Why London is beating American cities

[Acajack]

I wonder if, given the price(s) that must be paid these days in order to belong to the select club of globally-influential cities, if the idea of being one isn't losing a lot of its lustre at this point.

It's sort of the urban equivalent to being an A-list celebrity. It sounds appealling in some way, but would you really want to live like that? Most people wouldn't.

[veep]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Bogus list. No way, San Jose > Tokyo.

just no f*cking way.

Listicle.

???

The entire planet runs out of Silicon Valley. Tokyo is cute but what does it really do?

[veep]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Yeah except the very standards by which westerners morally judge themselves (or rather position their personal quest for cultural capital as a moral crusade) with respect to immigrants is non-existent in the big cities throughout Asia. We see plenty of people on forums like this brag about which western city has the largest and most eclectic minority population (and certain minorities carry greater cultural cache than others) while inferring that they, themselves, possess a higher cultural status because they, themselves, successfully mingle with said minorities.

Do you think every single poster here is white?

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by veep

The entire planet runs out of Silicon Valley.

Totally. The Bay Area is the most innovative and important technological node on Earth.

Originally Posted by veep

Tokyo is cute but what does it really do?

Way too far.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by veep

???

The entire planet runs out of Silicon Valley. Tokyo is cute but what does it really do?

Tentacle porn and mecha.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by veep

???

The entire planet runs out of Silicon Valley. Tokyo is cute but what does it really do?

Tokyo directs close to $1 trillion USD in annual FDI to the US, a substantial portion of which goes to Bay Area financing, whether through VC or directly. No other country in the world invests as much in the US economy as Japan does, and no other non-American metro contributes more to the US economy than Tokyo does via its corporate base and as the home of the Japanese federal government.

Metro Tokyo is effectively the largest foreign investor in 39 US states, including all of the major economic engines like California, Texas, NY, Washington, and Massachusetts.

Half a million Americans work manufacturing jobs alone in the US for Tokyo-based companies. Close to 2 million when you expand to include any Tokyo-based company.

If you're American and have or plan on enjoying a private pension in your later years, you can likely in large part thank Tokyo for your fund's solvency.

And this is just in an American context. Japan is very active in FDI throughout Asia-Pacific. Tokyo is far more impactful on the daily lives of Filipinos, Taiwanese, Thais, Indonesians, Malaysians, and arguably even South Koreans than New York, London, or any Western city.

In the context of this discussion, Tokyo public transit is on another tier than the rest of the planet. Comparing Kansai's network to New York's or London's is more germane. The Yamanote Line's daily ridership surpasses the entire New York MTA's system-wide daily ridership, and manages to do so with far nicer cars, stations, and service. Plus 30-second headway during commute times. There are 138 train and subway lines in Metro Tokyo, with over 1,200 stations. This doesn't include Express and Limited Express versions.

I own a house in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo. I also own a cottage in the woods in Nagano Prefecture, about 150 miles from my house. I do not own a car. Instead, it takes 3 minutes to get from my doorsteps to the subway platform at the closest station to my house, and another ~2 hours of relaxing express train to Nagano Station. I don't think there are many other (non-Japanese) cities where C-suites eschew cars because the trains are just that good.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Acajack

So Tokyo is dying?

I wouldn't be surprised if a significant amount of Tokyo's recent growth is from immigration. They have a pretty visible non-Japanese population, they just make it hard for those people to become permanent residents.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Tokyo directs close to $1 trillion USD in annual FDI to the US, a substantial portion of which goes to Bay Area financing, whether through VC or directly. No other country in the world invests as much in the US economy as Japan does, and no other non-American metro contributes more to the US economy than Tokyo does via its corporate base and as the home of the Japanese federal government.

Isn't SoftBank one of the biggest names in tech investment?

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by JManc

Isn't SoftBank one of the biggest names in tech investment?

Yes, and plenty of American/American-based tech grifters from both inside Silicon Valley and outside (Adam Neumann for example) are quite thankful for the Vision Fund. Son-san's recent batting average is tip-toeing close to the Mendoza Line.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I wouldn't be surprised if a significant amount of Tokyo's recent growth is from immigration. They have a pretty visible non-Japanese population, they just make it hard for those people to become permanent residents.

Tokyo is growing at a steady clip. But most of this growth is domestic migration from other prefectures, especially those on the Sea of Japan. As of Jan 1st this year, there were 647,416 registered foreign nationals in Tokyo-to. This is up nearly 20% from just 2 years ago, but this growth is skewed by the return of many semi-permanent and permanent residents who were locked out during Covid. Keep in mind there are plenty of foreign nationals who are decidedly not "registered." Also keep in mind that Zainichi Koreans are not considered "foreign nationals", even though they aren't full citizens either.

The LDP doesn't like immigration, but the Keidanren (Japan Business Federation, a hugely influential group of the country's largest companies) has aggressively pushed for - and successfully won - significant increases in the number of foreign workers allowed into Japan. The Keidanren also successfully pushed for visa relaxation and the creation of new visas allowing for longer stays. When I first started working here, I had to renew my visa every two years for six years until I was upgraded to a five-year stay. Now, qualifying skilled workers (both blue and white collar) get five years from the start. More critical in my mind, they also strong-armed the LDP into allowing family members of working visa holders to stay in Japan as long as the working member's visa is valid. This is a big deal. It means the Vietnamese construction workers can bring their wives and kids to Tokyo, finally giving me daily access to the one Asian ethnic cuisine I actually had better access to in Boston.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Shawn

If you're American and have or plan on enjoying a private pension in your later years, you can likely in large part thank Tokyo for your fund's solvency.

There is almost no such thing as a "private" pension in the United States for anyone who isn't already retired. Some public pensions might be explicitly invested in Japan, but generally, public pensions are fairly limited in their ability to invest in individual companies, especially companies based outside the U.S. (this is *not* the case with public Canadian pension funds - the Ontario Public Pension Fund notoriously lost its FTX investment two years ago).

Half a million Americans work manufacturing jobs alone in the US for Tokyo-based companies. Close to 2 million when you expand to include any Tokyo-based company.

Yeah this is still a major sore spot throughout the formerly industrial Midwest, as the Japanese went on a buying spree in the 1980s that saw many small and mid-sized machine tool companies (some of them family-owned) gobbled up into their Japan-based conglomerates.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

There is almost no such thing as a "private" pension in the United States for anyone who isn't already retired. Some public pensions might be explicitly invested in Japan, but generally, public pensions are fairly limited in their ability to invest in individual companies, especially companies based outside the U.S. (this is *not* the case with public Canadian pension funds - the Ontario Public Pension Fund was notoriously lost its FTX investment two years ago).

They're certainly less common than 20-30 years ago, but there are still American-based companies with private pensions, at least in media advertising / communications, and this industry isn't exactly known for excellent employee benefits. Here are some companies I've worked for/with which offer pension plans to new employees in America (any of the GroupM subsidiaries do, I'm not listing them all out here):

EssenceMediacom
Mindshare
OMD
Omnicom

I'm pretty sure all of FAAMG have generous private pension schemes in the US (they definitely do in Japan).

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Yeah this is still a major sore spot throughout the formerly industrial Midwest, as the Japanese went on a buying spree in the 1980s that saw many small and mid-sized machine tool companies (some of them family-owned) gobbled up into their Japan-based conglomerates.

Hey, I'm not saying it's a good thing - just that claiming Tokyo is "cute but what does it really do?" massively underplays Japan's far-reaching economic impact. This still being a major sore spot as a case in point.

[3rd&Brown]

I have a pension from my 7 years at a subsidiary company of LVMH.

It's quite generous considering I didn't spend my entire career there...I think I've calculated that it's worth something like $1800 a month in today's dollars. Not sure if it will adjust for inflation. Had I spent my career there I basically could have retired with close to my full salary.

Granted, it was only offered to maintain some semblance of equality with their EU employees and I've heard that it was since phased out for new employees.

But, I am the exception to the rule. My guess though is that foreign companies with a presence in the US are much more likely to offer pensions to their US employees than are US companies.

[iheartthed]

I have pensions from two different private employers but both companies also offered 401k plans.

[nito]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Paris and Tokyo yes. London maybe equal. China doesn't really have suburban rail using Western definitions.

The UK doesn't have good rail service for European standards. They never electrified or grade separated most of the system. London has pretty bad suburban service relative to size for European standards, and the infrastructure doesn't appear better than in NYC, to me. No suburban third-rail, less electrification, no 24 hour service, less grade separation, and the main lines don't have higher capacity. It's a vast suburban system, with very good frequencies, but not really like in Paris or Berlin, where you have a metropolitan-wide network.

It doesn't really make sense to directly compare NA suburban service with European suburban service tho, bc they serve completely different constituencies. Suburban rail in Europe is the same as the bus, priced the same with the same demographic. In continental cities, suburban rail is much more working class than urban Metro. Suburban rail in NA is (stupidly) service narrowly targeted to white collar executives in affluent railroad centers. There has never been a tradition of serving working classes on the fringe via suburban service, and the system pricing and scheduling reflects this. Working class Americans drive old vehicles, they don't use transit.

UK is kind of in-between Europe and NA. They have commuter towns for affluent professionals, as in NA. The service leans more Euro-style, but still functions more as a work shuttle for professionals. and not like in Germany and France where people take it to the dentist and school and sports club.

Relative to peer countries like France and Germany, the UK certainly lags when it comes to metro (and tram) systems, and it is behind both when it comes to roll out of high-speed corridors and electrification, but ridership density is second only to Switzerland, the UK network is the safest in Europe (by society safety risk, i.e. passenger, trespass, level crossing, railway worker, etc…), regional/rural services are more regular, and intercity corridors operate at a higher frequency. Hence surprising results like the UK intercity network (excluding Eurostar) moving more people than the German ICE or French TGV and Intercités, or intercity services on the East Coast Main Line moving more people than Spain’s AVE network. There is certainly a lot more work required nonetheless, but the immense capacity uplift from HS2 is a starting point.

I think you’re confused.

• Most of the suburban network south of the Thames operates on third rail (north of the Thames it is overhead catenary), a network spanning thousand km’s and several hundred stations.
• Only one of London’s main lines (the Chiltern Main Line) and a few metro area rural branch/orbital lines aren’t electrified. Total London area electrification is probably 80-90%. In contrast, >90% of NJT and >50% of the LIRR isn’t electrified, hence the existence of Hoboken and Long Island City to serve non-electric services.
• Most of the network doesn’t operate 24/7, but Thameslink does.
• By my count there are 7 railway grade separations across the New York metro area, compared to 37 in and around London that I can think off. I can’t tell you definitively the number of level crossings in and around London or New York, but outside the respective core urban areas, the frequency/dominance of level crossings in the New York metro area is far more prevalent, particularly on NJT lines, whilst even rural routes outside London are more likely to have grade separation. One side point; in terms of level crossing user safety, the UK is third in Europe (behind only Ireland and Switzerland), I guess the US would rank quite poorly.
• Other than the large radial system, there are multiple orbital lines, with another currently u/c between Oxford and Cambridge, so it is a peculiar claim that there isn’t a metro area wide system.

A few years back (before the pandemic) I was able to source the arrival of all trains into Central London and Manhattan between 0800-0859.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, that’s a good point. When I was on the RER the ridership definitely felt like it skewed more immigrant and working class than NY area commuter rail. The RER cars were also far less comfortable than typical rail cars on any of the NY area commuter systems. I was literally sitting thigh to thigh with the person next to me, and with my legs between the person in front of me because it was so crowded and tightly packed. Tokyo is the only city I’ve ever been to that has comparable quality of railcars for suburban commuter rail. I don’t get this claim that the NY commuter rail stock is supposedly antiquated lol.

Public transport in Europe tends to not carry the stigma that you’d find in North America.

As for rolling stock, setting aside the unpleasant steel can aesthetics for a moment, a big problem with US commuter rolling stock is the weight. After factoring dimension differences, the average M7 railcar is 40% heavier than a class 700 carriage, that extra weight means trains are slower to accelerate and decelerate which increases journey times. Another regressive design choice that persists is the single leaf doors (in contrast to double leaf and wider door setups) which delays egress and increases dwell times at stations, further increasing journey times. Other features of modern European commuter rolling stock include open gangways (something only now being introduced onto the NYC Subway), onboard WiFi, and advanced display boards which show train loads (which combined with open gangways allow passengers to move through the train to where there are seats available), toilet availability, ETA at stops along the way, onward train connections, line statuses and any other service updates.

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

He played all sorts of games in that post.

What percentage of A or 1 passengers ride their whole line from endpoint to endpoint? Yet he pretends that his is an argument against the use of the term “express” on the NYC subway.

Also, he neglects that the length and width of most NYC subway trains is on par with the new Crossrail trains, and that the rest of the London network runs dinky, sub-PATH scale trains.

The length of the NYC trains contributes to interlining delays since it takes much longer for a 600-foot train traveling at 15mph to clear a junction than a 250-foot train in London. This is also a problem with the BART system. But these delays are not some sort of critical flaw with the NYC system. Also, the very long platforms mean that most subway stations have several sidewalk entrances.

Of course not everyone will ride end-to-end, the point was to demonstrate that express services run at speeds comparable to those on the Underground, the reason for which I will come back to below.

Much like London, New York has different rolling stock groups (A/B divisions versus deep level tube/sub-surface/Overground/Elizabeth/other mainline):

• London only has one line which operates <76m trains; the Waterloo & City, which is a two-station shuttle with 65m long trains, the Franklin Ave shuttle for comparison is operated by 46m long trains.
• All other Underground lines have train lengths of 108-134m, which is certainly shorter compared to R211’s (A) at 184m and R188’s (B) at 172m. Overground trains are up to 166m in length, Thameslink and other mainline units up to 243m. The Elizabeth Line stock is 205m in length, although the line was built to enable these to extend to 250m, likely what with the rapid growth of ridership on the line.
• A division trains (like the R211) have a width of 2.62m, in contrast to the deep level tube of 2.62-2.68m, so practically the same. B division units (like the R188) are 3.04m in width, compared to 2.92m on the sub-surface lines.
• Where there is an difference is in the height, particularly the deep level stock where heights are around 2.88m, and the sloped edges at the sides. This compares to 3.62-3.65m for A and B division stock. Sub-surface and mainline stock such as the Overground, Elizabeth, Thameslink, etc… come in at 3.76m

Length of train isn’t the issue on the Subway; it is the antiquated signalling technology that prevents close running of trains and the high level of interlining. As a consequence all Subway services (except the L) run ≤20tph at rush-hour, and the average rush-hour frequency for all services is just 11tph. With so many conflicts, and the age of infrastructure (as witnessed by the recent derailments) that acts as a barrier to journey speeds, even for express services. In London, where there is some interlining between the sub-surface lines, the introduction of digital signalling means that headways are as low as 100 seconds. New rolling stock due next year and a proposed digital signal upgrade would see capacity on the Piccadilly line increase by 60%. If New York rolled out modern signal systems and reduced the level of interlining, there would be a massive increase in network-wide capacity and resilience and reduced journey times.