[SeanLuke]

It's generally regarded that Hong Kong has the best subway in the world. There are many reasons for this, but one cannot be overstated: Hong Kong's geography. A huge portion of the city consists of long thin urban corridors sandwiched between mountains and the sea. As a result, Hong Kong need concentrate its funding on only a few subway lines to support a huge portion of the population.

This good article aside, I wonder if the same thing is true about Japan when we're talking about long-distance trains. Compared to France or Germany, Japan is basically a stick. A very large chunk of the populace lies on a single train line running from Kagoshima up to Hakodate, running through Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, Tokyo, Sendai, etc. So you can slap a single bullet train line there and service all of them.

[user_7832]

I think you're broadly correct and that's definitely a reason, and I have another example to support it.

Mumbai too has a very similar structure (the core city is basically a peninsula that goes north-south). Our railway lines run N-S as well, with (till the recent Metros) feeder roads connecting them.

Mumbai is also one of the most densely populated cities in the world (#2 by some metrics).

Our local railways have an annual ridership of 2.26 billion [1]. Pretty much everyone agrees they're vital to the city.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_Suburban_Railway

[andrewl]

Yes. You get a lot of bang for your buck as far as the number of people served. Hong Kong is less than half the area of Rhode Island, but the populations are 7.5 million for Hong Kong and 1.1 million for Rhode Island. Small area plus high population density is the situation where trains are most valuable.

[z2]

The Hong Kong Metro is also very well planned, architected, and generally well run operationally. So much that the MTR corporation actually offers international consulting services. And for two decades, they have consulted with many mainland Chinese metro systems, hence it's no coincidence that the Shanghai and Shenzhen metros both look and feel very similar to HK's.

[kinow]

That is a good point but I think it doesn't apply everywhere.that has a similar shape. New Zealand has a similar shape but without railways interconnecting cities. You cannot cross the country, the islands, or even regions by train.

I think this could be a variable to contribute to a good coverage and infrastructure... but there are probably more factors involved.

[andrewl]

The population density is probably one factor. New Zealand has 5.34 million people in 103,000 square miles. At the other extreme you have Hong Kong with 7.5 million people in 430 square miles. Each mile of track gives service to a much larger percentage of the population in Hong Kong than New Zealand. The same goes for a lot of the United States. The coastal corridors in the United States are population dense, but the interior less so.

[phire]

Population density is one thing. Another issue is timing.

New Zealand was a really young country when railway technology came along, and didn't really have enough time or money to invest in a good railway network before other technology came along.

Airplanes are the perfect technology for NZ's geography, because they just fly over everything. There are actually a few places in NZ that received passenger airline service in the 30s before they received a railway connection (namely Gisborne), and many other places that never received railway connections.

At the same time, NZ was one of the fastest adopters of the automobiles, second only to America.

I think viable cars and airplanes had taken another 25 years to arrive, NZ might have had a much more complete railway network, with a much better chance of surviving intact into the modern era.

[kinow]

Didn't know about these historical facts, looks like timing really contributed to the current situation in New Zealand. When I was in Auckland some years ago, I remember NZ trying to bring some railway services back, before the pandemic.

I never got to travel on these, but I'm hoping to do that when I'm there again, probably next year. I see the website is still the same, so if anyone is going to NZ: https://www.greatjourneysnz.com/.

And to be fair, looks like you can more or less cross the country, as long as you don't plan to get all the way to Invercargill.

[phire]

The railway services NZ are trying to bring back are regional commuter services. Auckland to Hamilton (now in operation); Auckland to Tauranga; Wellington to Palmerston North (Capital Connection, has been in operation for 35 years, about to be upgraded to battery-electric trains, since only half the route is electrified).

And also the vague idea of local rail service around Christchurch (interestingly, a private company bought the old DMUs from Auckland's local fleet after electrification and are just starting to run special trains for Rugby games).

Part of the problem is that there is only really only three metro areas in New Zealand. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Everything else isn't really large enough to provide enough demand for a proper intercity route. And Christchurch isn't even on the same island, so you can't have a proper intercity train with the ferry getting in the way.

So the only potentially viable intercity route is Auckland to Wellington.

And apart from Hamilton and Palmerston North, (which already have commuter trains) there is absolutely nothing in the middle. The same distance in Europe or the US's eastern corridor would service 4-6 decently sized metro areas, and provide plenty of extra demand.

There just isn't enough potential demand to put a high-speed rail line through there. And without the high-speed rail, it's a 10 hour train trip that has zero chance of competing with a 1 hour plane ride.

Christchurch to Wellington is even worse. 6 hour train ride, at least an hour waiting for the ferry, 3.5 hour ferry ride. The plane does it in at little as 25 min in the air, there isn't enough time to reach cruising altitude. There is a reason why the route used to be serviced by an overnight ferry.

> And to be fair, looks like you can more or less cross the country, as long as you don't plan to get all the way to Invercargill

Yeah... but those aren't "intercity trains". They are scenic tourist trains that just so happen to be running along old intercity routes. Not bad as a tourism experience, but overpriced and not optimised for transportation needs.

The fact that you can't book both the Interislander ferry and costal pacific on the same website is very telling. They are literally run by the same company.

----------------------

If you are serious about the Christchurch to Invercargill, there is now a private company offering the occasional weekend trip: https://www.mainlander.co.nz/train-trips/the-mainlander-rail...

Same company that's providing the Rugby special trains, but this is using the old Capital Connection rolling stock. The train usually runs day trips up to Arthur's pass for cruise ships, but when there is a gap in that schedule they are running these Christchurch to Dunedin and Christchurch to Invercargill excursions.

Even more touristy than great journeys.

[kinow]

I remember the announcement some years ago of the Auckland-Hamilton train. I think initially it had limited schedule, but from what I recall the usage was quite good after the launch (I think it was before or just after the pandemic). Good to know it's in operation now.

> And also the vague idea of local rail service around Christchurch (interestingly, a private company bought the old DMUs from Auckland's local fleet after electrification and are just starting to run special trains for Rugby games).

Hadn't heard about this! Interesting, and good idea to have a service for the games.

> So the only potentially viable intercity route is Auckland to Wellington.

This one would probably be quite busy. I had to fly Auckland-Wellington quite a bit as an engineer, and our managers & executives travel quite more (NIWA, a CRI that now I believe has merged with another one and changed its name).

Eventually I had to go to the capital to vote or for the embassy, or for a tech event. All these trips were always via airplane, but I'd be happy to get a fast train or a night train as in Europe.

> If you are serious about the Christchurch to Invercargill, there is now a private company offering the occasional weekend trip: https://www.mainlander.co.nz/train-trips/the-mainlander-rail...

Learned another new thing, thank you! I plan to go to Invercargill when I visit again to see if I can see the Aurora Australis or maybe check out where they have the MetService radiosonde launch. From what I recall MetService used to launch one from Invercargill near the airport (or I could be confused with a weather station or another climate monitoring station they had there).

What about options for those living up north? When I was still in Auckland some of my co-workers were looking into moving further West/North (there were too many people moving to South Auckland/Raglan/Hamilton at that time). But I remember the transport options involved one or more buses, and a ferry in the case of a co-worker that bought a house in... Hobsonville I believe. But the ferry didn't run all days, and had a limited schedule compared to the one for Waiheke or Devenport. Has that improved?

I always thought it'd be nice if there was a short train line connecting Devenport to Cape Reinga, as all the times I went to Cape Reinga or to take someone to Russel I'd have to drive or find a private shuttle.

Thanks!

[kinow]

That is definitely a factor, especially comparing Japan & HK with NZ.

[renewiltord]

Population density is not accidental. HK has towers and greenery vs Anglophone culture which is to build homes sprawled into the greenery.

[leonidasrup]

The US urban sprawl in 50s, 60s was not cultural and not by accident but planed part of civil defense.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815910

[gorfian_robot]

didn't NZ have a decent inter-city train service in the past but no longer does bc cars won out in the end?

[stephen_g]

Geography like that does help a lot, it’s part of the reason it’s so easy to do really good high-speed rail in Italy over somewhere like Germany that is way more spread out. But it’s only half the picture, you also need the political will to get it built!

[leonidasrup]

The population density of Italy 201/km2 is lower then population density of Germany 241/km2, so from point of view of density, Germany should have more high-speed rail than Italy.

But because cars are major German export driver and car manufacuring is major employment in Germany, anything competing with cars has not much political support.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-merz-pledges-to-resist-2035-eu...

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

[Neikius]

Density is not that important. It's the distribution. Japan for example has most of the population concentrated close to coast.

Italy has a few major population centers south of dome but sparsely populated otherwise.

And so on...

[andrewl]

The population density of Italy 201/km2 is lower then population density of Germany 241/km2, so from point of view of density, Germany should have more high-speed rail than Italy.

That would be if kilometers of rail tracks scaled linearly with population density per unit area. My guess (based on no research at all) is it’s more that there’s a population density tipping point, and after reaching it rail development dramatically increases. I do also think you’re right about the influence of the German car industry.

[ang_cire]

I'm sure geography helps, but it's certainly not the driver for good train service design. Cities in Japan are definitely not laid out in thin lines, and there's not just a few routes in any given city. I was living in Nagoya back in high school, and its train lines are sprawling.

Side note, there actually isn't one shinkansen from Kagoshima to Hakodate, that route would take you on 5 different shinkansen lines: Kyushu, Sanyo, Tokaido, Tohoku, and Hokkaido. But I get your point.

[tracerbulletx]

Even if the geography isn't thin it seems like there are major US cities you could draw a route through that would have similar population distributions. Or at least good enough for the economics to work.

[socalgal2]

That’s arguably irrelevant to anything except the Shinkansen.

Switzerland has 8m people. Bay Area has 8m people. Switzerland is 1/4th as densely populated as the Bay Area (4x the size) yet they have 10x better transportation

[zhdc1]

The Swiss public transport system is a century-plus old at this point. Compare pictures of the Zurich tram system in the early 20th century with today - squint your eyes and you won't notice any difference.

That said, I'm willing to bet that San Fransisco and the surrounding communities had comparable public transportation in the 19th and early 20th century. While I can't speak for the bay area, you can still find exposed tram tracks in many US cities - Philadelphia, for instance.

The US's move from having the best to arguably the worst public transportation system in the world among developed countries is a lesson in disastrous government policy.

[renewiltord]

California is also like this for the most part. Bay Area has 8 m, Los Angeles area has 17 m, and San Diego area has 3 m. 28 out of 39 live in those three. Straight line.

[ghaff]

With relatively little between the Bay Area and LA to serve as a viable customer base. Hence, a lot of the problems getting California HSR going. Imagine you had the Boston area and the Washington DC area and took out NYC and Philadelphia in the middle. You'd have the same issue. The Acela isn't the fastest rail service (in part because NYC is in the middle but Boston to NYC and NYC to DC are a lot more practical than the whole route. I did it once when I wasn't in a hurry but it was because I could afford the time.

[rsynnott]

To an extent, a good train service can _create_ stuff. A while back, Irish Rail increased frequency on the Dublin-Belfast intercity train service. This had the side-effect (apparently unexpected) of kind of turning Newry (which is across the border in Northern Ireland) into a commuter town for Dublin. The Cork line also has a bunch of commuter towns which are on the face of it weirdly distant from Dublin, because the train compresses the distance.

You can see the effect of this here: https://www.chronotrains.com/en/station/2964574-Dublin?maxTi...

I'd assume that similar will happen with California HSR (which would be a far better service than either of the Dublin intercities above); it would make living in intermediate stops and working in LA or SF far more practical.

[kalleboo]

Isn't this Japanese Railway Thesis that with the railway you build something in that "very little between"? Have the railway company buy up up all that cheap land, develop it into commute hubs with their own walkable retail and use that to fund the railway.