The US is hopeless in their public transportation system. In any good public transportation system, everything is about connection. When you can move from one system to another without any delay, you don’t need to rent a car or call a taxi. The long distance transportation and local subway must be tied together. The subway in Chicago can get under the airport terminal, travellers can get on the subway before leaving the building. That is a good example. All they need to do is to implement similar connection with some major Amtrak stations.

Public transportation works best in frequently traveled route. Imagine a bullet train between LA and Las Vegas, it will eliminate the traffic jam on I-15 every weekend. But before the bullet train can become useful, make sure it has connection with the subway systems in LA. Also the monorail that connects all the Las Vegas Casino needs to connect to the bullet train station too.

To get to your points, JR (Japan Rail) is government-subsidized. While it may not be directly subsidized by a gasoline tax, the money collected from the very high tax rate on gasoline goes somewhere. Also, many local train lines are owned by department store companies who have combination station/stores. They *definitely* subsidize their train lines as ownership thereof is often cited as a drain on their profitablity.

Anyone who has experienced the utter crush of bodies on any Japanese train during peak periods does not soon forget the experience. I plan to take my wife to Japan in the next year or two and we will avoid rush hour at all costs because I’m certain she will not put up with the crowding.

While it gets cold in Japan, except for Hokkaido it rarely gets cold enough to freeze the ground, a major cause of road decay.

Finally, I reiterate that we just don’t want to pay for the real cost of trains. The primary cost thereof is that of acquiring the land necessary to create the new tracks needed for high-speed operation.

Here in the US, we really don’t have any other options except to figure out how to create a sustainable car-based system. On a personal note, I live in New York City and only use my car for weekend travel outside the city. The rest of the time, NYC’s excellent subway systems gets me where I need to go quickly, cheaply and safely.

AFAIK, Japanese trains are not subsidized by a tax on gasoline. Shinkansen trains are quite expensive, and they make a huge profit.

Japan has considerably varied weather, is very mountainous, and has earthquakes throughout the country all the time.

I am not an American, but I live in America. And I would take even the crowded Tokyo train any day over the 1 hour highway deadlock that my morning commute incurs.

I’m sorry to hear about your Shinkansen nightmare. You were probably traveling during peak season (e.g., Golden Week or O-Bon) and didn’t get your ticket early enough. Normally it is completely straightforward to get a reserved seat even on the same day. I personally buy my tickets one day in advance, and I have never had an issue with getting a reserved seat. (But then, I do know when the peak travel seasons are, and I try to avoid them.)

1) We simply don’t want to pay for them
2) We sold all the tracks to the cargo carriers
3) Cities in America are much farther apart than in Japan
4) We won’t accept a huge gas tax increase (see reason #1 above) to subsidize the trains.
5) Japan doesn’t have the temperature extremes that help to cause road damage here in America
6) No American would put up with the crowding on Tokyo’s local train lines

Finally, my ride on the Shinkansen was a nightmare. I was unable to get a reserved seat and I spent the entire trip from Kyoto to Tokyo stuffed into the vestibule straddling my suitcase with my neck bent so that my head could clear the ceiling curve.

According to your argumentation, the cars and roads in America should be far superior to those in Japan. Strangely, Japanese cars are superior to American cars (at least the way I see it) and the manufacturers in Japan do far better than their American counterparts (by the way Wall Street sees it). Moreover, if you have ever driven in Japan, you’d know that the roads are for the most part in far better condition than those in America.

There is simply no excuse for trains sucking as bad as they do in America.

Trains in America are only a small piece of the transportation landscape and of course, the car is the biggest piece. Trains in America only have strong interest in a few cities so they do not get the attention and money from the national level in order to make them the best they can be.

Jon

I don’t think NY’s train system is bad. It works and it runs all night. But it needs improvement if NY is to scale up to a more efficient and robust financial center.

Instead of scaling our resources into more efficient machines, we spread out into unremarkable plots of green grass. As a result, we have less efficient communication, our energy needs are greater, our energy consumption is less efficient, and we just aren’t as vibrant as we could be. There are very few exceptions in the US.