Why Japan has such good railways

Re:Why Japan has such good railways by twodave on Saturday April 18, 2026 @12:58PM (#47817436)

Rail for the US has always been more about moving goods than people. For overland long-haul freight it is significantly cheaper than trucking. Rail allows us to ship goods to places where we don’t have ports or river access. A place like Japan can make such good use of rail simply because it is so densely populated.

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Re:Why Japan has such good railways by bobthepanda on Saturday April 18, 2026 @01:22PM (#47817651)

The US is also densely populated; when people are talking about high speed rail they are talking about connecting the major, close by metropolitan areas that most people live in.

The Midwest, as an example, has roughly the same size and population as France with a larger economy. In fact, if you overlay the French TGV network onto the Midwest with Chicago where Paris is, you get a pretty good approximation of where major Midwestern cities are located: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/NMr3J3gt8C

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Re:Why Japan has such good railways by dullcrisp on Saturday April 18, 2026 @07:49PM (#47820549)

Even if it would serve the same population, I don’t think a system like this would have the same level of demand as France’s high speed rail.

Frankly, these don’t look like locations that that many people want to travel between.

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Re:Why Japan has such good railways by bobthepanda on Saturday April 18, 2026 @08:19PM (#47820713)

Most travel happens between cities that are close together, and Chicago has always been the larger gateway to the rest of the nation and the world.

The French urban areas on the TGV aren’t very big; Montpelier, for example, has a total of 600,000 people in its metro area, which is roughly the same size as Toledo, OH or Wichita, KS.

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Re:Why Japan has such good railways by dullcrisp on Saturday April 18, 2026 @09:11PM (#47820991)

Montpellier probably gets more tourism than Toledo though. And most people taking the train to Paris are probably not doing it so they can fly somewhere else.

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Re:Why Japan has such good railways by bobthepanda on Saturday April 18, 2026 @09:41PM (#47821124)

You actually can book an Air France/TGV combo ticket: https://wwws.airfrance.fr/en/information/prepare/voyages-com...

And yeah, there would be a fair amount of demand just to Chicago the same way there is a fair amount of demand to Paris, in that they’re both the regional powerhouses with finance, HQs, etc.

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Re:Why Japan has such good railways by dullcrisp on Saturday April 18, 2026 @10:15PM (#47821277)

Everything you’re saying is true but I don’t think any of it contradicts what I’m saying.

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