Why Tokyo's Metro Is Profitable and New York City’s Isn’t | WSJ U.S. vs. Japan

 Another aspect of Japanese transit that differs from the US is that many transit companies also double as developers/ real estate companies. This means they have diverse sources of income and a vested interest in maximizing the safety, convenience, and profitability of developments near their stations.

Correct. And the video is incomplete without mentioning this ALSO: Tokio was razed to the ground and rebuilt in the 50s, so infrastructure was laid out much better with modern criteria and objectives

Best part about Pasmo and Suica is they not only work in just Tokyo, but pretty much everywhere in all of Japan. In cities as far from Kagoshima to Sapporo. They all work on each others systems. On the buses, subways, commuter trains, light rail, It even works on the Disneyland monorail of all places.

As a new yorker, i get annoyed daily by how pathetic our transit system is. It's genuinely so insane to me that despite being such a major city, the people in power don't do enough to make the changes that will make the system more efficient.

The people in power don't ride the subway, so there's no incentive for them to make it better. We keep voting for them in spite of the fact that we get next to nothing for our tax dollars (except for the endless war that we wage overseas for the sake of geopolitics, whatever the human cost).

In Japan, the term "through services" are pretty common in the railway world. Cities such as Tokyo and Osaka has made the term subway or metro too ambiguous because most subway lines has through services with other private railways that connects to other cities. Such as in Tokyo, there's the Tokyo Metro (Subway) Fukutoshin Line which connects with Tobu Railway's Tojo Line and Seibu Railway's Yurakucho Line and Ikebukuro Line on the north end and with Tokyu Railway's Toyoko Line in the south. The Toyoko Line also connects with the Yokohama Rapid Railway Line on it's other hand. Thus, commuters can get from Saitama Prefecture suburbs to Shinjuku, Shibuya, and then to Tokyo Prefecture's suburbs and all the way to Yokohama's Chinatown in Kanagawa Prefecture. But the hiccup here is when one of the interconnected lines delays, it will delay the other lines as well