Why Tokyo Is Insanely Well Designed

this is a blueprint of shinjuku station the busiest public transportation hub in the world this structure stretches one kilometer through the shinjuku district and facilitates 3.6 million daily commuters we utilize it to go to different parts of tokyo on its five main levels you'll find one of three major means of travelling for those on the go shinjuku boasts three subway lines that connected to sister districts like shibuya minato and toyota all within minutes those using trains have their pick of five different railway companies that arrive and depart simultaneously located throughout the station's 20 different platforms if you're looking to travel long distances though shinjuku's impressive bus terminal hosts 1600 long distance travel lines that connect commuters to tokyo and greater japan it's a shining beacon of tokyo's envious and ambitious infrastructure design and what's crazier is the fact that this same formula is repeated throughout the mega city in different districts all interconnected in an urban design that's unmatched and quite frankly a masterpiece tokyo is not just a city it's a nation within a city the population measures 37 million people meaning it's the biggest mega city in the world and when you consider the tourists and visitors from other parts of japan the numbers are even higher tokyo has 50 more people than any other urban setting globally but despite the high population and never-ending movement it has often been known as one of the safest cities in terms of infrastructure city planners have not only found a way to make sure that the 3.9 billion yield users who depend on the subway system get to where they need to go but that they and others have alternative means of traveling through tokyo on any given day if you're walking for example each tokyo district has what you need right around the corner if not for a grocery store there's tons of vending machines waiting for you even those in bikes which make up fourteen percent of full transportation in the city have found a way to deal with the admittedly imperfect biking infrastructure but while walking is convenient and an entirely viable option 57 of travel in tokyo is done through public transit which can be compared to new york city's 58 but that's where the comparisons end take a look at this 3d rendering of the times square 42nd street subway station it's no shinjuku but it's part of a public transport system that is quite shockingly bigger than tokyo's seriously the new york city subway has 34 lines and 468 stations all servicing four boroughs namely manhattan brooklyn queens and the bronx but bigger doesn't always mean better and that's definitely the case here because despite its size it comes second to tokyo's annual passenger frequency this is possible because tokyo system while much smaller is way more efficient it's the result of a necessity that grew over time as people flocked to the big city and space decreased the flexibility and constant work on each transport system and the insane 200 billion dollar annual budget for japanese public construction from 2013 to 2023 which is 40 of their entire gdp by the way make tokyo a brilliantly built city but it didn't get there overnight after the end of world war ii japan like many other countries had to rebuild its nation however japan didn't have access to oil reserves and expensive order transport systems which led to the auto boom in countries like the united states so the japanese government in collaboration with private companies invested in railway lines instead in an attempt to connect tokyo's more suburban areas with the city center combine this with the historically lower income of japanese households and the demand for solid public transit grew this completely left the car as a means of transport in the dust hence it's no wonder the average car ownership per household in tokyo is 0.56 which is shockingly low for a developed urban area in comparison to a city like chicago that has a car ownership rate of 1.12 per household betting on public transport was a risky move that paid all for tokyo as it's one of the few examples of a system that is practical and profitable i know you're probably thinking the same thing as me public transport and profit are words that don't ever appear in the same sentence but in the case of tokyo they do and to achieve this tokyo city plan is collaborating with private builders and the government made the idea of using cars and taxis to get around the city as unattractive as they possibly could get away with just look at tokyo's traffic it's a nightmare that can pretty much only be compared to the long hours spent navigating la's infamous road congestion although tokyo is worse for a very simple reason take a look at the shuto expressway of greater tokyo the winding and overlapping roads may make the uss interstate highways if you travel greater distances though it requires expressway passes that could cost you as much as 14 000 yen or 120 dollars for specific areas over a one to two week period it might sound ridiculous but it helps public support for transit systems it makes it so there is no competition when comparing cars with the subway bus or train and that's a good thing because public transit in tokyo is objectively the superior option to a carpe city even if one did want to make a swing at using a car to get around they better have a lot of free time because a train or subway will get you to your destination much faster than a car will as transit vehicles run on a strict time crunch operating within a minute of expected arrival or departure time they're also super fast moving at one and a half times the speed of a car that's limited by speed restrictions traffic and unpredictable roadblocks so yeah public transit is the way to go and passengers only need one car to travel across tokyo the pasmo card which might sound like it should go without saying but before the 2000s people would have to line up in huge crowds to buy tickets from different train and subway companies and the pasmo car collaboration has solved this issue while also leading to a shared railway system that has only unified tokyo's great infrastructure further now you might be thinking that tokyo subway and rail systems are simply too technologically advanced to be compared to cities like new york but what japan is doing is pretty basic it's not alien technology it's just common sense i mean look at this train from a terminal in minato tokyo coupled with this one in chicago or what about this subway in shinjuku paired against this one in new york they look alike the difference lies in what they are connected to as well as the maintenance that these systems are taken through daily you see most of tokyo stations are empty through the night even the one in shinjuku which makes it the perfect time to do the mandatory nightly inspection yep you have me right the subway tunnels and tracks are checked every night minor damages are fixed while major ones are reported and alternative routes are chosen but tokyo goes even further than this by doing a thorough dismantling and inspection of all their train cars every four years the cars are stripped down by hand and all parts are tested for malfunction before they're cleaned and put back together it's a highly coordinated effort that ensures accidents along these stations tunnels and railways are kept to a minimum and unforeseen damages that cause down times or therefore virtually non-existent oh and let me just quickly mention the shinkansen tokyo's bullet train that has a maximum operating speed of 320 kilometers per hour making trips out of tokyo a breeze akumura could board 18 carson in tokyo and arrive at the xin amori station in northern japan in just 3 hours and 20 minutes the same can't be said for amtrak's aquila train which is currently the fastest train in the united states and it does the same distance of 713 kilometers from boston to washington in seven hours so all in all tokyo is really well designed and connected in an efficient way and while it can look chaotic sometimes from an outside perspective like when you watch videos of the crosswalks it's really the exact opposite everything is well thought out down to the smallest of details and everything seems so coordinated but that's it for this video thank you for watching i'll see you in the next one

Channel: OBF

Views: 7,851,236

Keywords:

Id: zysL_lkdtys

Length: 8min 28sec (508 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 10 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/insultant_]

Tokyo is by far my favorite city I have ever visited. And the transit system is extremely easy to navigate, even as a foreigner.

[u/ToddBradley]

A funny thing about English: There are two different meanings for the title of this post. One is “Why I believe Tokyo is a good city”. The other is “Reasons why Tokyo came to be designed so well”. For those who don’t watch the video, this talks about the first.

TLDR: The creator of the video believes Tokyo is a good city because it has a great public transportation system.

Sadly, he doesn’t talk about the history of Tokyo or its public transportation system, which is the more interesting topic to me.

[u/[deleted]]

They’ve had so many do-overs because of Godzilla.

[u/frunko1]

Nyc runs 24 hours. Tokyo stops between 12 and 1. Think about that for a minute. Since 1904 the NYC subway has ran 24/7.

[u/Benandhispets]

I agree with a couple of others who seem to suspiciously immediately get massively downvoted for stating there's elements to it that doesn't seem nice, mainly the green space.

http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/data/of-public-green-space-parks-and-gardens
This lists 40 of the worlds major cities and the percentage of public green space/parks in each, Tokyo is 3rd from bottom. London has around 4.5x as much. Not 100% sure how they calculate it but just looking at Google Maps for a few minutes confirms that it is pretty bad. There's some big parks but then theres square miles in a row where it's a struggle to find any parks, when you do you zoom in and realise its just a small school playground, or the park is a concrete area with trees. Seems total opposite to when I've lived in London and there's always been a choice of decent sized parks within walking distance, and many more within a 10 min drive.

I've been to a bunch of Asian cities and they're not all like this. Like Hong Kong is a big one and I found that was an awesome mix of city and then massive amounts of green space not far away, probably partly because of the very green mountains its built up against on 1 side. Was weird being next to skyscrapers and then a 2 min drive later you're on green mountainy roads. It also still has just as good of a public transport network.

So yeah awesome designed public transport but it didn't say much else that other non American large cities dont have. Everything close by is common all over. It can only really be talking about transport anyway because the overall city layout wasn't really designed at all, it's a mash of a load of smaller cities/towns all growing into each other by now, that wouldn't have been planned.

I'd love to go to Japan still, but I know for sure I wouldn't want to live there for good.

[u/JamesDCooper]

Toyko tolls are expensive.

Cries in Sydney daily tolling

[u/SntNicholas1]

Because during WW2 the Americans bombed/burned the old city to the ground. On one night in 1945 over 40km² (16 square miles) were destroyed, estimated 100,000 civilian deaths.

[u/GoldenJoel]

It really is something to behold when riding the rails. It made me insanely jealous and disgusted in the over paved highway system we've created the United States around. Hey, want to have a beer and a meal on a train that goes 200 MPH to the other side of the country? You can do that. Getting from Tokyo to Osaka in less than 4 hours was magical.

And the subways are even better. Every city has them. You barely have to walk anywhere and google works great in telling you which lines to hop on.

[u/johnnyr1]

A-kee-la train. LOL.