As opposed to American cities, famously known for sustainable and efficient transportation and not expansive suburban sprawl, pedestrian-hostile development, and adding more lanes to already-inefficient highways to induce additional traffic

That just means it's getting efficiently utilized. I've honestly only ever had packed trains during specific hours, or during the last train out of the city. That probably can't be solved unless people get moved closer to where they work.

Just picture the "sustainable" by unpacking that crowded train into a 4 wheel vehicle for each person and the carbon emissions, energy consumption, and space consumption that is being avoided. It's like we're the latest Intel processors and Tokyo is running on TSMC 5nm M1 Max. Sure we have the space to brute force our economy into competitive performance... but how long will that last?

Agreed - I’m doing my part by not riding the train from 7-9am, an it’s never bad :) and also it’s very viable to live not very far from where you work here (you can get a compact 1 BR apartment 15 minutes from any city center for <$800/mo if you’re savvy), so it’s much less of a big deal IMO.

Ate you a city planner in Japan?

The Japanese population is declining, so not sure how it's not sustainable and Covid took many workers off from commuting.

Bad comment since Tokyo and its suburbs is growing year and year in population as other areas lose people.

Thats why its very ignorant to think that the national trend is the same as the local trend.

And covid had very little impact on commuting in Japan. Remote work is not a thing yet for most employers.

As opposed to this?

https://reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/qljo6s/massi...

Having done both, I’ll take the cramped public transport rather than the fucking commute in the bay. This car culture is sucking people’s soul. I’m so glad that we’ve all moved to a remote world.

being crushed in a train is not as comfortable as being in your own car. ever tried?