The former refers to how private railways in the USA were operated before the invention of cars
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But Japan’s “interurbans” were well-integrated with main lines, often sharing terminals, etc. In USA, this was rare.
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The interurbans, which often used the same public ROWs as horses and carts, were crowded out by cars; replaced with buses and abandoned
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The second point is important too, though—the cultural habit of making streets deliberately wide, and of spacing out buildings
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These habits were not present in Colonial America, by and large, and didn’t become common until the 19th century—but they predated cars
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The advent of steam power and the industrial revolution are probably the culprits—two reasons for this
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On the one hand, city industry was now largely a coal-fueled endeavor, and air quality diminished in urbanized areas
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On the other hand, ideas of standardization & master planning were getting fashionable—applying, even overapplying, the lessons of factories
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So one way or another, it became common for new development to occur in large strokes, instead of incrementally…
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…an entire neighborhood at a time, even—every street planned in advance, with uniform width instead of hierarchical width
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Pre-industrial revolution, streets were more or less just the residual space between buildings: wide when needed, narrow otherwise
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It should be pointed out that widening streets was not exclusive to the USA—European countries tried it at the same time, pre-automobile
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Haussmann’s work in Paris is the most famous example, but this tendency was most widespread in England and her colonies
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Japan industrialized later than Europe and missed this cultural trend—even in Europe, it never became common (except in the Anglosphere)
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Consequently, when Japanese cities modernized, they kept their narrow streets—even long after they came to dominate the car industry
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In other words—wide streets are an aesthetic choice that predate the car, not something made necessary *by* the car
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Since the USA experience most of its development during and after the industrial revolution, we have little experience with walkable cities
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And because our railways were optimized for freight—even tho in other countries, private railways in the 19th cent optimized for riders…
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…our railways were ineffective for passenger travel—Americans *needed* cars to be able to travel pragmatically
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Postscript: I think part of the reason our railways were optimized away from riders was due to an odd sense of “competition”
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That is, private railways weren’t willing to expand their ridership in a way that’d significantly expand ridership on another railway too
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When you make it easy for passengers to switch between railway companies, BOTH companies can see ridership growth
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Because all the stops on *your* line can now connect people to that many new destinations; many more trips become possible
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And people will still use your railway to get to the point of transfer—this applies to both (or more) companies that intersect
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This is true for passengers but not freight, because freight packages don’t get off one train and onto another…
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For freight to switch from 1 company to another, the actual tracks must connect—passengers just need to be able to use one station for both
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So, in the US, rail companies tended to locate their *junctions* outside the center of town, in industrial areas
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While locating their *stations* closer to businesses and residences
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There is money to make in passenger service, but *only if people can easily transfer between lines*
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Otherwise you do not have a rail NETWORK, you only have a collection of individual rail LINES
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So. All this said, is there any hope for rail in the USA in the future? Sure, but with important caveats…
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