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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

counterpoint: it's also a bad thing because society functioning now becomes more reliant on this transportation method.

It destroys "walkable" spaces and encourages centralization of services, when a more uniform spread of services across space is in fact healthier.

I heard of a study recently that showed that cities in Japan that ended up getting Shinkansen stations ended up almost always shrinking, because people got used to going to Tokyo all the time and ended up just moving there. You see similar centralization in places like France (everything goes through Paris)

I realize your point but food deserts exist for a reason.

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> a study recently that showed that cities in Japan that ended up getting Shinkansen stations ended up almost always shrinking

I welcome you linking to this study, because a naive explanation for parts of Japan shrinking would be Japan's overall population decline (i.e. shrinking demographics). So unless the study controlled for that, I'm rather disinclined to think that the Shinkansen by itself caused areas outside Tokyo to shrink.

If anything, centralization happens because of the difficulty of transportation. Highways were what drove "white flight" to the American suburbs. Jammed highways and hellish commutes are driving gentrification.

And centralization improves walkability, if anything. If I need to take a train to get into the city, then I need the city to be walkable after I get there, because I don't have a car with me anymore.

You see the same in London too, where even within London, boroughs that'd be viable large cities of their own if they were further separated from London, has big gaps in various types of things because you can just go in to the centre.

E.g. nightlife is a typical one, where there are a few centres in London (and they change over time), and clubs and bars outside of those regions suffer compared to even smaller towns elsewhere.

On one hand it's great - you can head where the action is. On the other hand it means a night out might easily be an hour travel each way and/or expensive tax rides, instead of a 20 minute walk.

This is so counter intuitive. This is the exact opposite of suburbia. Faster and cheaper transport led to the growth of suburbs. Can the movement of people to Tokyo be attributed just to the faster trains ? Can you please share a link to the study if you have it handy.

Shinkansen isn't really priced to be a commuter rail service. Nagoya/Tokyo is roughly $90 each way.

Employers subsidize it.

Japanese salaryman employment is like civil service employment. Mediocre pay + crazy benefits.

They tend not to pay fully for shinkansen tickets (monthly commuter tickets end up being a lot of money). Though some cities tend to subsidize them.

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