Maybe. It would still not be governed by Japanese politicians...

aetherson 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I enjoy my trips to Japan as much as the next guy, but the idea that Japan is a model of great governance is at the very best arguable.

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piva00 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also, if state government was Tokyo-level of public service then CA would have had decent public transportation a very long time ago, eradicating a huge part of the value proposal of Waymo.

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astrange 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Japan Rail is public-private and many of the other train lines are fully private. "Public" is kind of an empty distinction here, Americans associate the two concepts because they think mass transit is a kind of gift you give to poor people instead of something everyone actually uses.

But there is plenty of need for car-shaped transit in Japan and people take taxis and use cars all the time. You might have luggage/equipment to take somewhere, it might be raining and you don't want to walk the last mile, etc.

(It's surprisingly hard to take luggage through transit in Tokyo. For instance, maps apps won't give you a transit route that uses elevators, even though everyone with a baby carrier would use it.)

	▲	arjie an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Americans associate the two concepts because they think mass transit is a kind of gift you give to poor people instead of something everyone actually uses. Huh, funny. This model actually explains American behavior to me greatly. Now I understand why the emphasis on transit in the US is primarily on cost and shelter rather than on quality of service. I always thought it seemed odd that they'd emphasize making things that are not useful free rather than making them as costly as is required to make them useful. But I was modeling 'useful' as optimal transportation across fare-classes. They are modeling 'useful' as 'compassion to the less well-off'. This also explains opposition to HOT lanes and so on.

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gretch 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe, but Tokyo, despite being literally tokyo with tokyo's politicians and tokyo's transit system has allowed Waymo to come in: https://waymo.com/waymo-in-japan/

So I guess it's still pretty valuable