Himeji and Hiroshima: Tuesday

[dorchadas]

Woke up early again, though not as early as softlykarou, who woke up in a panic at 1 a.m. worrying that she had somehow screwed up the hotel reservations and then couldn't get back to sleep. I woke up at 5:30 when she came back in from her morning run and then likewise couldn't get back to sleep, so after trying a failing for a while, I got up and met the

Comments

[q99]

Kebab bento looks great! :D

-Riding the Shinkansen again reminds me how much of an embarrassing pile of trash every single American attempt at mass transit is. It's true that Amtrak was designed to kill passenger rail, but even with all its failures it's still running because mass transit is part of a civilized society and it's something that Japan has absolutely got down. -

I wouldn't quite say that- some may have wished Amtrak a quick death, but the people behind it's founding wanted it to work. Of which my dad was one of the people behind it ^^ It was definitely designed so that freight railroads wouldn't have to do it, though, and it has had to put up with people trying to choke it ever since (and I'm gonna have to disagree with the linked article pretty hard- it's still a very cost-effective means of travel and has been growing in partnership *despite* attempts to kill it. It's the little engine that could, even with people trying to throw logs in the tracks. If it got proper funding, it really could be more like Japan's

[dorchadas]

I'd always hear that Nixon intended Amtrak to fail (or at least, his behavior is indistinguishable from someone who intended Amtrak to fail), but that it failed to fail and has continued doing so for 40 years.

I honestly don't think more funding would make anything like a Japanese system, though. Even ignoring the distance and population density, Japanese infrastructure is built around trains in a way that America would require a ton of rebuilding to duplicate. Just funding the trains more wouldn't put the stations in more convenient locations or route the tracks through populated areas, though it would improve a bunch of stuff. I'd love if Amtrak could pay people to roam around serving food local to the places it passed through.

(I also admit that I'm more disposed to Japanese cultural norms on mass transit, like most people sitting in silence!)

[q99]

Nixon wasn't the designer though. I don't know his thoughts, but I know the freight railroads wanted off the burden of doing it, so it may have simply been indulging them.

It wouldn't be exactly like the Japanese system, no, but there *are* high-speed rail lines in the works, and better funding would improve reliability, quality of service, etc..

[dorchadas]

Oh, yeah, I would gladly pay more taxes for better mass transit, even though I live in part of the country that wouldn't get that much use from trains (high-speed rail from Chicago to Madison, maybe? I'm not an urban planner). I like the kind of society that results from use of mass transit over heavy reliance on cars.