<story><title>How Japan saved Tokyo&apos;s rail network from collapse (part 1, 1945-1982)</title><url>https://seungylee14.substack.com/p/how-japan-saved-tokyos-rail-network</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rtpg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s very impressive to see these decades-longs projects pay off, in one way or another. Every single line extension, station change, is an entire political battle and story. A fractal of stories waiting to be discovered.&lt;p&gt;One extremely important detail for me when I hear about JNR (Now JR East&amp;#x2F;West etc) and privatization: during privatization, all the Shinkansen debt in particular was held onto by the public. Extremely expensive infrastructure (now a money printer, at least the Tokyo &amp;lt;-&amp;gt; Osaka segment), just handed to private investors.&lt;p&gt;Of course JR works well as a whole now and it&amp;#x27;s not like society is worse off, but it&amp;#x27;s always left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth.&lt;p&gt;(For people wanting some more interesting transportation content: here[0] is an excellent overview of IC cards and integration of all the systems in the 2000s)&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ejrcf.or.jp&amp;#x2F;jrtr&amp;#x2F;jrtr62&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;6-15_web.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ejrcf.or.jp&amp;#x2F;jrtr&amp;#x2F;jrtr62&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;6-15_web.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patio11</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Every single line extension, station change, is an entire political battle and story.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yep. A legendary one in my old stomping grounds of Gifu is that there is a shinkansen station in Gifu-Hashima, and not in places that would be far more convenient to have a station (e.g. Ogaki or Gifu City), because a politician local to there was able to decisively dictate the routing and, prior to the route being publicly known, acquired some real estate which was presently undistinguished but would have been extremely valuable if it were right next to a shinkansen station.&lt;p&gt;(Interested individuals can Google the names if they want them.)&lt;p&gt;A happier one which I use a lot in explaining why I love Japan: JR refused to close a particular station over one passenger. They ran one train there to pick her up and another train there to send her back every day for +&amp;#x2F;- a decade, until she graduated, because someone at JR thought that JR &lt;i&gt;must&lt;/i&gt; convey a child to their school.&lt;p&gt;(There are a few more anecdotes about that theme I am aware of, some reported to the press and some of which I know of through other ways, and in this I am in utter agreement with my rail buff friends that the railways see themselves as servants of the public trust in addition to capitalists.)</text></comment>
<story><title>How Japan saved Tokyo&apos;s rail network from collapse (part 1, 1945-1982)</title><url>https://seungylee14.substack.com/p/how-japan-saved-tokyos-rail-network</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rtpg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s very impressive to see these decades-longs projects pay off, in one way or another. Every single line extension, station change, is an entire political battle and story. A fractal of stories waiting to be discovered.&lt;p&gt;One extremely important detail for me when I hear about JNR (Now JR East&amp;#x2F;West etc) and privatization: during privatization, all the Shinkansen debt in particular was held onto by the public. Extremely expensive infrastructure (now a money printer, at least the Tokyo &amp;lt;-&amp;gt; Osaka segment), just handed to private investors.&lt;p&gt;Of course JR works well as a whole now and it&amp;#x27;s not like society is worse off, but it&amp;#x27;s always left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth.&lt;p&gt;(For people wanting some more interesting transportation content: here[0] is an excellent overview of IC cards and integration of all the systems in the 2000s)&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ejrcf.or.jp&amp;#x2F;jrtr&amp;#x2F;jrtr62&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;6-15_web.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ejrcf.or.jp&amp;#x2F;jrtr&amp;#x2F;jrtr62&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;6-15_web.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paganel</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s very impressive to see these decades-longs projects pay off,&lt;p&gt;Just read recently that Moscow is now in the process of building a couple of dozens metro stations outside of its ~60-miles long ring-road, to add to the existing ~230 stations. I wish someone would also write a more in-depth write-up of that and how do the Russians manage to do it (including how do they manage to keep the whole network running at what I assume to be reasonable costs), out in the West the knowledge of how to maintain such a system at low-ish costs and how to extend it seems to have been lost.</text></comment>