure people don't go over the cones put on the side of the road? The whole service industry in Japan guarantees low unemployment rates, this has NOTHING to do with stimulus. It's just the way Japanese approach services in the first place anyway.
> The alternative (no stimulus at all / spiraling self-reinforcing depression) would have resulted in ending up like Greece or Spain. This is also undeniable.
No, it would have resulted in unprofitable businesses going bankrupt, followed by a short recession and coming back to a period of growth. Instead of that, the Stimulus is making the recession last forever, and there's no end in sight. But you are probably one the guys who think devaluating 40% of the Yen value is the best way to increase Japan's productivity. Abenomics all the way !
Because Tokyo is the largest city in the world bar none: a phenomenon that would likely not have happened without high speed rail.
>Low unemployment in Asia is not hard.
Low unemployment is not an Asian phenomenon and high unemployment is not a Western phenomenon. Both are the results of economic policymaking.
>No, it would have resulted in unprofitable businesses going bankrupt
Unprofitable businesses were kept alive thanks to the Japanese banks doing extend and pretend. It had precisely nothing to do with stimulus.
A lack of stimulus would have meant GOOD businesses going bankrupt due to a lack of demand while the politically protected ones with their debts being extended-&-pretended STILL staying alive.
Stimulus isn't making the recession last forever. Japanese banks' insistence on extending and pretending is.
> But you are probably one the guys who think devaluating 40% of the Yen value is the best way to increase Japan's productivity.
No, but it would be a great way of bringing back Japanese industry from its current semi-dead state. Wanna know why Koreans and Chinese are eating their lunch in the electronics industry? This.
>Abenomics all the way !
Abenomics is business as usual. If you think there is a significant difference to what came before you are an idiot. The stimulus portion was small and the rest of it was just more QE (because that worked fucking great for the last 20 years!)
Nonetheless, the small stimulus was responsible for a dribble of Japanese growth over the last year or so.
a Seattle (or hell, even Vancouver, Canada) -> San Diego high speed line would be incredibly useful
However flying is a lot more time consuming and inconvenient. The Shinkansen system integrates well with the regular train/subway system. And of course serves locations without airports.
However given that, I think convenience is the deciding factor in the Shinkansen's favor.
Flights too Fukuoka would probably be faster too (Shinkansen would take 5 hours). I can see flights being more convenient there.
They are super profitable because they are super expensive as well, and because they carry mainly businessmen. I take the shinkansen relatively often and most of the time it's all people wearing suits, not leisure travelers. When it's not your company paying for your trip, it's way cheaper to take the bus, the plane or drive with your own car (at least if you are not alone).
Note that JR Shinkansen lines never have any discounts. There is a single price, and that's it. No price elasticity, even if some mid-day Shinkansen run half empty. Their marketing is also stuck in the 50s.
There are basically only two discounts for the shinkansen -- one is multi-trip tickets (回数券 -- which are mostly for businesses).
The other is something which is half a discount and half just outright subsidization of policy goals, the JR Rail Pass. It is a special ticket, only available to people who are visiting Japan and don't hold either a Japanese passport or mid/long-term visa, which gets you all-you-can-eat access to all of the JR lines (including the shinkansen, less one class of them). The cost for a week-long pass is less than that of a roundtrip ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto.
If you ever come to Japan, make sure you buy a voucher for one of these before you leave home, since they're not sold here.
Where do they fit in?
But you don't save much, really. It's in the order of 5 to 10% most of the time.