[fsh]

Japanese public transport is good, but no match for the Swiss system. Outside of big cities, the coverage is spotty, and even reasonably large towns are only connected by reserved-only trains every couple of hours that get booked out days in advance. The almost complete lack of digitization is also remarkable (reservations have to be made with machines in the stations). There are other annoyances such as the public transport in Tokyo shutting down completely at midnight. In contrast, the Swiss government-owned system delivers usable connectivity to almost any human settlement, even most mountain villages. The ticket prices are also not so different, which is surprising considering the large difference of salaries in the two countries.

[justanotherjoe]

It's worth mentioning that swiss is a nation of 9 million, whereas Japan has 128 million people. I'm not sure how comparable it is. You probably don't need to pass through a lot of settlements for any public projects in swiss, for example.

[YmiYugy]

I think it's more politics and economics. Switzerland is quite a lot richer than Japan and is extremely decentralized politically. That creates strong incentives to provide good public services even to mountain villages. It also helps that Switzerland isn't experiencing population decline. The Swiss population as a whole is growing quite rapidly and from what limited data I could find even rural regions are growing. I think land acquisition doesn't really play a huge role. They are both mountainous countries where rail projects have to squeeze in valleys or bear the expense of tunnelling.

[mastermage]

Quite alot richer than the 4th richest Economy in the world?

[YmiYugy]

In a per capita sense of course. But it does pose an interesting question. To what degree does the quality of rail scale with absolute investments vs per capita investments. On the face of it rail is almost entirely fixed cost. The capital investment for tracks, trains and the operating cost for staff and energy are fixed to matter how many or few people the trains are serving. The crux is that for a given cost the quality scales inversely with the population and covered area. Transplant the Swiss rail expenses to Japan and it would make for a pitiful experience. Stretching over an area 9x larger and having to serve 12x more people, simply requires a lot more rolling stock, track and personell to offer a similar level of experience. In particular when talking about rural rail service it's most apt to compare areas of similar size and population and in this local sense Switzerland is not just richer per capita but absolutely.

[QGQBGdeZREunxLe]

Doesn't that make it more impressive? That such a small country can deliver an outstanding public transit network.

[kohsuke]

You can make reservations online: https://www.eki-net.com/en/jreast-train-reservation/Top/Inde...

[darekkay]

But you still have to pick up the tickets at the machine. Additionally, my mobile phone internet is not recognized as "being in Japan", so I can't access the QR code needed for the ticket without wifi. You can work around it (save the QR code when you have wifi), but it all just seems so inefficient compared to all the countries where you can _book_ your tickets using a mobile app.

[SapporoChris]

Actually, ticketless services are being rolled out. Example: https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/ticket/eticket.html

[darekkay]

This sounds great, especially as it's linked to the IC card. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything similar for JR West or JR Kyushu, which I will be using in the next few weeks. Hopefully they will implement the same system in the future.

[ericzundel]

I was thinking that Japan and Switzerland likely have good rail networks because the buildable land is severely constrained by geography. In those cases mountains, and connected only by thin linear corridors (valleys and near coastlines). Look at this map of Japan: The green areas aren't just natural areas, they are too mountainous to build cities.

https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ALOS/en/dataset/lulc_e.htm

In other places with large, flat expanses, human civilization spreads out to an extent that expensive railroads just can't serve the needs/desires of people. You could artificiallly constrain it, but you know what? People in general just don't like being told what to do.

[SapporoChris]

"Japanese public transport is good, but no match for the Swiss system." I did some internet searches and Tokyo seems to always come in first when comparing rail systems. Switzerland comes in 3rd sometimes. Reasons for Tokyo being ranked first seem to be utilization, safety and punctuality.

Public transportation shutting down at midnight might be an annoyance to some, but it is a blessing to those that reside very close to the metro lines.

[MichaelZuo]

How could a route busy enough to completely fill a train every few hours not justify some kind of regularly scheduled service?

[weberer]

Most cities at least have night busses. Tokyo has 0 options after midnight.

[tuna74]

There are taxis and they are pretty cheap (compared to western Europe and the US). It is not a replacement but you CAN get home if you are out late.