[tnk0]

I'm a Tokyo local and yes, this is real. Even I find it uncomfortable. On the Yamanote Line during rush hour, trains come every 2-3 minutes and it can still look close to this.

That said, most people's daily commute isn't this extreme -- it depends heavily on the line and direction. The tradeoff most Tokyo residents accept is: 30 minutes of crowded train vs. hours stuck in traffic with nowhere to park.

[ericmay]

The OP is missing that you do the same thing you just do it in a car in a congested highway with your road rage, spend a lot of money, and all of that to avoid the impression of a subway ride that would never happen in an American city except maybe New York because these cities obviously lack population density at the scale of Tokyo. Oh and you get in car crashes and die.

This isn’t an anti-car rant. I’m actually trying to just get folks who don’t want to drive and shouldn’t be driving off the road so we can save money and do more with the infrastructure we already have while restoring economic bases and entrepreneurship to our non-coastal cities. It is quite literally a win for everyone except bloated highway departments and their downstream contractors.

[cyberax]

That's because subways are a dead end. They need to be removed entirely, and the dense cities need to be de-densified. That's the long-term plan.

> I’m actually trying to just get folks who don’t want to drive and shouldn’t be driving off the road so we can save money and do more with the infrastructure

Can we PLEASE just stop with the "saving money" and "off the road" nonsense? Please.

Adding transit does NOT reduce congestion (see: .https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/7/does-buildi... ). And it is NOT cheaper than owning a car.

If you dream of rail going to every city block like in NYC, then you should think about its other side effects: toxic densification, unaffordable housing, depopulation.

[ericmay]

> That's because subways are a dead end. They need to be removed entirely,

I certainly agree subways aren't the way of the future, at least in America. Too expensive and, frankly, unnecessary. We are already de-densified (which is why I find your below comment bizarre)

> and the dense cities need to be de-densified. That's the long-term plan.

Can you point to a single elected official in an American city that has a plan of reducing density in their city? I'm curious.

> Can we PLEASE just stop with the "saving money" and "off the road" nonsense? Please.

> Adding transit does NOT reduce congestion (see: .https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/7/does-buildi... ). And it is NOT cheaper than owning a car.

Well, no, I won't stop because it's true and arguments to the contrary are faulty for various reasons. For example, suggesting that transit doesn't reduce congestion misses the fact that you can't count future growth that didn't occur. Every single person riding transit would be driving, if there was no transit. It's just logically false. It's also ignoring the fact that growth and congestion and transit typically go hand-in-hand.

> And it is NOT cheaper than owning a car.

The only way for this to be true is to ignore all of the factors of car ownership. Even then it's probably still false.

> If you dream of rail going to every city block like in NYC, then you should think about its other side effects: toxic densification, unaffordable housing, depopulation.

No I don't. Also NYC is the most populous city in America so depopulation here as an argument yet again makes 0 sense. Housing is unaffordable precisely because of the density and demand, which go hand-in-hand.

[cyberax]

> We are already de-densified (which is why I find your below comment bizarre)

The US is rapidly densifying, and this will get _worse_ as the population starts shrinking in earnest. Japan leads the way here, its population has been going down for a while. Yet Tokyo now is in a real estate bubble.

> Can you point to a single elected official in an American city that has a plan of reducing density in their city? I'm curious.

Plenty of cities are resisting the density increases, NIMBYs are holding the line.

> Well, no, I won't stop because it's true and arguments to the contrary are faulty for various reasons. For example, suggesting that transit doesn't reduce congestion misses the fact that you can't count future growth that didn't occur.

Again. Transit does NOT reduce the congestion. This is a simple observable verifiable fact.

You can say that transit enables more density (true), but it does NOT reduce congestion.

> Every single person riding transit would be driving, if there was no transit.

And there would be fewer of these people.

> The only way for this to be true is to ignore all of the factors of car ownership. Even then it's probably still false.

In Seattle, I'm going to end up paying $150k in taxes/fees for the failrail line that will go nowhere near me. This is literally more than a lifetime of owing a cheap car.

But even if we just look at operating costs of transit, a single trip on transit is about $20. This ends up being about equal to the IRS deduction for car depreciation for the average trips.

> No I don't. Also NYC is the most populous city in America so depopulation here as an argument yet again makes 0 sense.

Look at the fertility rate for people in dense city cores vs. suburbs.

> Housing is unaffordable precisely because of the density and demand, which go hand-in-hand.

Indeed. Now think about this: the total US population is shrinking. NYC is growing. What is happening?

Hint: look at Japan.

[ericmay]

> The US is rapidly densifying, and this will get _worse_ as the population starts shrinking in earnest. Japan leads the way here, its population has been going down for a while. Yet Tokyo now is in a real estate bubble.

There are a lot of factors that go in to real estate prices, and I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to compare Tokyo to any city in America besides New York in just about any aspect.

> Plenty of cities are resisting the density increases, NIMBYs are holding the line.

Name one. That's not the same thing as NIMBY. No city is actively against growth.

> Again. Transit does NOT reduce the congestion. This is a simple observable verifiable fact. You can say that transit enables more density (true), but it does NOT reduce congestion.

It's the same thing, and it goes very well with your thesis that the US is rapidly densifying. As it densifies congestion gets worse, adding transit takes away additional cars that would otherwise be on the road.

In Seattle whatever transit exists is gone, now those people would drive cars, ergo congestion increases. This seems very obvious.

> In Seattle, I'm going to end up paying $150k in taxes/fees for the failrail line that will go nowhere near me. This is literally more than a lifetime of owing a cheap car.

Ok and do you not see what the problem is with this argument? I could just say, I'm paying $150k more in taxes for a new highway being built somewhere that won't go anywhere near me or I won't drive on.

Second, you're not including the costs for highway construction, maintenance, insurance, gas/oil (why do you think we're in Iran) &c. that goes into car ownership.

Third - Most Americans aren't buying cheap cars.

> But even if we just look at operating costs of transit, a single trip on transit is about $20. This ends up being about equal to the IRS deduction for car depreciation for the average trips.

Weird. I took a "single trip on transit" and it was less than $5 in New York. See I can just pull numbers out of my ass and apply them without any good reason too.

> Look at the fertility rate for people in dense city cores vs. suburbs.

What about them?

> Indeed. Now think about this: the total US population is shrinking.

The US population is not shrinking.

> NYC is growing. What is happening?

People want to live there - that's my best guess.

[cyberax]

> There are a lot of factors that go in to real estate prices, and I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to compare Tokyo to any city in America besides New York in just about any aspect.

Yes, it absolutely makes sense. The trend is simple: you build rail transit, you get unaffordable housing. Go on, try to find a counter-example.

> Name one. That's not the same thing as NIMBY. No city is actively against growth.

Princeton, Texas.

> It's the same thing, and it goes very well with your thesis that the US is rapidly densifying. As it densifies congestion gets worse, adding transit takes away additional cars that would otherwise be on the road.

No, it does NOT take cars off. A car that is on the road, stays on the road. Cars are _vastly_ superior to any transit mode on average, so people almost never give them up.

You basically need to make your streets impassable before people start switching from cars to transit.

> In Seattle whatever transit exists is gone, now those people would drive cars, ergo congestion increases. This seems very obvious.

Then people would out-migrate, companies will close dense offices, and congestion will relax.

> Ok and do you not see what the problem is with this argument? I could just say, I'm paying $150k more in taxes for a new highway being built somewhere that won't go anywhere near me or I won't drive on.

Except that I'm _also_ paying for all the highway construciton and maintenance in direct user fees ( https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructur... ). A transit user does NOT pay for my use of highways, I do.

And to give you some perspective, one mile of this failrail will cost about the same as construction of 1000 miles of modern 6-lane freeway. The entire project will cost about the same as the total highway spending for entire WA for 15 years.

> Third - Most Americans aren't buying cheap cars.

As I sa

> Weird. I took a "single trip on transit" and it was less than $5 in New York. See I can just pull numbers out of my ass and apply them without any good reason too.

That's because transit riders in the US (or Europe for that matter) never pay the full fare cost, it's always subsidized.

And the ~$20 number is easy to get. For example, MTA: 1.15 billion annual rides (2023), total _operating_ budget $19.2B. Divide one number by another. And this does not include all the new subway construction cost, which is harder to account for.

> The US population is not shrinking.

It will within 1-2 years: https://www.prb.org/news/u-s-population-growth-is-slowing-to...

And even before that, the rate of growth for large cities has been outpacing the population growth for the last 2 decades.

> People want to live there - that's my best guess.

They don't. Most people would prefer to live in suburbs, but they HAVE to live in dense cities.

[rootusrootus]

I have a hard enough time dealing gracefully with moderately congested trains in a place like DC. How do you coordinate your positioning so you can get off at the correct stop if the train gets packed this tightly?

[cassepipe]

From another city where things can get quite packed on some lines at rush hour:

People in front of the door know that people will get out so they step outside to let the flow out and are the first ones to get back in, giving them the opportunity to go further inside so that they don't have to do it at every stop. Might even get a seat at some point (the longer the travel, the most likely to get a seat)

I have been stuck in commute traffic for hours, 30 minutes of that is infinitely preferable.

Also if it's really too packed, just wait 2 minutes for the next one

[rootusrootus]

Thanks for the explanation. Someone else thought my question was impertinent, I'm happy you spent the time to educate me. I've never had to deal with public transit as congested as Tokyo, not even close. Hell, even on Portland light rail I find it stressful to try and navigate my way to the right place on the train to get off at my stop if I started my journey while the train was fairly empty.

> I have been stuck in commute traffic for hours, 30 minutes of that is infinitely preferable.

Can't argue with that. I won't ever have another commuting job again. I go into the office once a month, and after driving 45 minutes each way just because my company felt like our office needed to be in the most congested area of Portland, at the end of that day I thank my lucky stars that it's only once a month.

[cyberax]

> Also if it's really too packed, just wait 2 minutes for the next one

Except that the next one will be just as crowded.

[cassepipe]

No probably a better. Never had to let more than 2 trains go but mostly just one, but even in rush hour the most common though is there is just enough space so I don't have miss any train.

[tuna74]

There is ample parking everywhere in Japan, you just have to pay for it.