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Posted Oct 13, 2016, 2:03 AM
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BANNED
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Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Los Angeles/San Francisco
Posts: 2,408
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I'll quote the source:
Quote:
One of the impacts this has is on transit use of rapid transit lines. The Japanese system tends to gather density around subway lines, so as subways are built, they tend to attract development to maximize the subway line use. In Europe and North America, this attraction is much less present and tend to be the exception (like the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Arlington and the "City Centers" strategy in Toronto of building city centers around subway stations in the suburbs, both of which are planning efforts to do what the Japanese spontaneously do when they have a subway line). Old, dense European cities also offer great potential for rapid transit, but this is piggybacking on ancient density, and so the potential of these networks to expand is relatively weak.
We can notice here that all Japanese subway systems have at least 4 million passengers per km of track, and Tokyo Metro is way up there at 12. European subway systems are all over the map, with those of Paris, Rome and Milan getting exceedingly high ridership per km of track, Rome and Milan despite having very small systems, probably reflective of the very dense old urban cores of these cities. However, many European cities perform relatively poorly, with at least 33% less ridership than equivalent Japanese systems, and that despite the fact that Japanese subway systems are much more expensive for the end-user than the subsidized European systems (Japanese subway systems are profitable, not so for European systems). How much more used would the Japanese systems be if people could buy a 80$-100$ monthly pass that would give them unlimited rides across the network like they do on most European and North American systems? (Most Japanese subway systems have unlimited one-day passes for 8 to 10$, which seems to be the only way of getting unlimited rides across the network, there are commuter passes, but, get this, they only work between two given stations, get one station further out and you have to pay)
North American subways are even worse, and I did not add LRT systems which on average have only 0,5 million passengers per km of track (Calgary and Edmonton top out at about 1,55). In fact, it's interesting to point out that North American subway systems, where they exist, are no less developed than most European systems. The issue with most of them isn't that they are not developed enough, but that land use around the areas they serve leads to sub-optimal use of the lines that exist. Special mentions for Chicago and Atlanta which both have very long networks yet very poor performance, at the level of LRT systems.
European subway systems that leave the old urban core also offer relatively poor performance, London's system being one of the most developed in the world, yet its performance per kilometer is middling at best, being inferior to essentially all Japanese systems and equal or inferior to many American systems (New York, Toronto, Montréal and Boston).
All in all, it means quite a few American and European cities should be trying to reform land use to make better use of what rapid transit they have before thinking of investing billions into adding new lines or extending them further.
The chaos of Japanese cities also show positive results in terms of car mileage. Even when the Japanese use cars to get around, the proximity of density to jobs and services mean that people can use them less.
Thus, the average car travels 20 000 kilometers in the United States, around 13 000 miles, but only 10 000 km (6 500 miles) in Japan. Europe is in the middle. Truth be told, Japan has a further advantage that on long-distance trips, it is often better to take trains, that are faster, affordable and connect well the country, whereas in North America and even Europe, traveling long distances is more likely to be done in cars. Still, the fact that Japan can do it is often due to density, and thus locations of interest, being built near train stations.
Another criterion to judge cities on is the active transport mode share, the percentage of all trips made by residents taking place on a bike or on foot.
Overall, both Japanese and European cities enable active transport thanks to density and proximity, but there is more variation among European cities, whereas Japanese cities all tend to be between 30 and 40%, some European cities reach a low of around 20%. And of course, it's a complete disaster in the North American cities, where decent levels of active transportation in some central neighborhoods get totally drowned by the deserts of sprawl all around them. Use separation is the crucial aspect that kills the potential for active transport.
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http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014...-japanese.html
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