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Comment by MarkSweep | Hacker News Reader

The part about mezzanines struck me. BART has huge barren mezzanines. There is not one shop in the entire station. The other subways I've visited in the US (Boston, DC, NYC) also don't have any shops except in some of the largest like Grand Central or Penn station.

Compare this with subways and train stations in Japan which often have shops in the mezzanines and sometimes at the platform. There are always at least vending machines at the platform. I don't think this is unique to Japan, I recall there being shops in the station in Korea, Taiwan, and London too.

Why do the stations in our supposed capitalistic society not have any shops?

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I think part of it has to do with how the lines are financed and built. In Japan and Korea for example, individual companies own the lines and stations and basically use them to funnel customers to shopping areas where they actually make their money.

In the U.S. they are built as public works projects and owned in the end by some local municipal authority. Since they are public property, there's no incentive/ability to conduct commerce there. It would be like having a McDonalds inside of a library.

As far as I know, stations in Western EU are also mostly public works, and they do have shops. As an example, Brussels-Central has multiple coffeeshops (including a Starbucks), a waffle kiosk, a fast-food joint, a newsstand, and even a small supermarket.

And funny you should mention libraries; my local public library has a private café inside (not in the reading area, of course).

Ha! I stand corrected!

In the U.S. at least it's pretty rare to see shops of any kind inside of subway stations or libraries. There's a few news stands in some NYC subway stations, but not many. I've been throughout much of Europe and don't recall seeing many stores in most of the subway systems -- but maybe I wasn't paying attention.

But there will be some kind of place to get a bite in many train and even bus stations.

> The part about mezzanines struck me. BART has huge barren mezzanines. There is not one shop in the entire station.

I found that odd about BART, too - initially I thought this was due to crime (BART seems pretty sketchy, and opening up a shop there would be an invitation to robbers and thieves), but then I realized "safer" metros don't have them either.

In fact the safest thing you can do for a public area is have small businesses lining it. See Jane Jacobs' "eyes on the street".

That’s a good question. I wonder if it comes down to traffic volumes. I think US transit systems carry a lot fewer people compared to international ones, but I don’t know how they compare on a station by station basis. Is there enough traffic to “feed” retail on the mezzanine?

At some subway stations in Shanghai (notably People's Square and Xujiahui) there's more space devoted to shops than to the subway proper. (Those are outside the area you have to pay to enter. Inside, there are also shops, but not very many.)

Perhaps because other local interests don't want competition?

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