cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21954268
Mom Jailed for Letting 10-Year-Old Walk Alone to Town
“I was not panicking as I know the roads and know he is mature enough to walk there without incident,” says Brittany Patterson.
Which public transport? Tokyo Metro is publicly-owned. Some of the JR branches are still publicly-owned. JR was only privatized in the late 80s as an anti-labor move and to deflect from the unpopularity of closing unprofitable rural lines. But of course the government built most of the network, including the first shinkansen lines.
It sounds like they’re praising it in Japan and saying “of course it could never work here, Americans are just genetically predisposed to cars”.
Right. I will say there is a lot of the US where cars make sense because they use the same roads that farm equipment uses (which does not make much sense to build rail for), but in the cities (and thus the suburbs) it seemed largely cultural from any historical analysis I’ve seen (with segregation, excessive monopolization of passenger rail, and the advent of modern advertising).
