How Tokyo Hacks Streets and Subways
New York City is actually a great city to walk – quite safe, pedestrian-friendly, and riddled with public parks and waterfront promenades. But when Lifehacker sent a team to Tokyo to find local hackers, I damn well envied the city’s planning. There are many details that make Tokyo easy to navigate and enjoyable to wander around.
Sidewalk signs for the blind
The most impressive street feature is the yellow lane that runs along many city sidewalks and down to the metro. Embossed lines represent a continuous path along the sidewalk that visually impaired people can walk along. At the corners, the path turns into a strip of raised points that indicate the curb. Points that I have seen in many cities; lines, never before.
As explained in the Engineer’s blog post , there are also panels with raised dots to indicate turns and forks. Although these lanes are only found on certain streets, they still form a surprisingly wide network throughout the city.
Countdown pedestrian crossing
In Tokyo, pedestrians strictly obey pedestrian crossing signals, which is contrary to my religion. And as a visitor, you must obey too, otherwise people will look at you and make you feel like an ugly American. But waiting for a pedestrian crossing is becoming more bearable because of the pedestrian crossing indicators at some intersections. I’ve seen a lot of “walking” countdowns before. But Tokyo also has a no-walk countdown that tells you how long you have to wait before you can walk.
Countdown is not about numbers; these are two lines of LEDs on either side of the signal. (In the photo above, the green lines are directly above the signal of a walking person.) As time elapses, they contract like reverse progress bars.
If you’re zigzagging around town walking with lights, these progress bars can shorten your trip by whole minutes. You can wait a couple of seconds for the signal to change instead of walking down the block and later getting stuck with no walks. And when you walk for more than an hour a day, those seconds add up to a lot of time saved.
Tokyo’s sidewalks are often crowded, especially as pedestrians ride bicycles on them. But bikers tend to ride quite slowly and leave enough room for pedestrians, so this is not the problem at all. It wouldn’t work in a place with as many delivery cyclists as New York. Yet it is less enjoyable than the pedestrian sidewalks. But I was shocked at how politely the bikers walked around the pedestrians and how little I got angry with them.
As with most major pedestrian cities, pedestrians in Tokyo tend to split into lanes and everyone walks to the left. It took me just a day to get used to crossing to the other side. This is no stricter than New York, just an unwritten rule by which things go smoothly.
Special smoking compartments
You cannot smoke outside in downtown Tokyo. This should be the case everywhere with pedestrian traffic. It’s crazy that New York City bans smoking in restaurants, bars and parks, but not on the sidewalks that every New Yorker should use. In New York, it is completely normal to see someone walking, having difficulty walking, smoking around children, babies and pregnant people. I constantly maneuver with smokers on the street, feeling like a jerk for not wanting to get used cancer juice splashed in my face.
It’s not that Tokyo doesn’t smoke. There are many cigarettes for sale in every kiosk and convenience store. But smokers must find designated booths or go to an establishment that has a smoking area. (I walked into the pachinko room – I was hoping the pachinko would look like a pinball, but it’s more like a slot machine – and my clothes were instantly saturated with the smell of tobacco.)
The etiquette guides say you shouldn’t eat or drink outside, but I’ve seen it happen every day, even on rare trips. It’s just not very common. Most street eateries – even 7-11 year old restaurants – have some chairs you can grab a bite to eat and throw out the trash on before you leave.
During a whole week of walking around the city, in tourist and non-tourist areas, I may have seen one person smoking on the street, in an alley. (Tokyo has many pedestrianized lanes and streets that are rarely used by cars, and they are all fairly safe. People walk in the middle of these streets day and night.)
For that matter, I haven’t seen a lot of people wearing headphones or reading on their phones on the sidewalk, which is a huge departure from New York. A group of people who walk, don’t smoke, don’t eat, or listen to podcasts. Is it relaxing or stressful?
Stylish subway signs
The Tokyo subway was easy to navigate … compared to New York. In fact, thanks to Google Maps and full-fledged mobile connectivity, I almost never got lost or confused on trains. There are several high-level reasons why other cities cannot copy – for example, in Tokyo it is not customary to use multiple train lines on the same platform, so it is more difficult to accidentally board the wrong train. He also does not constantly report that your train is suddenly bypassing. Trains are quiet and announcements are loud and clear in multiple languages. It will take a lot of work to bring other urban transport to this level. But there is an important factor that every city can easily and cheaply implement: smart signage.
When you are driving on an unfamiliar train line, you need to know more than what stop you are currently stopping at. You want to know which stop is next, and you might even want to know which stop was last. This additional information will help you make sure you are on the right track and on the right train. And the Tokyo subways help with this. When you arrive at the station, you will see many signs on the wall and along the platform indicating where you are. (Much more than you’ll see in New York.) And signs on the wall usually indicate the next stop and even the last stop.
On some platforms, lines indicate where the doors will land the metro, so passengers can line up in the queue, and not before the doors. Raised yellow lines help people with visual impairments get on the train.
Inside the train, static and digital signs indicate the route of each line, often offering the same information in different formats. Signs cover all of your bases, so even in a panic, you will be able to determine your next step by the time you reach a stop.
Now the system is not perfect. Trains in Tokyo are operated by several transport authorities, and although the systems are mostly well integrated – they accept each other’s subway cards and stop at the same stations – I still managed to get to the wrong part of the station, and the attendant had to pull me back so that I can find the correct train system. And Google Maps doesn’t tell you when you’re going to pay for a ride at two rates, and it doesn’t offer a clear option to show only routes within the same transit system. And the trains don’t run all night. But I would still trade New York trains for Tokyo trains in a second.
Hot vending machines
There are many vending machines in Tokyo. I’m not really sure why – I haven’t seen people use them all the time or anything like that – but the city is packed with these cars and most drinks charge around a dollar. There is water, soda and iced tea, but most of the machines I have seen also offer hot coffee . Several brands and varieties of this. Nice. Significant. Paper cups and plastic lids are silly and we all have to buy hot coffee in a can.
There are also many traditional cafes and coffee chains, it doesn’t seem like the city has automated its baristas. But to my dismay, many of these cafes don’t open until 10. So it’s good to have 24/7 self service. In addition, many vending machines accept payment with a metro card.
Train station bathrooms
Tokyo has a bathroom at every train station. It saved me when I had diarrhea on the trip . They used to be kept in large stations in New York, but over the years they were mostly locked up, which is, frankly, an act of hostility towards passengers, visitors, and the homeless. Widely available bathrooms are a quality of life issue.
These bathrooms are a little cleaner than they might be in New York, but they don’t look pristine. One thing that helps is the lack of paper towels to accumulate in the trash: many bathrooms in Tokyo, public and private, do not have paper towels or hand dryers. So, as Lifehacker’s Patrick Allen advised, carry a handkerchief with you . (Some public bathrooms have ass wash spray, and toilet paper was everywhere I went.) I never mind pulling out my handkerchief to dry my hands; I was grateful for any working bathroom on the run.
No trash cans
There are no roadside trash cans in Tokyo. You might think that this is the downside! And carrying trash on the street or on the train can be a challenge. But you can throw away trash at convenience stores and throw bottles into built-in vents in vending machines. So you can easily get by and take advantage of the biggest benefit of not having open trash cans: debris that doesn’t fall out of these bins or is blown out by the wind blown across the street.
Of course, most cities can’t just rip all their cans off the sidewalks and expect everyone to cling to their trash. Trash is a cultural issue, and in America I don’t know how best to enforce no trash laws without giving our police officers even more power over vulnerable citizens. But, damn, New York is dirty, and if we were better at dealing with garbage, it would be nicer to live here, and maybe the rats will stop breeding .