Look, from the point of view of a passenger, the best transport system goes:

- where you want,

- when you want,

- carrying what you want,

- as fast

- and as safely as possible,

- at the lowest cost possible.

Trains are weak on multiple axes here: they do not go where you want to go and they do not go when you want to go, and you cannot carry large amounts on them. They are also quite slow.

The only reason that anyone uses trains is because in dense urban areas like London, cars are even slower, and for intercity trips it is both slow and hard to park when you get to the destination city. There are perhaps some exceptions to this but they don't really exist in the West. Really fast intercity trains are a thing in China and Japan, but the UK has no trains that take you from A to B at an average speed greater than a fast car once you take waiting and stopping time into account. As far as I am aware the same applies to the US as well.

Trains do not cover 90% of use cases, they cover maybe 10%. In my opinion, trains are a technology that should be completely scrapped in favor of driverless minibus and driverless car networks. Modern electric & driverless vehicles with internet connectivity and global transport optimization like Uber would beat trains on every single axis.

I agree. For people who really like trains, think of a bunch of automatic buses traveling right next to each other as a train.

Train definitely does not go "everywhere" in Japan, and one of the problems he mentioned (late night) is especially relevant there even in Tokyo.

The Japanese rail network is awesome but it does not stop everywhere and it’s quite expensive. Japan is huge and taxis get expensive real quick.

Consider Singapore, which is tiny, has a kick ass public transport system (trains and busses) and where it costs 90-100k SGD to own a beater Corolla: people still own cars.

Some people own cars. Car ownership rate is around 11% according to [1], which doesn't look that high.

That said, Singapore public transportation (at least SMRT trains [2]) is freaking strict about food and drinks. I could not even have a sip of water without triggering a warning message. So anyone who can't control their thirst or hunger (like, you know, basically any kid) isn't really welcome there.

[1] https://www.budgetdirect.com.sg/car-insurance/research/car-o...

[2] https://www.smrttrains.com.sg/Journey-with-Us/Travel-Informa...

I life in a city of 600,000 in Japan. Trains DO NOT go everywhere. And as GP wrote, they don't run at night. Everyone here owns a car.

The biggest fault of the entire Japanese system is the stoppage at night. 24 hour service is not the solution and is one of the reasons the services there work very well. But I don't understand why they don't have a replacement system. In Philadelphia the (smaller) system is completely replaced by buses. In other countries the trains run 24 hours but only Friday nights and weekends nights which could increase the use case of 90% of riders to 95% of riders.

Nowadays I live in a city with a tram system, trains to other larger cities and bike lanes.

If you are going from one city centre to another, during the day, the train is the best choice.

If you are moving within a bike-friendly city, bike is best (or Uber, but it is banned here). If you are somewhere in an urban sprawl, it's car or Uber.

I definitely find trains useful, but I think that they are consistently overrated by people for emotional and irrational reasons. I personally use trains for maybe 1% of my journeys and trams for 0% despite them being extremely prominent in my city.

Most people don’t live in Japan.

There are no commuter trains Tasmania.

Compared to Japan, there are no people in Tasmania.

I guess my wider point was that today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050.[1]

Urban commuter trains will have little effect on that ~45% of people who won't live near them even if they are built.

On the flip side, though, I guess, that doesn't mean we shouldn't build more train lines.

1. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-...