Thanks for featuring my footage! I find the points in this video to be very worth mentioning when looking at Japan as an example for good railways. It's not all "shiny, punctual trains and everyone is happy". Greetings from the island! 🎌🗾 ~ Shioyama
I am Japanese. The video is mostly correct about JR. However, this only explains 40% of Japan's railways. The total number of annual train passengers in Japan is 20 billion, of which 60% are private railway users. Unlike the UK's TOC, Japanese private railways are companies that manage rail, stations, trains, buses, taxis, real estate, commerce, etc., and take a completely different business approach than JR. The influence of private railways in the region is enormous, and it is difficult to explain the railway situation in Japan without private railway companies. Thanks for the Japan reference, many Japanese still think the UK is the father of Japanese railways.
^ very much this. Especially here in the Kansai area, I find myself almost never using JR, instead using Hankyuu (阪急), Hanshin (阪神), Osaka Metro (大阪メトロ), or municipally-owned services such as the Kyoto Subway (京都市営地下鉄) instead. Whenever I find myself in Tokyo, I end up using JR lines significantly more.
As a a Japanese I think this video covers Japans problems as a whole and not just JR, the economical and population decline mentioned really shows some of the major problems the country has and the strict workplace also is present around the nation with some of my family facing harsh reprimand in other jobs. While this video does cover the countries problems long and short term, the conclusion is well said estimating the future we must meet
It's at least good to see some of the negatives of the Japanese railways highlighted for some balance, no matter how great it really is overall. Thanks for the video!
You got to keep in mind that rural Japan is not the same as rural UK. In terms of landscape 90% of Japan is similar to the Scottish Highlands, although for the most part with a warmer climate. So obviously local railway lines are slower since many of them have to navigate through hills and valleys in area's that have always been sparsely populated. If Beeching would have gone through Japan it would only have the Shinkansen lines, plus some connecting lines right now. The fact that many of the rural lines are only now in danger of closure is really remarkable. Obviously the rural lines are better in most European countries, but that's mainly due to Geography.
Warmer climate? Maybe on the south-east side of the 'Japanese Alps', but to the west and especially north of them, it has much, much worse winters than the Scottish Highlands.
@@tehangrybird345 Don't forget that Japan is 9 times as big as Switzerland and that the population of Japan is heavily concentrated in a couple of coastal plains. A large part of rural Japan is very empty and much further away from the main cities then the most mountainous regions of Switzerland.
Side note on rural transit in Germany, I think it's far more punctual than you'd expect. The most delay-prone places in Germany are the most used ones. Makes sense, the more trains are running through a place, the worse the cascading delays get. A line with one train per hour, such as my local one, really doesn't have many chances to get delayed, apart from outright failures or disasters or whatever, there isn't anything that could cause big delays. So oddly enough, the rural lines can end up more reliable than the most important corridors in the country.
Indeed, I was only really joking. I do love the German transport system, it would be one of the best in the world if buses were more consistent and intercity rail was more reliable.
Oooh Honey I live in rural Germany Just dont even talk about this... It's worse Maybe in your rural side but not mine.....during winter is even Worse and worse.......uurgh
@@GWVillager It does depend on region to region as well, though. I live in the southwest of Germany and I find the busses to be more reliable than those in Japan (and almost anywhere else, for that matter), especially in regards to the ticketing system and scheduling. Busses to rural areas come at least once per hour, with areas with even smaller populations having called shared taxis that are covered by your public transport ticket. And I don't need to worry about which bus company to take since your ticket is accepted by all of them anyway.
Yeah. At least true in for example the München area. The S2 was always on time until it got to Markt Schwaben were the regional corridor and less frequent kinda express S2 collided in two little tracks in the city direction. Also in the entry of the central corridor where trains have to wait their turns
To be fair, a lot of JR's problems are caused by Japan's problems in general. The population decline that causes lines to get closed down isn't gonna stop just because the trains are still operating. There's that one story of the train line that only runs to serve one high school girl that takes it everyday, until she graduates and it finally closes. The largely stagnating economy makes it hard to make new investments, only to keep up maintenance. As a private public transport company, they have the hard to balance responsibility to profits but also to society. Its understandable why they're facing issues. But nevertheless, as you said, they still have one of the best services in the world. Also, sidenote, Japan mostly uses narrow 1067 mm gauge compared to Britain's standard 1435 mm. That probably contributes to the speed limit.
Did that girl suddenly no longer need to go anywhere when she graduated? Or did she (most likely) move out of the village? But this is exactly my point. I said precisely that in the video. Railways are a public service, and can only be judged in isolation to a degree. The population crisis especially, but also the economic stagnation, was entirely foreseeable, yet nothing meaningful was done to address it. Obviously you cannot blame rural decline on railway closures, but it is another way that rural communities are facing managed decline which is not going to help their prospects.
@@GWVillager In rural areas of Japan, students obtain a driver's license while they are in high school for job hunting purposes, but the school seems to keep the driver's license while they are in school. Besides, there is no need to run trains at a loss when they can be replaced by buses.
@@GWVillager Strikes on British Railways are as bad as they were when JR was a national railway. By the way, one of the reasons why Japan's National Railways was privatized was to reduce strikes and wasteful expenses.
The reason for the speed limit on conventional lines appears to be the 2005 JR Fukuchiyama Line derailment accident. Also, unlike the UK, Japan operates Shinkansen trains, so there is no need to operate them at speeds over 130 km/h on regular conventional lines. Social infrastructure should emphasize safety.
The reason for massive delays on the few Swiss trains that are delayed is that they often fit them into the next slot in the clock face schedule so as that you can still have a timed interchange with your next train.
Also, they have a policy of pushing trains which are late enough to cause missed connections down to the lowest priority, to make sure they don't cause cascading delays.
I can't tell if that "Tokyo" rail map includes the subway or private (non-JR) rail operator lines? It's definitely also hyper-deformed, as that loop in the bottom right appears to be the entire prefecture of Chiba, and the bottom center is Kanagawa prefecture. It's therefore including Yokohama (3.5m), Kawasaki (1.5m), Saitama (1.3m) and SIXTEEN other 'towns' with populations over 100k. This all makes the Tokyo map look both better and worse than it actually is. I think a comparison of the #2 Japanese city's network (Osaka) or even #3 (Nagoya) and any of the UK's #2 contenders B'ham, Manchester, or dare I say Glasgow, would result in an even more stark difference. I lived in Japan for three years, and in all that time, the one and only occasion where a train I was going to use was 'late', typhoon-induced landslides had wiped out several areas of the line. The service was restored in under a month. I'm glad you mentioned the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, but you left out that the UK has no such catastrophic events hampering it's rail operations. Then there's other amazing advantages like the safety system that will emergency stop shinkansen lines before the damaging wave energy of an earthquake can reach the train. I've been to the UK a few times, and I don't think I've ever felt the rail service was inadequate around London or even much of the rest of the places I went. (Not Alton Towers though, transit to there from London is ridiculously lacking.) That said, I think that if you haven't actually experienced rail service in Japan, you can't understand that rail in the UK is not in the same league, and that includes many trips that I made well outside the orbits of the megacities in each country. Touting potential stats of HS2 is not really beneficial to this argument, considering that Japan's Chuo maglev line is likely to open well before HS2. With twice as many stations, over twice the distance and at nearly 150% the speed, HS2 would not compare well as an engineering marvel. The UK also has a significant geographical advantage, being comparatively flat next to Japan. UK's rail lines benefit from greater speed over Japan's non-shinkansen routes because they havn't needed to drill tunnels to go in a straight line outside of city limits. "Inter-regional travel" in the UK isn't faster, because you're comparing local Japanese lines, and not the typically parallel shinkansen lines. The shinkansen lines run from Kumamoto in the south to Hakodate in the North, (some 2,000km) and last I checked HS2 will not reach Glasgow before the Hokkaido shinkansen reaches Sapporo. Oh yeah, HS2 is barely going to reach London or Birmingham (230km), let alone Glasgow. Yes, the trip in Japan has two transfers and will take roughly twice as long, but it's also going 4 times as far, so I call that a win. Is Japan's rail system perfect? No, of course not, nothing is. It sure beats rail in the UK, though. ...and yes, UK rail absolutely runs laps around rail service in the US.
Thank you for this fascinating view. You could, I think, say the same about France. Many are dazzled by the TGV and high speed lines but on many of the rural lines the trains run quite slowly and there has been a gradual run down of secondary routes with some branch lines closing. Thankfully the government is planning to reverse this decline.
@@GWVillager wonderful video, i loved watching it, i will definitely sub and come back for more. indeed, france is really polarized, especially on regional trains around cities, we barely have any sbahn - like networks. unfortunately, if we were to serve more people on our regional lines, our mainlines would simply die: a lot of bottlenecks havent been fixed and instead frequentation of lines was articifially lowered.. now we would need to spend so much money to add capacity back that it's almost just not feasible
When a video almost exclusively focuses on JR, it betrays that the creator lacks a fundamental understanding of the Japanese railway system. This completely ignores the dozens of successful private operators whose roles in society uniquely contribute to the country’s rail history. Honestly, the goal of this video seemed more to justify the British railways than offer a valid critique of the Japanese. Most valid arguments are flaws in Japanese society itself, which spread to the railways much like they do in every other country. But those points are overshadowed by a string of bad faith arguments about issues such as aesthetics, prices, and station density.
Thank you for your comment, and I bow to your knowledge of the Japanese network. I'm well aware of the private operators, but this video was not intended to be a balanced summary or review, but rather a series of flaws to highlight how things are not uniformly perfect in Japan. I did clarify this in the description, but with hindsight I could have been a little clearer. To some extent, the video *is* about justifying British railways, but this is an essential pursuit. There is a terrible self-loathing atmosphere around British trains at the moment, and this is (in my opinion) getting in the way of progress. We can, if we put our minds to it, produce some of the finest services in the world (the Elizabeth Line, HS1, Virgin Trains etc.), yet people too often ignore this and say things along the lines of "things are better in Japan". They may well be, but that's not particularly useful, and if anything just depresses us further. Once again, this video is not an unbiased assessment coming from a neutral, non-geographic perspective. It's intended for a British audience, to (hopefully) inspire future hope.
@@GWVillager so let me get this straight: your whole opening premise was that coverage of the Japanese system is unbalanced, and you want to set the record straight. But when you receive pushback, then suddenly you meant to be unbalanced and unbiased? What a cop-out! When you are deliberately not fair in your critique, your argument is moot. And perhaps there is a reason for all the self-loathing in the British railways. Rather than use mental gymnastics to console yourself, why not be brave enough to face reality and advocate to improve things?
Watching the second part which criticizes the station design really upset me. While I like and respect the British designs of the stations, I don’t think Japan stations have any problems or aren’t as favorable as British ones. Japan stations often integrate super well with other services like commercials, office buildings etc, so it provides the convenience that old British stations can’t. Shinjuku station, which doesn’t look good at all, integrated seamlessly with a ton of services, including a large bus terminal, both subway and trains, and of course stores, and offices. Do I want a station that looks good but provides limited services, or a station that looks “bad” (modern though) but provides everything I need? I’d say both are equally fine!
Agree... aesthetic is secondary to function. I choose boxy station with lively market inside and convenient network transfer over beauty. On top of that, people need to pip down referring old building as beautiful. Those 'beautiful building' are often way too expansive and maintenance heavy. Better spend those extra resource to poor people.
Not only do the Japanese stations integrate well with other forms of transport and have extensive underground/elevated pedestrian access but they have a lot of retail outlets too, often inside the ticket gate area so you can get something to eat or drink if you are changing trains. Like most things in Japanese cities they are extremely functional, if not architecturally stunning.
one time i was panicking as i didn't have lunch and was going to be on a shinkansen in 15 minutes. thank goodness for convenience stores in major train stations.
This bought up a lot of good points half the reason why people act like Japan's a superpower in the railways is probably due to them only ever showing the good part.
You mean China? The issue is not that "they only show the good part", the issue is that holistically, they have a superior and innovative system. Nothing is perfect, but having lived there, I can't seem to find much fault comparing to my place of origin, NYC. Having said that, last time I was there, I would think that improvements with bike network is a much better priority.
Also Japanese people are overwhelmingly supportive of their transit system. Even if people are inconvenienced daily by bad frequencies or slow tr supportive of their transit system. Even if people are inconvenienced daily
MTR HK is a great system, sadly now that it's part of China, I'll never visit again, HK is also a small city compared to Tokyo and Japan as a whole. @@wisehat_yt
except tokyo does have a main station, having to switch main stations in cities like london and paris is always a pain (and paris has direct connections between every main tgv station at least)
Technically, tokyo has seven: Tokyo, Ueno, Omiya, Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Shinagawa. They are all connected by the Yamanote line. 28 of it's 30 stations interchange with other lines.
The Yamanote Line does not go to Omiya, I'd stop at the other 6 (or replace Omiya with Shimbashi) which still proves your point. One thing Tokyo does NOT have is a central downtown; the major Yamanote Line stations *are* their own district in practice.
This was an enjoyable video, but i feel like you have never been to Japan and therefore maybe is not the best person to be talking about this. I live in Japan and here are a few of my thoughts on some of your comments. 1. JR looking to vertically integrate and build out stations to have a huge range of services located at the station makes sense, almost nobody drives here in major cities, so keeping services centralized at stations is what people want here in Tokyo and other major Japanese cities. I don't see how this is a fault at all, in addition in Asia, huge VI conglomerates are very normal. 2. Station design / grandeur is a little unfair on Japan, old buildings don't get to survive here, constant earthquakes, which happen almost weekly, take their toll overtime. Buildings don't get to grow old in Japan, its simply unsafe. Not to mention most of the old stations of Tokyo were destroyed by either the great Kanto earthquake or the bombing campaigns of WW2. 3. Slow speeds in regional areas are rarely an issue to be honest, as the shinkansen gets you close enough that you don't need to be on a slow train for very long or you can easily rent a car and drive the final 50-100kms to where you want to go.
I wasn't necessarily saying that the JR's other activities were bad (indeed I explicitly said they made sense), but I was rather highlighting how their financial efficiency isn't really to do with how they operate the railways. The point about earthquakes and bombing is very fair, and I defer to that. But many Japanese stations could be dressed up a little nicer, with more coherent station-wide design. It is nit-picking, however - you are correct. There are plenty of people who cannot drive, though. And there are still many major city-to-city connections that are far slower than they should be.
@@GWVillagercheers; also I do agree that many stations here are unacceptably maze like and even locals don’t like them. With so many exits, direct entries into office towers or shopping malls it can be extremely confusing. But in the extreme heat and humidity of summer being able to get to your office without going outside is a huge win. So it does kinda make sense. I do wish they just had signs at each fare gate that said ‘fastest way out’ with an arrow though.
@@TheRealUnconnected That would be great. This is something I love about London - there are always clear black and yellow signs pointing to the nearest exits, and thankfully this is being rolled out all across the UK too.
@@TheRealUnconnected I have to throw in, that you can get lost for instance in shinjuku, but overall it is quite manageable even for a German tourist. I have been to Japan 4 times up to now and I can attest, that travel was never complicated or stressful. You do a great job there.
Most Japan "Main Line" services has been replaced by Shinkansen, running on standard gauge offering much higher speeds. The legacy rail system thus complements the Shinkansen network, where a combination of both (with timed transfers/through running e.g. mini shinkansens) effectively decreasing travel times for the average passenger. The branch line speeds are not dissimilar with the UK - 70mph on the West Highland line, 60mph on the Heart of Wales Line. The fastest narrow gauge services once reached 160kph/100mph on the Hokuhoku Line, but was no longer necessary given the opening of the parallel Hokuriku Shinkansen. The Japanese train network might not be the best as some might think, but it is still important to learn from international best practices and their mistakes in order to build a world-leading system.
Certainly - on the whole it’s a fantastic system and we have a lot to learn. But the Heart of Wales and West Highland lines are perhaps some of the most remote lines in the country. My issue with Japan’s speeds is on important - but not trunk - regional routes between provincial cities.
@@GWVillager Another big issue is that Japan runs narrow gauge, so achieving higher speed is very, very difficult. Japan only ran narrow gauge trains up to 160km/h with the Hokuhoku Line, a dedicated, shinkansen like track. Conventional line are only safe for 130 km/h operation. In the end, they figured that if you are building that much dedicated track, might as well build a shinkansen. You need to keep in mind that the train speed record for narrow gauge trains are only like 240 km/h or something, while standard gauge is 580km/h. However, problem with Japan's regional network is that they don't really have something between Shinkansen and Conventional line. There are no legal framework with it. Given how conservative the Japanese are its either Shinkansen or nothing, and lot of cities cannot afford Shinkansen. This is why regional transports are lacking. That said, most limited express trains are still generally okay.
@@lbsc1201Indeed, Odakyu actually managed to safely operate a regular scheduled service at speeds of up to 160km/h on their narrow gauge Romancecar line between Shinjuku and Hakone-yumoto (also demonstrating the impetus for a wider gauge high speed line that later became the Shinkansen) but later dropped that down to 130km/h because of that law you mentioned.
Who said Japanese trains were perfect? No one did, the fact that its a train centric culture with many types of trains and had the first high speed rail, gets Japan alot of attention from train enthusiasts. As far as the mistreatment and bullying of employees, thats all old stuff, most of that was done away with almost 20 years ago, ive not heard of recent examples of this. The overwork of train crews its more a national issue and its part of Japanese culture. As far as quality of trains, Japanese trains are known for cleanliness, punctuality, and frequency of service. You must remember that there are many different train types in Japan, from local, rural lines, commuter trains, limited express, shinkansen, light rail, luxury trains, sleeper trains etc. The experience you get is dependent on where you are and what you are willing to pay for, as Japan has such a extensive use of trains, the experience will not always be the same. I agree Japanese trains are too expensive, though, and commuter trains can be packed and uncomfortable in the big cities. Its hard to compare Japan to other countries because of how diverse the trains are in Japan with so many private lines and JR lines, different companies have different piorities and have different age of rolling stock, as many railways are very old. Japanese trains are mix or old and new at the same times, which makes it very unique. As far as speed, Japanese rail infrastructure is very old compared to other countries, many lines were built for local trains but now have limited express trains running on them, couple that with the use of narrow Guage and older track geometry due to challenging terrian, its not suprising Japanese trains are slower than some other countries. The Shinkasens are limited in thier maximum possible speeds due to maintainence concerns, train spacing, and noise pollution is a problem because of how densly packed Japanese cities are. Large stations can be confusing and rural Stations can look very outdated, but once again the type of stations you see is dependent on where you go, as many places in Japan have muliple lines going through them and stations have various ages. Its not reasonable to expect every station to look pristine and new, as there is not enough space or funding to makeover every train station in Japan I have traveled all over Japan via train and outside of weather, earthquake delays suicicides on the tracks, most trains in Japan are on time. People forget Japan does get alot of poor weather, from heavy snow, to typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and strong winds. Despite this the trains in Japan are still very relible and i have planned and completed many many successful trips by train in Japan. I just went from Hokkaido to rural Kyoto by shinkansen, limited express, and local trains. I Took 4 trains and they were all on time, even the last local single car train got me home when i needed it too. Sure Japan has some issues, but as far as train options and the amount of connectivity avalible, ive never seen any country come close to what Japan has to offer.
The raise in JR rail pass is largely due to the severe over tourism after lifting COVID restrictions, and the JR company has to limit the passengers and reduce over crowding. Japan is also developing new vehicles that can do 360 km/h with the test vehicle alpha x. That said I find Shinkansen rides much less comfortable than China or the TGV The most impressive part of the Shinkansen is that it has very short stop spacing, around 13km on average. Yet it still creates a very fast service. This is because their trains are super light and very fast acceleration, reaching 2.6 km/s. The TGV in comparison does something like 0.5 km/s. Japanese shinkansen are acceleration and curve optimized, not top speed optimized (though the top speed is still respectable). The N700S trains can do 285 km/h on a curve with radius of 1800m. The H5 series can do 320 km/h on a curve radius of 4000m. Just for comparison, the original 1800m are set with a design speed of 210 km/h. And just for comparison, for Eurpoean HSR, lines with 4000m curve radius are limited to around 250 km/h usually. Unfortunately, these traits does contribute to its rougher ride quality. The decline of rural railway is to be expected though, as Japan as a whole is declining. In fact, there are strong incentive to NOT improve rural transport that much because it would just accelerate rural area's depopulation. This is evidented by the opening of the Hokuriku shinkansen and several cities along the line like Iiyama city.
It's interesting that you didn't mention any of the 10 major private railway companies, because THESE are the ones that hold sway over Japan's cities, not JR. 4:00 JR's operational style is a carbon copy of what all the other rail companies have been doing along their rail lines since before WW2. These investments are chiefly to increase ridership. 5:20 this was JR West's terrible working culture that caused the accident. Each of the 217 rail companies in Japan have different working cultures and many of them are fine (more should be better though). 8:52 Wouldn't the right comparison be between the tube map and Tokyo's subway map? The unofficial Suica map you showed includes lots of areas where Tokyoites would only go on overnight vacations, let alone commute into to the city. 9:35 Have you read about JNR's passagification of stations? In order to cope with the huge number of passengers, JNR changed its layouts so passenger flow is constantly moving, instead of making people wait in stations like in Europe. Stations (and to some extent trains) are in practice an extension of the sidewalk. As much as I think many British stations are nice, nobody in Japan would actively choose to use a station more just because the outside is more western or ornate. 14:38 You conveniently forgot to mention that almost all Japanese train lines are cape gauge. This severely limits the speed and stability that's achievable in comparison to standard gauge. I still wish it were faster though. 16:00 more like overinvestment in road transit. the LDP doesn't want to reduce infrastructure funding and ends up building tons of (quite useless) roads that kill slow Japanese trains' competitiveness. 17:45 this is more a result of decline rather than what causes it. 18:52 Japan has rarely looked at being eco-friendly in the past, but if you have enough people the least consuming one happens to be the cheapest. 19:33 YES. Japanese people tend to over-trust rail companies, even defending sudden frequency cuts in the name of efficiency. We could use a little more of the Brit's voiced discontent with their railways, because after all, the lines exist to serve the community. In any case, it is true that in the long run, Japanese rail is only going to get worse over the next few decades. And unless European countries do something about their systems as well, they're going to start falling off as well. It's a shame you only focused on JR, because that's really only half of the story here in Japan, but I'd love to go try the UK's trains again someday.
Thank you for your insightful comments. A lot of the things you mention I do indeed know about, but didn't really consider relevant to the video, and there is a huge amount of nuance missed out in my video that I would have put in if I were making a balanced assessment of the rail network. Stuff like the passenger flow in stations is impressive and indicative of the many things we in Britain could definitely learn from Japan - but I bring architecture and speeds up because, regardless of the reasons, which do exist like the narrow gauge etc., are still areas that Britain excels at, and perhaps ones that we shouldn't be so defeatist in (it's really quite common to hear passengers complain about the service and say stuff along the lines of "this wouldn't happen in Japan", when in reality they're facing a pretty universal problem). As for the maps, the London map used in the video isn't the regular Tube map, but rather the Rail and Tube map, which also includes heavy rail suburban (and main) lines that run quite far out. It's essentially the equivalent of the Tokyo map.
Heavily agree with you on the focus part. The videos' called "Japan's trains..." and yet the focus is on Tokyo (where most subway lines are not even run by JR East) and the "rural" (which is very poorly defined, Hokkaido/Shikoku/Kyushu rural is not the same as Kanto rural) lines. And putting the main focus on JR East (a regional company) and then comparing it to Switzerland (a country) is just very unfair, the geographical and demographic contexts are completely different between the two. Of course the video would easily be over 2 hours long if you delved into the other JR companies and private rail companies, but then you shouldn't say "Japan's trains...." but instead say "JR East's trains..." to clear up the focus. Even if you focus on JR companies alone, JR East's operational and business model is drastically different than say, JR Shikoku, JR Hokkaido, and JR Kyushu. I would say the JR rail pass hikes are completely justified though, seeing how cheap the Yen has been for the past 2 years or so and how many tourists have been going to Japan post-COVID. Also, European rail passes are fucking SHIT compared to JR rail passes when you consider the user experience and what is included in the rail pass package. His architecture point is spot on though, Japanese stations feel very copy-and-pasted for the most part. They really fucked up the new Harajuku Station design for example.
You bring up some of the things I saw, but better spoken. In all honesty, it's pretty tought to make a video about the shortcomings of the rail networks of Japan, because there really is a lot of good in the system. I mean, architecture? Really? I'll take an on-time train in an ugly station ten times out of ten over a pretty station and random train delays.
In Tokyo area ,JR is the biggest piece, it represents more than 50% of the lines in the sector. In Nagoya area , JR is also the biggest piece, more than 50% of the lines. In Keihanshin (Kansai) it's 50% because Hankyu is a big competitor. In Shikoku, Kyushu and Hokkaido the JRs dominate.
Hello from Japan! As a Japanese railroad fan, I think the content of your video points out well the problems about Japanese railroads.👍 The cold treatment and disregard for social workers in Japanese society has led to poor treatment of railroad workers. Privatization has led to excessive efficiency and service degradation as money is sought to be made from the railroads, which are supposed to be infrastructure. Neither the company nor the public pays attention to station design, guidance, seating, and other onboard amenities, and the level of service is significantly lower than in other countries. The ministries that take the reins of transportation policy are reluctant to do so, there are no politicians to address the problem, and there is no coordination among the various companies and transportation agencies. As you say, the increase in the speed of railroads is partial. Many people oppose even the construction of a new bullet train or linear motor car because they consider it a wasteful investment. Thus, politicians and the public are not interested in transportation, so there is little chance that the structural problems of Japan's railroads will be improved in the future. Thank you for this excellent and accurate video about Japanese railroads.🙇 (Translation used)
Some additional pushback beyond what's already been offered: Regarding architecture, you saying that Timeout "couldn't even get to 10" for the Japan list and that "many more come to mind that aren't listed" for the UK list isn't really fair, as that partly just reflects the limits of what *you*, a Brit, and whoever wrote those articles happen to know. I'd offer that there's in particular a lack of knowledge of more recent constructions. Omissions that come to my mind include the monumental sloped roof over the tracks at Osaka; smaller stations also with capacious and interesting roofs like Minami-machida Grandberry Park and Takanawa Gateway, both around Tokyo, Universal City in Osaka, and Hyugashi; and a number of newer station buildings on the Hokuriku, Hokkaido, and Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansens. And the attempted belittling of Shinkansen speed and frequency is particularly weak. "Various countries achieve 350 km/h": there's... *two*. While China has an admittedly impressive network, the other, Indonesia, only has a single short line using exported Chinese technology. "HS2 will run at 360": countering with a delayed future line for which there are expert question marks about actual operating speeds is... something. And it's countered by Japanese efforts to continue improving speeds - they're not sitting still either. See JR East's goal for 360 km/h operations based on the ALFA-X experimental train, and JR Central's 500 km/h maglev that's partly under construction. "...and have up to 18 tph, more than the crowded Tokaido Shinkansen": the accompanying visual speaks for itself. Note that this claim was also questioned in the first place.
My point was not at all that this is Britain being better than Japan at high speed rail - I agree it would be wrong to claim as such - but rather to highlight that Japan is by no means far superior to much of the rest of the world, which is a common opinion. There is certainly competition and many countries are in the same league. Though you are largely correct with stations. I deliberated over that point for a very long time, and in hindsight should have left it out.
The stations issue was labouring the point I think - not only did it take up a bit too much time for something that doesn't really make a practical difference to service ( it may make your day a little better, but that is too subjective to be part of this imo ) but also I think reflects differences in culture. I can't say Euston or Brum New St make your day any better either :P. It was a video worth making. I'm not sure you can really directly compare two countries where one seems to be either all megatropolis or wilderness, and another that only has three conurbations ( by Japan standards only one, really ) and the rest of it's population splattered about all over the place but these "stop being so hyperbolic" videos are necessary.
@@Karibanu I agree, the stations point really deserved no more than a minute. I just wanted to portray a relatively unequivocal picture, but in hindsight it was largely irrelevant.
While I love the Japanese railways and many of their aspects, I love that you legitimately criticised it and acknowledged its shortcomings. It seems that many media outlets really exaggerate the greatness of the railways, and I think even I have been gullible to think it's all done at a well enough standard, especially considering that it's rather hard to really know if the situation is well when you haven't even properly experienced the situation. The points on the work culture were as you mentioned, a much broader look on Japanese society and its horrible treating of the common people. I'm based in Sydney, and while I think we have lots to improve on, work culture probably isn't one of them. Unions are highly prominent and workers are treated well, like actual people rather than just labour to use. I hope that the situation can improve, and to not constantly dunk on our own systems while solely praising somewhere like Japan's. We're all trying to get to these various transportation goals, which means looking at the downsides of various systems and how to avoid them; which of course, includes the ones that we praise most. Thank you for making this video, it helps in truly understanding how we can improve rather than just being kind of blinded.
As others have mentioned, a lot of how JNR became JR Group can be attributed to the bubble bursting and was later also replicated with the privatization of Japan Post a few years later as well. What you’re missing is these companies are massive vertically. Japan Post is the country’s biggest BANK for example. And all railroads in Japan are huge real estate companies. It’s their job to develop properties like housing estates, shopping malls and office complexes. Take Tokyu Corporation for example. Their railway network takes up all of southern Tokyo metropolis and a lot of Kawasaki and Yokohama in Kanagawa. Needless to say, they also operate all the office skyscrapers in Shibuya and downtown Yokohama as well as a lot in between. The focus has always been on getting people to and from these developments as quickly as possible, so the stations are designed that way. Also no talk of through-running here - almost all suburban regional trains run into and become central subway metro routes. Again, no need to have lots of ornate stations to change modes when the train you spent an hour on getting into the city is also the subway that lets you off under your destination as well.
Thank you for your video. As a swiss I see happening something similar with our rail system. Especially internationally it often gets praised as one of the best systems in the world while problems get overlooked. Of course it really is good with the clock face scheduling, in punctuality or having the strong support in the population and all that, but that dosen‘t mean that it hasn‘t any flaws. Be it the high prices or that also SBB suffers to some degree from the fact that they are technically privatised; we face in many things the same issues like in most european countries. SBB also has/had a fair share of internal issues especially in miscommunication between divisions. It led to things like that older train carriages had dangerous doors where even DB warned them and recommended to replace, until a horrible accident had to happen. Also while the infrastructure is well maintained, Switzerland has a similar problem like the UK, a lot of routes are over a 100 to 150 years old and very curvy which don‘t allow for any faster trains. And if they can run faster, due that all rail running on the same tracks, faster trains often get scheduled slower because of slower freight trains. Especially the west of Switzerland gets neglected in that regard. Trains are really slow and it takes ages from Bern to Geneva. The trains themselves are nice, but most SBB Intercity trains are not on a ICE, TGV or even Railjet Level in terms of service or comfortability. For Eurocitys, where SBB actually has for some lines fancy high speed trains that can go 250km/h, they still often use standard carriages. Even in the national network they regularly just use S-Bahn/Regio like trains for IC/IR lines. To be fair it is better to provide a train instead of nothing. I don‘t want to shit on the swiss system, I know that the problems here are very minor compared to many other nations. Though I think it is important to keep in mind that people often tend to positively (or negatively) exaggerate other things compared to what they are used to. Nothing is perfect and there is always room for improvement.
I'm not really acquainted with the transit advocacy side of the internet but Japan definitely is the best place for train nerds. The sheer variety of trains, terrains, and services is unbeatable, and the transit companies are very accepting of the fandoms surrounding them. The train enthusiasts that take photos are notoriously rude though
@@tachobrenner they're often really inconsiderate of others. They illegally enter private property, destroy plants, and pilfer train parts all in an effort to get better photos. The community itself is quite toxic too.
I do want to point out a few things where I think you glossed over a bit too quickly. With the 2005 incident that killed over 100 people, including the driver, you are correct in that he was running 90 seconds late and had recently already served a harsh punishment,, however the running "late" is probably not the (only) reason for him entering the curve at that speed. He also had made a different mistake that morning and just heard the driver at the back of the train reporting that mistake over the radio, which could have also distracted him. One of the recommendations to come out of the investigation from that accident was that there was an urgent need for cultural change within the Japanese rail sector whereby the type of punishments handed out really had to change. You mention the steep increase in the cost of a JR pass by 70% and compare that to the Interrail pass which hasn't seen any increase in recent years. But what you fail to mention is that the JR Pass hadn't seen any increase in decades and was becoming the victim of its own success. When you have queues at the travel centers where you can exchange your vouchers of sometimes over 2 hours, when it becomes difficult to make a reservation because the green car is full of tourists on a JR Pass, you have an issue. The pass simply had gotten too cheap. I love myself a beautiful station, and you can actually find some of those in Japan. But not having beautiful stations to me is not a problem. Just have a look at what the costs are for maintaining those beautiful temples of the railroads and compare that to what the Japanese have done to ensure that a lot of their stations actually generate a positive income from turning them essentially into shopping malls. While there are a lot of slow lines in Japan, the slowness often comes from the twisting lines to follow the landscape. And at that point in time I feel it is also important to note that roads for cars have to do the same thing. Any train that doesn't stop every couple of minutes should still be faster than a car on most journeys, at least if your destination is within proximity of a station. Japan's debt might be the highest in the world, yet it is more sustainable than that of other countries because of who is holding that debt. While most countries sell most of their debt papers to foreign investors, with Japan, most of the debt is in the hands of Japanese companies. So where China could potentially bankrupt the US because it holds so much of America's debt, it is unlikely that Japan would ever find itself in such a situation as those holding the debt would also suffer dramatically should they allow Japan to fail on its obligations. At the end of the day, we should learn from the positive things that other rail networks have to give, be it Japanese, Swiss or even the good things about British railways. There are positive stories to be found everywhere. Perfection doesn't exist but we can aim to improve.
Thing: 😐 Thing, Japan: 🤯 Fr it's so wild how people refuse to admit that Japan is a country with flaws just like anywhere else instead of some amazing utopia where the grass is greener.
Japan is seen as the utopia of the right. Sweden as the utopia of the left. In reality both are great countries but not perfect and have problems much like everywhere else. What can’t be argued about Japan’s railways is that in percentage terms the proportion of journeys made by rail is far higher than other first World countries.
@@lawrenceporter8389 if Japanese is utopia of the right, why the rights mostly against building public transport?, like they always said cars are freedom or something
@@lolololo-cx4dp It's privately owned public transport. As long as all of that fat cash ends up in the pockets of some "Übermensch", they are happy or something ...
My understanding is that both JR shikoku and JR hokkaido are not private but still government owned along with the the freight part of JR. A quik wiki search also shows JR shikoku and JR hokkaido are 100% owned by the government owned JRTT. The interrail pass is a nightmare that requires you to plan your entire journey months ahead of time because otherwise 'all interrail seats on this train have been sold out' also it has shit tonne of hidden fees the French railways being of course the most famous for having these fees but certainly aren't the only ones. IMO it's not comparable to the JR railpass which is hassle free and allows reservations free of charge and does not require booking trains months in advance. Interrail/eurail is something that exists for railfans due to it's complex booking system and way to many exceptions and fees.
Yes, JRs Hokkaido and Shikoku are Government owned companies, but they’re still companies. I discussed this in the relevant footnote, but did not consider these exceptions important enough to put in the Final Cut of the video.
@@GWVillager They are actually still government supported. They are drawing on a Management Stabilization Fund set up by the government during the privatization process because they determined that JR Hokkaido and JR Shikoku will have financial difficulties due to declining population and poor population density in their assigned regions. JR Kyushu was also drawing on the fund until recently when their real estate business helped them to break even in 2022.
Most of the characteristics of Japan’s railways are the results of its topography rather than mythical Japanese ingenuity, and just isn’t replicable in most of the world. With 70% of its land being uninhabitable mountains, its 120 million people are living in dense urban areas. Hi population density means high demand of public transportation and easy access to affordable labor pool, so it’s easier for railways to reach profitability. Little enclaves of habitable lands are spread apart amongst rather long and narrow island, which increases demand for speed. Frequent typhoons makes airplanes unreliable. Its low energy sufficiently also makes car travels expensive. Japan has to have fast, efficient, reliable railways.
Low energy self sufficiency and tough terrain also means that speeds are low even on roads, making very tiny 660cc cars actually viable, though the advent of hybrid and electric cars have started to make these kei cars become less popular.
One also has to bear in mind that when we consider best train system in the world, both West Europe and Japan are world leaders. Second point is punctuality, I think it is proven that regular punctuality is the most important aspect passengers perceive when it comes to transportation, where from Europe probably only Switzerland beats Japan.
I often wondered why Shinji’s mind train was an old fashioned, wooden interior, train like a 1920s or 30s Tube. Seeing this footage of the wobbly single-carriage rural trains, I guess it was just meant to be a rural train! He did live rurally before moving to Tokyo-3 to be with his dad. I guess that was the train he took to move out to/back from the sticks.
While I apprechiate the video, the argumentative trick you pull at around 14:00 feels a bit scummy and deceptive. "The Shinkansen [has a] maximum speed of 320km/h, and an intensly frequent service, but it's not the fasteset in the world, [...] and Britain's HS2 will run at 360" You're comparing the Shinkhansen here with a train that does not exist, you're comparing plans and dreams with actual trains that run at this second. That feels weird, at the very least. Yes, China, France, Germany, Italy -- we all have fast trains, *too*, but the Shinkhansen does have an edge because it's frequent, fast, punctual, and has a fairly wide network. That's really neat! And HS2 *might* be frequent, it'll be fast, but will it be punctual? Eh. And the network is one line that's like, cut in half. That comparision really is a bit silly. And the German ICE network is fast, has a wide network, but the frequency is "eh" and punctuality is very low. This isn't to say that the Shinkhansen network is perfect - I haven't used it, so I don't have a strong opinion on the matter. But comparing UK dreams with existing japanese infratructure that's carrying passengers right at this second is weird, and imo almost deceptive.
to compare HSR by speed seems superficial. The Tokaido Shinkansen's 80% share in the market (plane and rail) between the two of the busiest metro areas in the world tells you everything you need to know about how speed is not everything.
I'm canadian, I've been to London, and went to Japan in october. i was one of the last people to really take advantage of the rail pass before the price increase. I don't really drive and take plenty of public transport. My biggest problem with Japanese transport was how convoluted it was sometimes. Theres too many cooks in the kitchen. in Tokyo, you had JR, Tokyo Metro and Toei, which have very little compatibility with each other. You have an integrated fare card at least but zero fare integration. Need to get from a TOEI to a tokyo metro station? double fare. The connections also become labyrinths if you have to change systems. same system? great. And thats not speaking of all the private lines that have even less integration with the major rail lines. Other than long distance trains outside of London, this felt like a nonexistent issue in London unless you were taking the bus. The fair zones are super straightforward and you have simpler interchanges. In british terms, Japan feels like it hasnt completely left the time when the metropolitan and district railways were competing with each other.
Fantastic video, it's my first of yours but you certainly earned my subscription. Lovely animations and footage, and great points. Thanks from Utah, USA!
I am one of those guys who hyped up Japanese public transit, and become train weeb (densha otaku) thanks to my first dip in Japan back then. But ever since that, I've been staying in Japan for work (real salaryman job, not social media or entertainer stuff), instead of being a tourist. It quickly brought me to reality check about why Japanese have a lot of complaints, even about their own seemingly excellent public transit services. In general, I would divide the negativities between "cultural East Asian" and those that are uniquely Japan - things that makes Japan great, but costs them a lot. "Cultural East Asian" is what makes Taiwan transportation to be accident-prone (plane crashes, train derailment), Korea's Asiana crash landing, China's safety lapses, as well as Japan's accident in near-accident free operations (including those happening in their airports recently, the Haneda collision, and yesterda's Chitose collision). I just never trust that they will learn from those accidents, even the way Southeast Asians learn from accidents. It is in the culture: the school-like institutional hierarchy, strict textbook adherence (instead of balancing them with observational learning), students conformity, hiding mistakes due to intollerant society, and teacher only focus on numbers, problems are not solved, instead considered finished when we found the culprit. It is easily finger-pointing problem solving model. As Chinese descent myself, this is a very familiar habit, even in my own family when we discuss about accident news. That being said, Japan being an island nation, also highly suffer from "Galapagos syndrome" - a problem uniquely their own, and their acceptance of the problem being part of their "culture". One way Japan is super behind its own neighbours of Korea and China is when they have to deal with "unusual", "non-regular", or "changes" that is not in their training or textbook material. It is saddening, frustrating, as well as comedic to watch the chaos in Japanese fashion. It reminds of me and my friends back in highschool, when we forgot to study for exam or when a pop quiz question didn't exist in the textbook material. Japan is keeping everything artificially cheap (to the ridiculous early 1990s level), incuring losses, taking debts, all just to please its aging boomer and retiree populations. They refuse to let prices increase, salary raise, and upgrade stuff. That exarcebates the phenomenon of Tokyo "sucking everywhere else" dry. One way Japan often deals with problem is to solve problem with even more complex solutions. Toyota become a success simply because they accept "working solutions" no matter how ridiculously simple or mundane the suggestions. But typical Japanese business people often think that "if things were that easy, I don't need to pay you that much, don't try to fool me." You will see Japan clinging on to a lot of outdated stuff simply because they have a lot of functions and processes complicatedly tied or meshed into those outdated stuff in a very convoluted rules that they made themselves. However to be fair to Japan: It is a big nation. It has 27,000 km length of rail network, super mountainous and natural disaster-prone. It is not the tiny mountain villages of 5,000+ km Switzerland. Europe is much smaller than everyone thought. Yes, we can't learn everything from Japan, but then again, European solutions are not exactly fit for bigger nations like Japan. Shinkansen, especially that Tokaido network is 295 kph limited, but it linked 505 km city pair (Tokyo and Shin-Osaka station) in just 2 hours 20 minutes. It is easily the fastest service around, even China and Spain's 400 kph Talgo and Fuxing trains don't go between 500 km city pairs apart that fast. Frankfurt to Berlin is just 550 km, and it takes the Germans 3 hours 57 minutes, with a train capable of reaching 345 kph. Top speed is meaningless. Japan's slow regular train speed is simply because of their cape gauge 1,067 mm rail network that is prone to hunting oscillation beyond 130 kph, according to their own study. An accident can delay the entire service, close the line, and rendering the speed bonus useless. Moreover, what's wrong with Japan's TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) model? Air travel is heavily subsidised because of their refusal to bear the actual cost of running airports and its navigation facilities - which are either subsidised by the government or operated at a loss by the airport operators. With real estate subsidising transit services is good - it also serves the transit users. Of course, it doesn't always work everywhere, especially in rural areas.
Slow conventional line speeds are not due to the use of 3ft 6in gauge lines. The Hokuhoku line ran express trains at 160 kph for two decades without incident. In addition, the standard gauge conventional network has similar speed limits.
Been on japanese trains and the staff are so polite I got a bow from the driver as I got on train was on time very comfortable and had a buffet car with fresh food staff had smart uniforms all with peak caps
i love watching videos covering the problems of such extensive railway networks like the JR group or the ones in the UK while i'm here in mexico with only a handful of railway projects that seem more like tourist attractions than anything serious excellent video btw
It's definitely interesting to see videos about Asian and European railways that point out the problems and the downsides. It seem like there are so few videos that actually acknowledge that there is any negative attributes to them at all.
The main problem with government operation is that they are bloated. They have tons of personnel that do pretty much nothing. The main benefit of having a operation private, is to fut down on personnel, and in that case you have to get rid of personnel to do so. Its just in the nature of how things works. In Europe, not only in UK, but also in Germany, Sweden and a few other countries with problems. The issue isn´t that privatization failed, despite a lot of people think that. The issue is that there have been to much expansion with to little new rail. When Japan was building new rail in the 60s and 70s. Europe was pulling up rail. The load factor on European rail is just way to high. Its a bit unfair to say that interrail is for tourists. Interrail is mostly used by people living in Europe. So while its used so to say for tourist use, its used for local tourists, that is very different to tourist that fly in "various countries reach 350km/h" Exatly one.. china. And with exactly 2 trains. The CR400 and the TR-Shanghai (that does reach 430km/h). It might not sound like it, but de-elecftrifcation may be a good thing. The issue with electric network is that it cost quite a lot in maintenance, regardless of if being used or not. A train consume very little fuel (at least at modest speed as 160km/h) and the power and acceleration is really not that different today between electric and diesel trains at that speed. You really need to go past 200km/h for electric train to have a significant advantage.
1. I (and the majority of people with common sense) would take punctuality and reliability over architecturally pleasing stations any day. Enjoy waiting for your delay in your beautiful station though. 2. You ignore that Japan does transit-oriented development (TOD) far better than anyone in the West. This is where vertical integration and private ownership help a great deal. TOD boosts ridership on the rail network, increases economies of scale, and lowers car dependency, which are all good things for costs and the planet. The railways’ investment in real estate, which supports TOD, is therefore very good for society, and not a bad thing at all. In terms of costs, while the Shinkansen is pricey, commuter rail and subway fares in metro areas (which is what non-tourists use most day-to-day) are still cheap. Fares in the Tokyo area had been unchanged for nearly 30 years (except to account for increases in the sales tax rate) until last year’s 5% fare hike. Japan also has London and most western cities beat in terms of integration between suburban rail and subways, with thru running and shared ticketing systems that removes the need for a rail to subway transfer at a rail terminal in the center city (you can do this in London only with Crossrail and Thameslink but not much else, while every major suburban line in Tokyo runs thru direct on the subway).
I did ignore these things - but as I clarified in the description, this isn't a balanced assessment of the Japanese rail network. If it was, I would obviously have brought them up and would be largely positive. Instead, though, it's a collection of criticisms.
I've been around Japanese trains all my life and they are quite the marvel, not without its problems but you could say that with anything. While not "perfect" Japanin my opinion has the best trains and railway system in the world from what I've experienced.
This was a very balanced video covering the issues facing Japan's railways. Overall, Japanese railways are excellent, especially considered to the rest of the world, but there are cracks beneath the surface. Fares are very high compared to Europe, while rural railways are in poor shape. Furthermore, speeds could be higher on suburban and rural railways (this would require funding for grade separation). Japanese rail companies' decisions to invest in realn estate is a great idea since it allows them to profit from development made possible by railway expansions, but I do think the government should. I also liked how you pointed out that while Japan's railways are great, we also have similarly great systems in places like London and Switzerland. Japan just manages to have good railways everywhere (rather than just in Tokyo), but the system is in bad need of revamping and grade separation, ideally with an infusion of public dollars.
I think a big part of the problem is land. There isn't much physical space around the tracks in the major cities. Grade separation is being carried out, but slowly. Again, due to space issues. The Odakyu Electric Railway fought NIMBYS for 10 years to elevate and quadruple the tracks of its busiest section to increase frequency. Over past few decades several rail lines that were previously ground level tracks have had some sections elevated (i.e. Chuo Line, Keikyu Line, Hankyu Kyoto line, etc.) Effort is underway but it is very difficult. Just go watch some of the cabview videos here on youtube. You will realise how close the tracks are to the roads and buildings. In Japan, many companies offset their employee's commute fares. Real estate investment has become something of a necessity to keep the railway company afloat financially. Most of them are using the profits to offset the losses from upkeep of rail services. Unless I am mistaken only JR Central is making a serious killing off its tokaido shinkansen. Many cities and towns in Japan want a shinkansen. Several railway companies have formed committees to promote shinkansen in their region. Shikoku shinkansen, Trans-chugoku shinkansen are some examples. So far, none of these plans have materialised due to poor potential returns. A shinkansen line is built with part government funds, part prefecture funds, and part railway funds, with the state footing the largest share. Rural railways are often suffering from deep financial losses. The closure of railway lines in japan isn't straight forward. It requires all the major towns and prefectures affected by the closure to agree. Often, they won't agree unless there is some form of satisfactory service replacement (i.e. buses). The closure of a large portion of the Hidaka main line was a great example of this. JR Hokkaido determined that the cost to repair the line damage from Typhoon 17, considering the ridership and maintenance costs, was unstainable. It took 5 years of negotiations before all the towns agreed to the closure.
Thanks for sharing your balanced view point on Japanese Railways. Lots of good info in their on how things actually are. One thing though. I imagine they had lots of historic buildings and stations before they were carpet bombed relentlessly. Looking forward to them leading the way and trialing the intercity Maglev. Upgrading frequency and points and things. Lot of challenges ahead to see if it's viable and by how much. Thanks man.
Our country ain't perfect just like any other country lol It's interesting watching the two extremes of westerners claiming 'Japan is living in 2100' and 'Japan is a living hell' fight each other on the internet when it's always a lot more nuanced than that. Thanks for the vid
The transit density stood out to me when I was browsing Google Earth, looking at Japan's network. Even in cities there's very large gaps in the rail transit network, and between that and the abundance of expressways, it's quite evident why Japan, despite being a "rail faring nation" has a surprisingly high car ownership rate. My limited experience of the UK was one where I didn't even need to think about a car, both because of London's great network, and because the lines though the countryside actually take you to places you may have reason to go. Indeed, while the Beeching Cuts stripped out a lot of trackage, those routes often are trails or treelines with little redevelopment, making them potential candidates for reopening should they be needed, making the current network even denser. Another point I noticed that seems to be a historical trend rather than an active decision is that of grade separation and good junction planning. In mainland Europe, as well as the UK and here in North America, while level crossings do exist, a lot of major or very new routes barely interact with road traffic, if at all. Meanwhile Japanese routes often have numerous level crossings straight through neighborhoods within well developed parts of cities, which probably plays a large part in collision rates and the correlated speed limits. Japanese networks also seem to have a lot of flat junctions where lines cross each other or even share signifcant trackage in some areas, which could prove to hurt service frequency in the long term, whereas the rest of the world is focusing heavily on flyover junctions and cross-platform interchanges. This isn't to say Japan isn't doing that at all, the non-JR private company, Hankyu, is doing some pretty impressive grade separation and interchange streamlining such as at Awaji Station. One thing I do have to give credit to with Japanese railways is the real-estate element. Many major railway companies who created some of the greatest passenger (and in some cases even freight) networks did so through the real estate model. The US and UK in particular seemed to largely abandon this when nationalization or city-control of services occured, trying to make fares pay for the systems, rather than using the larger economic activity that they produce and enable. In the US this seems to be changing, as Brightline and CalHSR seem to have a substatial realestate development angle.
Building new grade crossings have been been illegal in Japan since 1987 and have resulted in huge and often unnecessarily large flyovers all throughout the country as you have mentioned. The reason many of even the mainlines aren't grade separated is because all of them started as interurbans in the late 19th and early 20th century.
You're wrong. Car ownership in Tokyo is really low. People don't just rely on trains, buses and bicycles are also very common for people who live further from train stations, and that works well. You don't need extreme coverage.
"The US and UK in particular seemed to largely abandon this when nationalization or city-control of services occured" - The UK didn't abandon it, it never existed in the UK at all except for the Metropolitan Railway, due to legal obligations to sell off excess land.
A brave take to honestly address some concerns about the Japanese railway culture. If you are going to read through this, I highly appreciate your patience. My biggest complaint is in point 5 which can be read on its own. Here are some things I'd like to add: (most info is from memory) 1. Finance of JRs: Despite the obvious success, merit has not been equally distributed across the branches of JR. The "Big 3" of JR: JR East, JR West, and Central JR quickly became sustainable as they respectively owe the regional businesses of Tokyo, Osaka, and the hugely profitable Tokaido Shinkansen alongside Nagoya. However, the leftover JRs, particularly JR Shikoku and JR Hokkaido do not enjoy the comparable advantage of having a huge metropolitan region that guarantees ridership and are left as victims of the declining rural. The two are not financially sustainable and have to rely on Gov subsidies. JR Hokkaido, in particular, has to deal with the natural heavy snowfall and the subsequent delays, maintenance, and extra manpower required, which makes it the most vulnerable. (A former president actually killed himself in 2011 over a derailment accident). It is hoped that with the upcoming Hokkaido Shinkansen connecting Tokyo and Sapporo they can finally have a saving grace as a survivable business. 2. Company culture: As mentioned by other comments, JR West has been seen as the one having the worst employee treatment, partly due to the fierce competition they have in the Kansai region with the numerous private railways, which more often than not, run through the denser part of Osaka and can focus on their fewer assets while actively enable through running trains across companies. Train service by JR West therefore has to be much stricter and staff are often under pressure. Speeding was a common practice to avoid delay which resulted in the infamous derailment in 2005. In 2017 an N700A Shinkansen train had a broken bogie, and it took the staff 30 minutes to find out due to the confusing protocol. (There is probably more stuff to accuse of, but they are beyond me. Could check them out on the Japanese side of UA-cam) 3. Quality of trains: The state of trains and trams running can be seen as hugely disjointed across regions. The reasons are complex, but they are largely to blame for the rural decline(again). By law, whenever a new Shinkansen line was to be built, the responsible sector of JR had to give up on the old regional rail. The local Gov would take it and set up a separate company to transfer and manage it, with the hopeful (but more often than not, wishful) goal of being financially sustainable. The business environment is inherently harsher as their very route are replaced by HSR, which is superior in every way and lets passengers skip all the local towns that the old rail serves. Trains are leftover old models from JNR and obviously, they would not have the resources to be modernized. In effect, they are relegated to legacy lines and the hope is to attract tourists who enjoy the scenery and goods of rural towns. Inside a great corporation like JR, it is reasonable to assume new trains are invested into denser urban routes first, while older model would see their later life in the rural network. The hierarchy would repeat so it would not be surprising to find current models of trains in Tokyo serving the Tohoku region in the coming decades. However, it is erroneous to assume rural regions can't enjoy new trains on their own. New tram/light rail systems are built in more rural cities like Utsunomiya, where they have the main station exit completely renovated (a topic I will touch on) that serves 3-car low-floor trams. Toyama (an even more rural city blessed by new Shinkansen service) also saw its main station completely renovated and finally enabled their tram lines to connect north to south through it, a first in 50 years or so. They also enjoy the service of the low-floor trams, too.
4. Pricing: I say first and foremost that, yes, traveling by train in Japan is hella expensive. I believe it is both a cause and a result of the high living costs in metropolitan areas in Japan. Prices are often directly, and reasonably, correlated with the level of monopoly the railway company holds over the regions and/or the end-to-end connection. This is the exact reason why Central JR could be so profitable as the Tokaido Shinkansen is easily the faster, most direct, accessible, and interconnected service between the three biggest metropolitan areas: Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Even airlines have to constantly lower fares to compete with them. In other cases when companies face competition, prices would be more reasonable, and every level of service would tend to be covered of some sort (entry economy class). *HOWEVER* , the news you gave about the price jump of the JR pass is a bit laughable in this context. As you have mentioned, it is tourist-focused. And after 2022 tourism bloomed so virtually every sector related to tourism raised their price tags. Well, are you gonna pay for it or just don’t come here? Especially when Yen/USD already fell like 30%? 5. Coverage (I have a few more personal comments here): The wayfinding and interconnection are indeed not the best in Japan, especially in Tokyo. This is partly due to the plethora of private rail companies all doing their tracks and services separately and putting much less work into integrating with one another, mostly in the past. However, development has slowed since then, and companies have realized the importance of making railway interchange efficient and elegant. Digital wayfinding is everywhere in the system. The two subway companies, Tokyo Subway and Toei Metro have collaborated to eliminate some literal walls in stations and enable easier transfer. Private railways jump on the train (pun intended) of enabling through running that allows easier travel between suburbs by running in metro tunnels. Where before, passengers had to get off in some central Tokyo stations, suffer through the commute, and get out on the other side. Double fares, although still required in many instances, are reduced. For example, since 1998, a direct through-running service between Narita Airport and Haneda Airport was created that enables travelers to switch from the regional airport to the international one on a single ride across 70+km. I sincerely could not think of an equally impressive service around the world. And I haven’t even touched on the associated Bus services, which are mostly run by the railway companies themselves to promote ridership of their services by connecting local areas with stations. *Here comes my biggest, major complaint from this video.* Although I agree with you that the more spread-out part of the city would get lesser station coverage, by the nature of the Kanto region, basically everywhere around central Tokyo is suburban to it, and this is a fairly common sight for suburban rail. The map at 08:10 is technically not Tokyo, but the Kanton region that Suica serves. That includes legally Tokyo Metropolis itself, along with portions of Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Ibaraki Prefectures. As I have mentioned before, they serve as suburban areas for Tokyo itself. So the map you have shown is actually, in the majority, just the suburban railway, and in itself, only tiny portions of major stations are shown. Not to mention the lack of information within the suburban network, let’s take a look inside the centre portion. Within the oval-shaped black-and-white line of the Yamanote line, can you see the coloured lines that have suspiciously very few stations? They are the very subway lines that serve the most important stations in the CBDs, and I reckon there are close to 100+ subway stations missing from this map. Yes, your method of comparison is very nonscientific. And yes, the Tokyo and Kanto region railway network is really in another league on its own globally. 6. Station and their architects: This topic is very subjective and the personal preferences on stations artistic designs vary. But I do still have a few things about Japanese stations to say. Europe certainly enjoyed its early leap in railway development, and as a result, had much more major grand stations than Japan in earlier days. It was not until the 20th century that the Japanese had the resources and interest to commit and expand station designs, although they were largely utilitarian in nature with modern concrete structures. A surviving member would be the main building of Ueno Station which was completed in 1932. I said ‘surviving’, because however nice of the station were, be it wooden or concrete, they would just be bombed to dust in WW2. In the post-war era, very few plans were to be implemented to restore the former glory of the stations, and most major stations just got rebuilt based on development needs like Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Shibuya of today, and are mostly function over form. Only recently (2012) that the red brick Tokyo station(09:31) was rebuilt to pre-war looks, which had its top 2nd floor (following the British way of floor numbering) blown away by bombs and remained as a 2-story shell until recently. Not that the Japanese don’t care about making old stations nice, however, as seen in the grand modern structure of Umeda(Osaka) and Kyoto stations. The photo at 08:00 featured a station from the Ginza Line (the oldest subway line in Asia), it had only recently been renovated in 2017 into that sexy look. Previously stations along the line were just another dystopian white and yellow, hospital-looking murky stations. 7. Speed (and efficiency for that matter): As mentioned by other comments, most Japanese railways came with the historic handicap of being built on a 1067mm narrow gauge track, compared to the 40% wider 1435mm standard gauge of most of Europe and that of the Shinkansen. That serves as the main hurdle for a speedy local service. Although some trains in Shikoku and previously Joetsu regions could run 120mph service, a lot of compromises were made. However, to make up for the loss, most railway companies are obsessed with providing express services that could often leapfrog traveling time and serve as main weapons to steal customers from one another by providing ever more efficient transport options by new stations and tracks, such as converting old freight track into passenger use which has the added benefit of inherently fewer stops. So I do not necessarily agree with the notion that speed is the only metric of efficiency. And the efficiency of the Japanese rail network (large cities in particular) truly shines in places not felt directly. The location of stations being the hotspot itself, the guaranteed success of using travel cards even across the country, most lines are (arguably) up to the tasks of their ridership…These are the true firsthand experience of a passenger and the system functions very well considering the needs of millions of people it needs to fulfill. P.S. From 03:20 to 04:30 you mentioned how JR East had tons of businesses outside of railways. I would say this is a common phenomenon for conglomerates (Zaibatsu in Japan, Chaebol in Korea) in East Asia to control multiple branches of businesses across society, and in some way dictate its functioning. MTR from Hong Kong is another example. Make of it as you will I guess. Oh god. The ‘few points’ had been expanded into a 1900-word comment. Basically, every other concern and problem you have raised are important and the Japanese do have to find ways to overcome them. There are tons of other problems like accessibility not being on par with European or some regional suburban services simply not existing. I do not see your video as faulty, but rather thought-provoking. I love Japanese railways to my heart, even to the knowledge of its deep flaws. I certainly hope they can find better solutions and actually improve their own lives through the system
I am very aware of the fact that your channel is British-based, while I have zero experience of any European system. So any observation starts from here the east without much knowledge of the west. Some attributes may be more, or less desirable from your perspective. Again, make of it as you will. (kaya9994's comment is quite valuable to me. Although not with the same assumption, their questions are worth taking a look too.)
@@brokeafengineerwannabe2071 Thank you for your comments. I'm by no means an expert in Japanese rail, so I will take your comments on board. As for Point 5, it is excellent to hear that wayfinding and integration is being improved. However, for the airport example, I can think of another - The Elizabeth Line in London. A direct, frequent service between Heathrow and London City Airport (a smaller, more regional airport), on modern, stylish trains in truly spectacular infrastructure. Also, I should have made this clearer in the video, but the maps were as close a comparison as I could find. The map used for London is also a suburban map, showing heavy rail lines that extend quite far out of the city. I made the measurements in such a way that the "outliers" that curve back into the map were not included. The 88km figure was made over the city proper.
@@GWVillager Thank you for reading my comments and I appreciate that a lot. Disregarding that the City Airport is much smaller than Haneda, with 3 fewer runways and about 10 times fewer users, it would not undermine the Elizabeth Line which is undoubtedly an impressive rail project, serving not only passengers to and forth airports but also as an express route through London, stopping at important stations that intersect other systems. I also hope the City Airport will get a direct airport-to-airport express service as well someday. As for the map usage, I have less complaint about the scale (as in distance in km), but about the detail contained. The Kanto region map you used is a massively simplified one that heavily distorts the geography to a lateral shape. I have checked the map and it isn't actually missing any stations (My mistake). It is only the compressed file that simply wipes out all the small stations to pixels. I would liken the structure to that of a fractal, in which if you zoom out details will be lost by eyes and the scale seems fine. In reality, the map treats distances between stations disproportionally the further it gets away from the centre, even if just slightly off the Yamanote Line. Stations outside of it are compressed together while those inside are stretched. A more appropriate solution would be to zoom in on Tokyo in the same size as London first to compare the density, then to zoom out linearly to see the true scale of the suburban network to avoid losing details. IMO, London and Tokyo are pretty comparable within a certain radius. It is a great pleasure to interact with you and I certainly hope to learn more about the British system from your channel too!
"The broader corporate culture in Japan appears ... to be better than in the west". Japan's corporate culture isn't really good. It's too risk-adverse, and emphasizes overworking employees. Although government statistics show Japanese workers work OK hours, it's probably because Japanese corporations don't report overtime well. Japan's culture of overwork is very well-known, and Google has a lot of articles on it (and underreporting overtime). Eg. "Japanese working more unpaid overtime: survey" by "The Mainichi" Japanese corporate culture is also too risk-adverse and hierachial, and dominated by old people. This means Japanese people don't switch jobs, which misallocates labour. Additionally, companies don't take enough risks, as with their slow Electric Vehicle strategy. Companies also won't listen to junior employees. There's a reason why Japan has had 3 lost decades of economic growth since their bubble burst in the early 90s.
This was a really interesting watch and brought up some really good points. Certainly integration and wayfinding is something I've noticed seems to be very lacking from some of the videos I've seen about Japan's railways. I've never visited Japan so can't say how accurate this is but it almost looks as if a lot of Japan's railway infrastructure (or at least Tokyo's) looks very retro-futuristic in that it looks like what someone in the late 80s/early 90s might have imagined the future would look like.
Thank you for this video, it makes many convincing points, however, I must object to the assertion that Japan's railways are slower than in other places. While the Shinkansen does not have the highest possible top speed of any bullet train globally, the Hokkaido Shinkansen does have the highest average speed as it can maintain it's top speed of 300+km/h for much of it's route, a feat few other high speed trains can match. The only genuinly slow Shinkansen, the Tokaido Shinkansen, can have its low speed attributed to being built in 1964 and severe over-crowding. Even this point of weakness is difficult to critise however, as it is currently being replaced by the even higher speed Chuo Shinkansen. It is true that Japan doesn't have many 150-200km/h routes like the UK does, that is mostly due to many of those lines having been replaced by truly high speed Shinkansen lines. Far from only connecting the largest cities, a fair proportion of the Japanese Mainline rail network has been replaced by Shinkansen.The Hokuriku, Yamagata, Akitia and Nagasaki Shinkansen serve quite small cities that might not even have rail service at all in many developed countries. The city of Nagano, in Japans mountainous interior,is served by a full-fat buttlet train dispite having a population of less than to that of Cardiff. A Shinkansen line is currently being built to Tsuruga, a city of 66 000. The crazy thing is that isn't even the least used Shinkansen stations, there are areas far less populated with Shinkansen service. The remaining lines connect town of 100 poeople to other towns of 100 people through mountain passes, those kind of lines are not fast in any part of the world if they even exist. For all of the real flaws Japan's rails have, many of which are very well detailed in this video, speed is not one of them.
Very well said. I largely agree with your points there, but there are still plenty of regional trains (particularly along the West Coast) that are slower than they really should be. I’m referring more to lines that operate between cities, but not Tokyo - inter-regional transport, stuff like Nagoya to Nagano.
"there are areas far less populated with Shinkansen service" - because they happen to be inbetween far more populated areas. The idea that the non-Shinkansen intercity lines are solely about "connecting town of 100 people to other towns of 100 people" is nonsense.
@@lbsc1201 Look you're right, I was making a bit of an exaggeration to service the point that the vast majority of lines that you'd hope to be faster than 130km/h (or that you'd expect to be in other countries) are already shinkansen and the remaining regional lines criss-cross the mountainous interior, and for whom urgent traffic have shinkansen alternatives much of the time. Obviously, there are exceptions but the bulk of Japan's main/trunk lines are indeed served by Shinkansen now.
I came to this video with scepticism, as coincidentally recently I had begun obsessing over Japanese infrastructure (I literally spent 3 whole nights looking at just Tokyo's highway infrastructure), but I must say, you have made some pretty good arguments. While I may not agree with all your points, you have definitely brought my attention to some flaws. I still believe Japan has the best infrastructure in the world (and that is coming from a Dutch person, and I firmly believe we have the second best infrastructure over here), but there is always room for improvement.
My findings from 5 weeks in Japan: + The service is very good, for example there's staff everywhere and even very remote stations feature free toilets - Service integration is bad, there seems to be minimal cooperation between different operators. You'll need more than one ticket for many of your journeys. - This also extends to information in general. I didn't find any website or app where you can search for connections in all parts of the country. There are only the (very outdated) websites of the respective operators, and maybe a consolidated system for a small region. - Things look very run-down. Even in Shinjuku station, one of the world's busiest and featuring something like 50 tracks, you can find rust everywhere. It gets a lot worse in rural areas, as shown in this video. - Lack of investment: Apart from the Shinkansen lines, Japan seems to have stopped building new (or rebuilding existing) train lines. For example, no effort to get rid of level crossings at all.
idk what you mean by "no effort to get rid of level crossings at all." The number of level crossings has been halved in the last 50 years from 70,000 to 35,000. In total there are 38 lines under construction and 168 that have already gotten most of their level crossings removed. Also your not finding a website sounds like a you problem? Norikae-annai, Ekitan, Navitime, Eki-supaato among multiple others that cover all Japanese trains, planes, busses and boats. And the official website thing I don't get. They are much more comprehensive than most you'd find in Germany or France, for example. Having to get different tickets for each train company is annoying though, I agree. At least in most cases we can use our transit card.
Can't help but think you've prolly never been to Japan. Living in Tokyo and I'd say I expected this video is gonna mythbust the problem... that commuter trains do have delays every day, especially in Kanto area. It's simply as that. They have timetables that would only work in an ideal setting, but in reality a minor delay in Saitama in the morning would easily propagate into some 15-30-minute delay the entire day in Yokohama, thanks to the extensive through service (in Kanto) and timetables without allowances for minor issues. I'm not sure but it seems you haven't covered much about the daily ride experience (except aesthetics). Is it because the video ends up mostly about JR (which doesn't have much through services to other railway companies), though you conveniently added that extensive Kanto railway network map for comparison with London, when in reality (again) nobody is commuting between Chigasaki on Kanagawa shore and Utsunomiya? The point about the train fare/rail pass price hike is also unfair imo. Most Japanese companies pay for their employees' monthly tickets, which sometimes even include shinkansen or limited express trains, though indeed I won't like it when I'm going somewhere not covered by the ticket on the weekend. The increase in JR passes' price is very justifiable though, seeing how yen's been doing these years and the post-covid overtourism. Don't forget the passes still have much better coverage than rail passes in Europe and allow access to shinkansen and limited expresses cheaply, at least much more economical than for a local. I'd also say their business model cannot be applied universally but works well with Japan and metropoles in East Asia in general. Really don't think the omission of private railways is something considered while producing the video. It's kind of a core to this nation's railway development.
As you mentioned punctuality and timetable at the beginning, I think the timetable somehow has some allowances but just a bit (maybe round 10-30 seconds?) because frequency of the lines around Tokyo should be at least 12-30 trains per hour to satisfy the huge passenger demand in the rush hour, so it is nearly impossible to leave plenty of allowance (especially dwell time) in that situation. And I also started to suspect that commuter trains in Tokyo are not that punctual as the media said after I saw the platform staff spent nearly a minute to close the door while struggling with pushing people into the train 😅
@@yatstransportbureau8848 the rush hour dwell time extensions are included in the scheduled time. As long as a railway company doesn't run its trains earlier or later than scheduled it's on time.
14:30 Let me add one point here: Japan's rural trains are slow in comparison mainly because they are running on the narrow track gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) which is a considerable disadvantage compared to the 4 ft 8.5 in (1435 mm) common in the UK and continental Europe, a gauge which in Japan is reserved for high-speed trains and a small number of underground lines.
Excellent video, really appreciate you trying to bring balance to the often insufferably ignorant fawning over trains in other countries, particularly Japan.
Thanks for this great, informative and well-balanced footage, in my eyes, but I wish to add just one point: 07:36 The price hike for the Japan Rail Pass was simply inevitable because the major Shinkansen lines (Tokaido and Sanyo) are already running beyond capacity. There is simply not enough room left to handle those additional three Million tourists entering the country every month, of which a considerable amount uses the Japan Rail Pass for "free" rides when- and wherever they want to. If you ever happen to ride a Shinkansen "Hikari" train between Tokyo and Kyoto during cherry blossom season, cramped with foreign tourists and their luggage in particular, you will understand. The Japan Rail Pass is tempting its owners for unnecessary short rides such as between Osaka and Kyoto, or Tokyo and Yokohama, using the Shinkansen, just because it's possible. Also because of the speed and reliability of the Shinkansen, long distance return-travel such as Tokyo - Hiroshima or Tokyo - Morioka, on the same day becomes feasible, leading to even more overcrowded connections. So the aim was to reduce the overall traffic and thus to make tourists travelling through Japan in a more thoughtful and planned manner. There are other great means of travel in Japan such as night buses and planes as well, and using them more frequently will be something foreign travellers will benefit from as well as the people living there. That being said, in my opinion, Japan Rail Group has missed the opportunity to rework the Japan Rail Pass itself here. Whereas the Japan Rail Pass enables the user to take an unlimited number of rides within a period of time (one, two, or three weeks), the European system requires to select from a number of days on which to travel, or even gives a certain number of trips to select. In my opinion, that would have been a better solution than just increase prices for the Rail Pass.
Oh certainly, there are reasons to increase the fares. But they have happened, and it is off-putting. Perhaps the JR Pass would benefit from a Deutschland Ticket arrangement, where you can travel on local trains for a very low price, but have to pay extra for the Shinkansen.
@@GWVillager I'm sure you looked into the plethora of other cheaper tickets available the last time you came to Japan? What about the 青春１８きっぷ or any of the free passes the individual JR companies provide
@@GWVillager I had feelings you hadn't. I commend your bravery for evaluating a system without having ridden it; I surely couldn't. When you do come to Japan you'll definitely find a lot of things that are worse or better than you think it may be now.
Nice Video. Its nice to see the flaws of the Japanese Rail Network. Especially the demand for being on time, id much rather have a train be delayed by 7 mins and a driver have nothing come of it over a 20 second delay ruining a drivers life. Likewise, i think the Shinkansen difference to rural lines is a good point as well. Whilst Japan has been heavily investing in Shinkansen, its left the rural lines to be somewhat run down, wheres as here in Britain, our trains may be 20+ years old, but they and the tracks they run on are well maintained. Even more rural lines are well kept, which is in a bit of stark contrast to Japan, as the clips show the trains wobbling at low speeds.
In fairness, the wobbling is largely down to Japan’s narrow gauge, which naturally makes trains appear less stable. It’s not necessarily indicative of track maintenance, though there are clearly some areas that could do with a bit of work!
You cannot compare 128M population Japan (35Million in Metropolitan Tokyo) to less populated cities of London. The 51 Busiest Train Stations in the World- All but 6 Located in Japan
Hmm... not sure it's really honest to cite the historically extremely underpriced JR Pass as an example of some unbounded price increase. Previously if you were making just one round-trip from Tokyo to Kyoto, getting the 7 day pass would be economically sound. Why would a pass that gets you unlimited JR line access throughout the country be so cheap. Even with the price increase, it's still a great deal. Furthermore, general train prices have seen little to no increase in decades. Sure, a 70% price hike feels like a lot, but in the context of foreigners who have spent thousands on flights to get there, it really isn't and considering just how much you can get out of it, it is still a fair deal.
yeah not to mention, area passes also exist (Hokuriku arch pass for example) as well as private passes (Kansai-area daypasses) and are still extremely valuable for the tourist.
Great video, I especially like the call out of the work culture as Japan gas very toxic work (and school) cultures that do need to be addressed. Very good arguments, and a very balanced video on your behalf though I will point out a few things (Especially for those in the comments who are now pretending Japanese railways are rubbish because of this video and are going all out to dunk on them): - Aesthetics: Japan has earthquakes, especially ones such as the Great Kanto one demolished a lot of old, cool looking buildings like the ones we have in the UK - bricks and earthquakes are also not a very good mix. Also given how little flat, habitable land there is in Japan having a big rail station with no other purpose (i.e. apartments or shopping centres) is very wasteful use of land thaf Japan cant afford to have. - The metro map comparison includes places such as the Yokosuka and Boso peninsula, which while part of greater Tokyo, are far from urban, think towards Amersham on the met line or Central line towards Enfield - as you mentioned its a schematic so its very out of proportion and in many areas in Tokyo you cannot go a couple hundred metres without a station, areas that only exist in/around zone 1 in London. Overall Japanese society is in decline, I think we both Britian and Japan (as a British-Japanese person) have been punching above our weight for a long time (two smallish island countries with smallish populations being bigger economies and more developed then places such as India/Brazil/Areas of africa/ ect... forever?). Japan can still be a powerful country and it should definitely take care of its declining birthrate (being a bit more lax on immigration recently) and rural depopulation certainly to make sure this is the case. I don't exactly think its Japans fault that all these (probably not as well informed) news outlets keep harping on about our railways like they do. However, for all the haters in thw comments, don't act like you wouldn't love to have at least aspects of Japanese railways in Britain/elsewhere and that you've seen the flaws of Japanese railways all along - especially when there are the clowns at places such as TPE (no explanation needed), Avanti ("Free government money") and LNER (Whatever the hell that new 70min flex ticket is) running the UK railways. Very well integrated tickets and rail systems between different operators, very frequent service, cleanliness and customer service (though maybe not at th expense at the employees as much please!), very cheap fares (£7+ for a zone 1 day ticket are you kidding me !!?!?!) - 600 yen (about £3.50) for an all day Toktyo metro pass !!! As for GWRVillager, once again great video - as someone with a lot of experience in Japan and Britain I couldn't agree more with your final point - what is best is what works for each country: Japan and Britain are two very different places and while we can learn from each other, we have to find what works best for us
Don’t worry about writing a lot - I love it when people provide genuinely insightful comments. I never really considered that with the architecture, it does make sense. As for the maps, a lot of thought went into that behind the scenes. Tokyo’s map curves in on itself around the edges, with some of those lines extending very far out of the city, as you point out. I chose two opposite points on the map that were roughly at the boundaries of this distortion (I.e, the most distant points that were not doubling back in on the map), and measured the 88km from there. This obviously does ignore some of the extremities, but it’s a case of “steel-manning” rather than “straw-manning” and provides a more representative comparison.
japans problem is mostly with overly concentration on urbanisation towards large cities which i see it can be a huge problem particually when privatisation starts to kick in
I think you bring up some small minus points, but there are many plusses in japan (and not just the high speed trains). They are able to run a huge number of stopping/limited express trains on just two tracks, where other countries would need four tracks for the same level of service. Also they build their trains with all seats facing the direction of travel and seats rotate at the end of the line. In Europe we lazily assume passengers will put up with facing backwards, seats not aligned with windows etc. All to make production of the carriage cheaper.
"stopping/limited express trains on just two tracks" key here is maintenance of passing loops, unrivaled scheduling practices, and precision of driving speed. Hankyu Railway seems to have mastered the art of scheduling I feel
Japanese railways aren't perfect but this video lacks research. Most medium sized cities in Japan have decent and adequate mixed mode public transport. Sapporo, Sendai and Fukuoka have subways. Utsunomia, Hiroshima, Kumamoto and many more have trams. All are in addition to JR or private main lines which run commuter/metro services. Conventional express trains are slow because Japan has already done what the UK wants to achieve with HS2 - build dedicated new lines for long distance service, so local stretches of the main lines can run as frequently as metro services. JR has taken safety seriously since Amagasaki derailment accident and the statement of apology remains on the home page of JR West Japan. In fact, there was an incident where one rolling stock manufacturer built Shinkansen trains with flawed steel. The manufacturer has since been forbidden from building new trains for one of the JR companies. This is quite unimaginable in Europe due to competition law and lack of options outside the big companies.
Excuse my rudeness, but did you even watch the video? I said precisely that about cities, with the exception of the rolling stock manufacturers, which is interesting and impressive. Thank you for informing me.
@@GWVillager You have stated that Railway in Japan has been weak in regional and rural services. I disagree. In fact I specifically point out examples of third or fourth tier cities, the equivalent of Leeds or Sheffield, which have been well served by public transport. Thanks to the Shinkansen and the bubble period, Japan has converted the regional railway to urban commenters. From Sendai to Kagoshima, urban train services are almost unbroken, covering most rural areas along the line. The Hokuriku Shinkansen extension is the ongoing example of this approach - Fukui now sees 8-10 trains per direction per hour. About half of those are express trains between Kanazawa and Osaka/Nagoya, making local trains not as good. The extension will see all those express trains replaced by Shinkansen. This will release track capacity for local trains, improving the services of both local and long distance travel. This also means the fact that Japanese express trains on conventional lines being not very fast is very much done on purpose. For places where demand exist and Shinkansen has not yet covered, the express trains are decently quick. In fact, to study public transport in Japan, JR in Tokyo is not a good example. Rather, see how private railway companies in Tokyo compete or cooperate with each other (or even JR), how JR West competes with private railway companies by differentiating factors such as cost, speed and comfort, and how cities with limited population, such as Fukuoka, bring JR, subway and private railways together and create a seamless system. These are just some examples against your view on the railway in Japan. And to be honest, these are not even the most significant aspects the Japanese have done right with public transport - it is impartial, universal within the entire country, and it is passenger oriented.
the Japanese rail network is undoubtably better than the UK, but Japan is actively performing the beaching cuts as you brought up, local lines being killed while mainlines are improved, while the UK is improving both. If the JR companies keep on this path, it's not impossible that the UK's non-highspeed lines might pass Japan's non-highspeed lines, at least that is my view.
I had 3 different G60s over the space of 20 years, a 1968 then a real clean 1974 model and an even better 1978 model and iv never seen a truck as well looked after as that. Original paint is mint the bonnet braces are still glued on and the roof lining 👌. Excellent truck mate that's a once in a lifetime find, my 78 was the same and engine gearbox & transfer case were rebuilt and like new . I'm absolutely gutted I sold it and should have held on to it .
I have Japanese roots and I'm currently living in Switzerland. A lot of Swiss people praise Japanese rail, but I always say, as you mention, that the Japanese system is only impressive in the cities and Shinkansens. Of course, the safety culture and precision in Japan is imo one of the strictest in the world (with exceptions like the tragic accident of the Fukuchiyama-Line, but the Shinkansen had no major accidents since their opening in 1964), however the Swiss public transit system is ridiculously underrated, as every village has the right of having a regular connection to public transit. Additionally in Switzerland, the timetable guarantees perfect connections between busses, trains and even ships at practically every station. In Japan, this is not the case (esp. on the countryside), so it's not uncommon to have to wait for the next bus/train for several minutes. Overall I think your video is really great, thank you for pointing it out! p.s. you mention that the speeds of Shinkansen is lower than in other countries etc. They can easily build Shinkansens which could travel at 400kph (incl. prototypes like the Fastech360) but they're always a bit more conservative (for various reasons - safety, punctuality, efficiency etc.) when it comes to commercially operating these trains...
Disagree with the London part. Yes teh stations are way more beautiful and interesting, But at least at my last visit 7 years ago there is almost no tube coverage south of the river and the overground lines are not really well integrated and switching is everything but seamless. I had a hotel in crystal palace clearly not a fancy part of the city and it was not very easy to reach that on a friday night. This is unthinkable in Tokyo. Overland travel is still a breeze in Japan, even in remote places. No Japan is by far not flawless, but any comparison with european train services is useless. Think of shinjuku station handling 3.5 million(!) people every day. Without massive packs of people colliding with each other and almost without touching each other. That is more than ten times the amount of people in London Liverpool street.
While interesting video, I find this almost hype up the problems that Japanese railway has while glorifying European railway's triumps. From what I can find there are only 3 things the UK in particular is ahead of the Japanese. Train station architecture, higher speed in conventional lines and also working culture within the train company. Aesthatic are a subjective, Japan's architecture has always been clinical in a country that prefers function over form and also jolted by earthquake every other Tuesday, and while architecture are great, new 'aesthatic' station can take years to complete, look at Stuttguart 21 and even Berlin Hauptbahnhof taking nearly a decade if not more, while relatively boring and spartan Japanese stations like Takanawa Gateway and Kyoto station only took 3 years from ground-breaking to opening. While I am on about aesthatic, I believe Japan's train, when you compare things like the Hida trains, several Odakyu and Kintesu trains and even some Shinkansens like the Nishi-Kyushu and Akita Shinkansen are far better 'aesthatic' than anything in Europe, but that is based on my opinion., the Japanese conventional lines widely adopts the cape gauge standard limiting them to a lower operating speed than the wider standard gauge used in Europes, which not only adopts a wider gauges but alos a narrower profile than Japanese conventional line, improving high speed stability. Additionally, while I understand it is a Western thing for seats to be placed permanently fixed forwards or reverse to the direction of travel and sometimes facing together, the Japanese rotating seat always ensure the seats are facing forwards, which I find much more comfortable and I believe having better seat pitch. The one thing I can't argue are the working condition of Japanese train company. In addition to the refusing to operate GOa3 and above of driverless train, they frequently stress their workers to perform almost robotically. But given how Japan's railway are operated where many different lines and different trains each with different destinations / speed and stops all operate on the same track line, it is important to keep everything working almost like clockwork. Japan has begin to move towards driverless train operation as Japanese train companies, and the wider industries begin to face extreme labour shortage. While I can go on, I have no expereience riding on a UK train outside of watching train videos, and however sat in many different Japanese trains. While Japanese trains have problems, almost none that you highlighted is what I belive are Japan's train problem, which i believe is a Japan problem, which are declining population, toxic working culture and appaling geographical hazards.
Well, one thing that puts both Britain and Japan above my country, America, is that all of their largest cities have some form of rail Based transportation for passengers, My hometown, the Capital city of Ohio, for example, is the largest city in the United States without any form of passenger railway serving it, and i know there is at least one other major US city that lacks a rail connection as well.
3 looooooong complaints: If I remember correctly, most of the bullying reports were coming from JR West, which is the company that caused that horrible accident in 2005. Not all JRs or Japanese rail companies are like that, and I think a lot of Japanese people who know the history were deeply disappointed that such culture still exists in JR West. Although employee treatment is a very, very deep problem in Japan, such practices and “educations” are considered ridiculous bullying even in Japan. I don’t particularly agree with you that Japanese rural trains are not as great as that of the UK, since I personally thought THAT line you showed on the video was very specific (I have never seen such a bad-looking facade of a train. The furnishing inside was a popular one, and you see them often on local trains in rural areas, but are British trains always new and fresh everywhere in the UK?). Take an example from, let’s say, Hokkaido island’s Sōya Line. It runs through a very rural area, but the trains used for the “limited trains” do not look as bad as that car. In turn, in the UK, you have places where HST + carriages which are not so up-to-date, and I think situations are not remarkably different in Japan and the UK in terms of the quality of cars running on the rural railways. (Well, if you meant England when you said “the UK”, maybe.) Speaking of regional transport, yes, some Japanese trains can be very slow, but I am not sure if the British railway network service is any better at this. Yes, Swiss train system is great, but it’s mainly because Switzerland is such a snowy and mountainous country (in almost all areas) with many cities situated close to each other, which hinders efficient transport by cars on motorways or by aircrafts. I don’t know how much of this can be applied to England or to other countries in the UK. Also, I am not sure about the point on the speed. Yes, less than 50 minutes to Birmingham is great, but even after the currently constructed HS2 is open, London-Manchester is 1 hr 41 minutes, and Tokyo-Nagoya is 1 hr 40 minutes (both are apart by roughly 260km as the crow flies). If you discuss the part of HS2 beyond Birmingham, I do not see why you would exclude the Linear Shinkansen (Magnetic High Speed Trains). They might both be around by 2030s, and the linear one is planned to be as fast as 500 km/h. I also believe that most of the Japanese transport systems are well organized and coordinated for most passengers in most major cities, so I do not know if the German example overdoes cities like Tokyo, Osaka, or Nagoya. But overall, yes, I do agree that Japanese railways are never perfect, and many Western European train networks, in some cases, are much more profitable, more electrified, more sustainable, or faster. And, speaking of speed, Chinese High Speed Trains, TGVs, and ICTs have better records. I think each country has its own problems and unique ways to address them, and that Japanese landscape of very narrow and long archipelago with mega-cities are somewhat different from the British, and, as you and some other viewers pointed out, sharply declining population and such a huge amount of unprofitable rural railway lines with national government’s preference and utter emphasis on developing motorways over improving railways are certainly not similar to the issues of the UK railways, so I agree that Japan is probably not the best example to follow when designing a new era of British transportation (it may be one of the sources for inspirations on where to improve, but probably you cannot find an answer for “how” to do so).
The situation at one major rail company can be used as evidence against a broader system - how it was allowed to come to that is a valid criticism. For example, I would (and do) use Avanti West Coast’s failure as an example of the British system’s failures, even though things might be great at, say, Greater Anglia. If I were making a balanced review, I would bring up better conditions elsewhere, but this is more of a one-sided critique - there’s plenty of praise to be found in other places. I felt the same way when comparing the rural networks. The average rural British train is rather nice and modern, but I thought I may as well compare the worst of Japan to the worst of Britain. Those two interiors I showed (the Classes 150 and 153) are widely regarded to be the worst in the country.
@@GWVillager Thank you for the reply! I see your point that such a huge company like JR West can represent some issues of the entire rail system. I'm surprised that all British trains' interiors look relatively new, even the worst ones! I still don't think that those British trains' interiors are better than Japanese JNR-era ones, but I recognise that this is extremely subjective and I now understand your points. Thanks for your clarifications!
I love many aspects of Japanese railways: high maintenance standards, cleanliness, high availability of level boarding, among others. But other aspects, outside those mentioned in the video, are not great. Ticketing and wayfinding gets unnecessarily complicated, especially between different local railway companies, and requires extensive and confusing reading beforehand, as well as using apps like Google Maps, if you're a foreign visitor. Integration between different modes and operators is minimal, despite sharing station buildings - a good example of which are the completely separate Tōkaidō and Tōhoku Shinkansen lines and platforms at Tokyo, and lack of through running. And Japan's corporate culture (or perhaps cult) is one of the most toxic in the world, which heavily contributes to their social problems.
16:43 One more thing: The term "Hybrid Train" not only refers to trains with Diesel-electric engines, but also trains running on hydrogen fuel cells. Given that electricity in Japan is being produced emitting a considerable amount of carbon-dioxyde (e.g. produced mostly by burning Coal and LNG), those technologies actually are capable of reducing the CO2 footprint of trains.
I feel like once people start understanding the Tokaido Shinkansen for its business model around the stations instead of its top speed, people will start understanding the complex networks and concepts that bolster the success of Japanese Railways. For starters, try to see Tokyo not as a single hub, but an agglomeration smaller of seven stations connected by a loop railway. (also applies to Osaka but to less of an extent) IMO the most important narrative is modal share/gravity model of trade between the two cities, as well as the smaller cities along the line.
Finally someone that doesnt praise Japan into a Blivion. In my opinion Swiss Railways are by far the best and most relayable. And the most quality packed one. Great video mate!
Saying that Switzerlands system is flawless is just wrong. There are many problems like way to hard seats in Stadler trains, slow speeds and many trains are only one man operation. SBB is only this punctual because there is a lot of reserve time in the timetable it the train is on time it will probably run 10-20 km below the speed limit.
schedule padding is not necessarily a bad thing. a lot of people would prefer a train that arrives on time later to a train that claims to arrive earlier but is often late
The point about speeds in Japan versus UK needs to be put in the context of geography though - Japan is famous for it's mountains and impressive wild landscapes, most of the places where people in the UK live and commute between are a walk in the park compared to what Japan has to deal with.
@@GWVillager but does it actually make your trip overall faster though? If I am in a smaller town on a regional line in the UK and want to go to one of the big cities on the ECML or WCML, my train to the main line may well be quicker than the Japanese equivalent small town trip to the main line. But then my express train to the big cities may take significantly longer and run much less frequently in the UK than the Japanese equivalent Shinkansen. And that is before we take into account the better Metro and suburban rail coverage in Japanese cities, or that UK mainline journeys have many more delays and disruptions than the Japanese mainlines. So my overall journey time might still be slower depending on the nature of the trip.
@@BigBlueMan118 Yes, it may be slower, but that journey to the mainline is faster, and many people will only make that journey. My point is not that all trains in Britain are faster, but that some are.
18:15 correction: Public debt is incorrect. This is government debt. Calling it 'public' falsely makes it sound like it is the public that are in debt - quite the opposite. Government debt means spending on/to the public, creating public surplus, not public debt! Therefore the public is richer. Anyway, GDP is a meaningless figure. And so is government debt. So you're dividing a meaningless figure by a meaningless figure to get 260%. Useless. Doesn't tell you anything. Tell me, also, why it 'cannot sustain' 260% debt which it is paying off at near 0% interest? It cannot 'runaway'.
Public debt refers to Government debt - if it were the debt of the individuals it would be private debt (though there are a huge number of definitions). GDP is indeed a largely meaningless figure, but it does have some relevance. The fact is undeniable that Japan has far more debt relative to its economy than most of the developed world. This is unsustainable as it can lead to "crowding out", whereby investors are discouraged from investing in private enterprise as there is such an abundance of safe Government loans to give. Additionally, there is also the concern of actually paying back the debt. If a country is incapable of doing so, it may be forced to default or rely on harsh bail-outs from elsewhere, as happened in Argentina or Greece. Even if that does not happen (which is, granted, highly unlikely in Japan), interest payments can take up a larger than desirable portion of Government spending. It is not true that Japan is able to pay of its debt with no real impact - about 22% of the Japanese Government's spending goes towards debt servicing, an alarming figure. I agree that national debt is not the be all and end all. There are other far more important issues in every country. But high debt is also not *good*, and it certainly presents problems.
Thanks for this refreshing video, I was always skeptical about all what’s said about Japanese trains, in France it’s really common (and even for some railway workers) to say that our railway is shitty AF, and that compared to Japan, and even (lol) Germany, it’s completely borked, while there is in fact many similar downsides on the Japanese network than on the French one (don’t make me talk about Germany, it’s just a joke at this point, and in accessibility standards too) I want to share another perspective about other good things that are said about Japanese railways: it’s wheelchair user accessibility (i am one of them). Most people that don’t know railway stuff always said that Japan is awesome about that, because they have seen some inspiration-p-word fueled videos about how railway workers in Japan put ramps for wheelchair users… sometimes people say that to me, that it only exists in Japan, and I usually say to them « go to Châtelet les Halles on the RER at 9am and you will be in Japan then ». But, outside of this, I don’t know what Japanese disabled people want, but it’s really not great from my European disabled perspective. In Europe, while it’s slow, we tend to do as much as possible to have independent travel, with level boarding with an automatic gap fillers, unsupervised elevators… it’s still not great, there is many holes in the system, but the main objective is to have as much autonomy as possible (even if sometimes, government underfunding slows everything down). In Japan, everything seems to be around assistance services, manual ramps, slow elevators integrated into escalators that need a guard to be turned on… all these things grant access (and do many views on inspiration fueled videos)… but do not grant autonomy at all, as we still have to contact a guard to take a train, which takes times as he has to see if he can do it in time, he has to call the other station, and might be busy for other tasks that are really needed to run the railway (especially with understaffing) The only attempt at an automatic gap filler in Japan is from a video from 2021 (it’s not the same kind as European gap fillers, they are station embedded and not on the train)… in France. The first train with a button released gap filler dates back from around 2003 and is level boarding on most stations nowadays at the 55cm standard height… I don’t know if we are in these early, or if they are late, but autonomy when possible must be prioritized over assistance services. Thanks for your video nonetheless ^^
I don’t know too much about accessibility in Japan, but it’s interesting to hear this. I was quite surprised too to see that video of a ramp being deployed supposedly making Japan the “best country in the world” - as you say, this happens essentially everywhere. The real test of accessibility is autonomy, and given how similar most platform and train heights are in Japan, it’s really quite shocking that level boarding hasn’t been implemented, even on new trains.
By that measure even the UK beats Japan 😱 we need to ask for a ramp in a lot of places, but more and more trains are finally getting level boarding. It’s overdue by 2 decades, but it’s coming. And thankfully since the ScotRail nationalisation, and the increased staffing, I’ve never had to wait for a ramp. Prior to the recent nationalisation, I often had to wait 10-15 minutes even in major cities. I’d still prefer level boarding, but having someone always waiting sure beats having to chase down a staff member (or even block a door sensor to get someone’s attention).
One thing is very clear. German railways are way better than French ones at rural and regional service. The service many lesser lines and connections receive in France is absolutely pitiful.
@@bahnspotterEU yes, and it’s getting better as government funding is increasing. But many people in France tell that Germany is better in terms of speed, reliability and regularity on mainlines/ICE, which is not at all.
@@kaitlyn__L Interesting that there was a noticeable difference after nationalisation. There must have been something actively preventing service like that before - I struggle to believe this but there must have been explicit instructions to focus on other activities.
The main problem about Japanese railways is lack of unitary vision from the central government. Subsidies are low because the central government simply doesn't care about deciding anything and everything is left to the local governments, even for stretches of infrastructure that should very much be considered of national interest. And honestly, the Japanese central government is really lethargic about anything (this does have its good points but all of them are very in different areas from public infrastructure).
As a German I know the problems of our system but there is one thing I always think is actually pretty good. While we too suffered from closure of lines etc we still have a lot of regional lines that serve even really small towns. You can take regional trains to get from all the way in the south to the sea in the north and regional trains punctuality is okay I would say. Still needs improvement but over 90% of trains are either on time or with a delay of less than 6 minutes and over 98% with a delay of less than 16 minutes isnt unusable as some people make it out to be. Like I said it still needs a lot of improvement and I know the flaws of the German rail system but its not like Japan does everything better either. One thing I still dont get is why even in major cities in Japan there is a "last train" that basically leaves you stranded after midnight if you dont catch that one. I think Japans rail system is seen as overly postive without looking at the negatives because an average tourist just doesnt experience those negatives. They usually visit large cities, see the well working system in those and think that Japanese trains/the system in general must be amazing
IIRC they close tracks during nighttime hours for regular maintenance operations, which I can imagine would be important for high traffic areas like Tokyo
@@firetruckenthusiast8596 Afaik they only do that with the Shinkansen lines because they are highspeed but still use normal ballast tracks. All the other lines wouldn't need daily maintenance of such scale
I usually gave an example of japanese rail in comparison to Sakhalin rail (as Sakhalin rail is of the same track width), but since JR closed half of lines in Hokkaido this comparison works better in our side! :D
Thanks for featuring my footage!
I find the points in this video to be very worth mentioning when looking at Japan as an example for good railways. It's not all "shiny, punctual trains and everyone is happy".
Greetings from the island! 🎌🗾
~ Shioyama
「しおやま」って読むんだ。知らんかった
I am your 300th subscriber!! ❤
@@deancostello001 Oh, thanks! Enjoy the upcoming videos!
The best rail country by far.
As a person born and raised in Japan, I agree with Shimoyama’s opinion!
日本人の方が映像をちゃんと提供してくれるとはびっくり…😮
I am Japanese. The video is mostly correct about JR. However, this only explains 40% of Japan's railways. The total number of annual train passengers in Japan is 20 billion, of which 60% are private railway users.
Unlike the UK's TOC, Japanese private railways are companies that manage rail, stations, trains, buses, taxis, real estate, commerce, etc., and take a completely different business approach than JR. The influence of private railways in the region is enormous, and it is difficult to explain the railway situation in Japan without private railway companies.
Thanks for the Japan reference, many Japanese still think the UK is the father of Japanese railways.
In a way, the UK and the US are the Grandfathers of all railways across the world. And they all began as PRIVATE Railways. NOT State-owned.
^ very much this. Especially here in the Kansai area, I find myself almost never using JR, instead using Hankyuu (阪急), Hanshin (阪神), Osaka Metro (大阪メトロ), or municipally-owned services such as the Kyoto Subway (京都市営地下鉄) instead. Whenever I find myself in Tokyo, I end up using JR lines significantly more.
@@DR3ADER1 Most railway networks in the world started out as Private Railways, but they were eventually (in most countries) nationalized
Definitely the father of Korail
As a a Japanese I think this video covers Japans problems as a whole and not just JR, the economical and population decline mentioned really shows some of the major problems the country has and the strict workplace also is present around the nation with some of my family facing harsh reprimand in other jobs. While this video does cover the countries problems long and short term, the conclusion is well said estimating the future we must meet
It's at least good to see some of the negatives of the Japanese railways highlighted for some balance, no matter how great it really is overall. Thanks for the video!
You got to keep in mind that rural Japan is not the same as rural UK. In terms of landscape 90% of Japan is similar to the Scottish Highlands, although for the most part with a warmer climate. So obviously local railway lines are slower since many of them have to navigate through hills and valleys in area's that have always been sparsely populated. If Beeching would have gone through Japan it would only have the Shinkansen lines, plus some connecting lines right now. The fact that many of the rural lines are only now in danger of closure is really remarkable.
Obviously the rural lines are better in most European countries, but that's mainly due to Geography.
Warmer climate? Maybe on the south-east side of the 'Japanese Alps', but to the west and especially north of them, it has much, much worse winters than the Scottish Highlands.
But in this section, the video compared Japan to Switzerland. I'd say that Switzerland is quite a bit more like in geography than the UK.
@@Rollermonkey1 well then it's all the more similar.
Switzerland is WAY more mountainous, yet it still has a great rural network
@@tehangrybird345 Don't forget that Japan is 9 times as big as Switzerland and that the population of Japan is heavily concentrated in a couple of coastal plains. A large part of rural Japan is very empty and much further away from the main cities then the most mountainous regions of Switzerland.
Side note on rural transit in Germany, I think it's far more punctual than you'd expect. The most delay-prone places in Germany are the most used ones. Makes sense, the more trains are running through a place, the worse the cascading delays get. A line with one train per hour, such as my local one, really doesn't have many chances to get delayed, apart from outright failures or disasters or whatever, there isn't anything that could cause big delays. So oddly enough, the rural lines can end up more reliable than the most important corridors in the country.
Indeed, I was only really joking. I do love the German transport system, it would be one of the best in the world if buses were more consistent and intercity rail was more reliable.
Oooh Honey I live in rural Germany
Just dont even talk about this...
It's worse
Maybe in your rural side but not mine.....during winter is even Worse and worse.......uurgh
Was redest du da? Verspätungen aufm Land sind VIEL schlimmer. (Oftmals kamen die Busse bzw. Züge nichtmal, ohne das eine ansage dazu gemacht wurde)
@@GWVillager It does depend on region to region as well, though. I live in the southwest of Germany and I find the busses to be more reliable than those in Japan (and almost anywhere else, for that matter), especially in regards to the ticketing system and scheduling. Busses to rural areas come at least once per hour, with areas with even smaller populations having called shared taxis that are covered by your public transport ticket. And I don't need to worry about which bus company to take since your ticket is accepted by all of them anyway.
Yeah. At least true in for example the München area. The S2 was always on time until it got to Markt Schwaben were the regional corridor and less frequent kinda express S2 collided in two little tracks in the city direction. Also in the entry of the central corridor where trains have to wait their turns
Thank you for making this. People too often talk about perfection, when we should be striving for improvement.
To be fair, a lot of JR's problems are caused by Japan's problems in general. The population decline that causes lines to get closed down isn't gonna stop just because the trains are still operating. There's that one story of the train line that only runs to serve one high school girl that takes it everyday, until she graduates and it finally closes. The largely stagnating economy makes it hard to make new investments, only to keep up maintenance. As a private public transport company, they have the hard to balance responsibility to profits but also to society. Its understandable why they're facing issues.
But nevertheless, as you said, they still have one of the best services in the world. Also, sidenote, Japan mostly uses narrow 1067 mm gauge compared to Britain's standard 1435 mm. That probably contributes to the speed limit.
Did that girl suddenly no longer need to go anywhere when she graduated? Or did she (most likely) move out of the village?
But this is exactly my point. I said precisely that in the video. Railways are a public service, and can only be judged in isolation to a degree. The population crisis especially, but also the economic stagnation, was entirely foreseeable, yet nothing meaningful was done to address it. Obviously you cannot blame rural decline on railway closures, but it is another way that rural communities are facing managed decline which is not going to help their prospects.
@@GWVillager Almost Japanese high schools prohibit their students to get car license. After graduation, She might be to not need to take trains.
@@GWVillager In rural areas of Japan, students obtain a driver's license while they are in high school for job hunting purposes, but the school seems to keep the driver's license while they are in school.
Besides, there is no need to run trains at a loss when they can be replaced by buses.
@@GWVillager Strikes on British Railways are as bad as they were when JR was a national railway. By the way, one of the reasons why Japan's National Railways was privatized was to reduce strikes and wasteful expenses.
The reason for the speed limit on conventional lines appears to be the 2005 JR Fukuchiyama Line derailment accident. Also, unlike the UK, Japan operates Shinkansen trains, so there is no need to operate them at speeds over 130 km/h on regular conventional lines.
Social infrastructure should emphasize safety.
The reason for massive delays on the few Swiss trains that are delayed is that they often fit them into the next slot in the clock face schedule so as that you can still have a timed interchange with your next train.
Also, they have a policy of pushing trains which are late enough to cause missed connections down to the lowest priority, to make sure they don't cause cascading delays.
I can't tell if that "Tokyo" rail map includes the subway or private (non-JR) rail operator lines? It's definitely also hyper-deformed, as that loop in the bottom right appears to be the entire prefecture of Chiba, and the bottom center is Kanagawa prefecture. It's therefore including Yokohama (3.5m), Kawasaki (1.5m), Saitama (1.3m) and SIXTEEN other 'towns' with populations over 100k. This all makes the Tokyo map look both better and worse than it actually is.
I think a comparison of the #2 Japanese city's network (Osaka) or even #3 (Nagoya) and any of the UK's #2 contenders B'ham, Manchester, or dare I say Glasgow, would result in an even more stark difference.
I lived in Japan for three years, and in all that time, the one and only occasion where a train I was going to use was 'late', typhoon-induced landslides had wiped out several areas of the line. The service was restored in under a month. I'm glad you mentioned the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, but you left out that the UK has no such catastrophic events hampering it's rail operations. Then there's other amazing advantages like the safety system that will emergency stop shinkansen lines before the damaging wave energy of an earthquake can reach the train.
I've been to the UK a few times, and I don't think I've ever felt the rail service was inadequate around London or even much of the rest of the places I went. (Not Alton Towers though, transit to there from London is ridiculously lacking.) That said, I think that if you haven't actually experienced rail service in Japan, you can't understand that rail in the UK is not in the same league, and that includes many trips that I made well outside the orbits of the megacities in each country.
Touting potential stats of HS2 is not really beneficial to this argument, considering that Japan's Chuo maglev line is likely to open well before HS2. With twice as many stations, over twice the distance and at nearly 150% the speed, HS2 would not compare well as an engineering marvel.
The UK also has a significant geographical advantage, being comparatively flat next to Japan. UK's rail lines benefit from greater speed over Japan's non-shinkansen routes because they havn't needed to drill tunnels to go in a straight line outside of city limits. "Inter-regional travel" in the UK isn't faster, because you're comparing local Japanese lines, and not the typically parallel shinkansen lines. The shinkansen lines run from Kumamoto in the south to Hakodate in the North, (some 2,000km) and last I checked HS2 will not reach Glasgow before the Hokkaido shinkansen reaches Sapporo. Oh yeah, HS2 is barely going to reach London or Birmingham (230km), let alone Glasgow. Yes, the trip in Japan has two transfers and will take roughly twice as long, but it's also going 4 times as far, so I call that a win.
Is Japan's rail system perfect? No, of course not, nothing is.
It sure beats rail in the UK, though.
...and yes, UK rail absolutely runs laps around rail service in the US.
Thank you for this fascinating view. You could, I think, say the same about France. Many are dazzled by the TGV and high speed lines but on many of the rural lines the trains run quite slowly and there has been a gradual run down of secondary routes with some branch lines closing. Thankfully the government is planning to reverse this decline.
I'd agree, France's network has huge inconsistencies. There's an awful lot of potential if they make better use of their secondary lines, though.
Well, if you trust the government to do anything transport related. We don’t even have a ministry of transports !
@@GWVillager wonderful video, i loved watching it, i will definitely sub and come back for more. indeed, france is really polarized, especially on regional trains around cities, we barely have any sbahn - like networks. unfortunately, if we were to serve more people on our regional lines, our mainlines would simply die: a lot of bottlenecks havent been fixed and instead frequentation of lines was articifially lowered.. now we would need to spend so much money to add capacity back that it's almost just not feasible
You would think high speed lines would bring more ridership to rural lines via network effect but apparently not
@@GWVillagercan their secondary lines be replaced by maglev? Or simply better links to the TGV via intersecting lines?
When a video almost exclusively focuses on JR, it betrays that the creator lacks a fundamental understanding of the Japanese railway system. This completely ignores the dozens of successful private operators whose roles in society uniquely contribute to the country’s rail history.
Honestly, the goal of this video seemed more to justify the British railways than offer a valid critique of the Japanese. Most valid arguments are flaws in Japanese society itself, which spread to the railways much like they do in every other country. But those points are overshadowed by a string of bad faith arguments about issues such as aesthetics, prices, and station density.
The internet's most avid Seibu fan speaks facts🔥
As one user put it, it was all “complain for the sake of complaining”
@@LGVRhin-Rhone I wear that title like a badge of honor
Thank you for your comment, and I bow to your knowledge of the Japanese network. I'm well aware of the private operators, but this video was not intended to be a balanced summary or review, but rather a series of flaws to highlight how things are not uniformly perfect in Japan. I did clarify this in the description, but with hindsight I could have been a little clearer.
To some extent, the video *is* about justifying British railways, but this is an essential pursuit. There is a terrible self-loathing atmosphere around British trains at the moment, and this is (in my opinion) getting in the way of progress. We can, if we put our minds to it, produce some of the finest services in the world (the Elizabeth Line, HS1, Virgin Trains etc.), yet people too often ignore this and say things along the lines of "things are better in Japan". They may well be, but that's not particularly useful, and if anything just depresses us further.
Once again, this video is not an unbiased assessment coming from a neutral, non-geographic perspective. It's intended for a British audience, to (hopefully) inspire future hope.
@@GWVillager so let me get this straight: your whole opening premise was that coverage of the Japanese system is unbalanced, and you want to set the record straight. But when you receive pushback, then suddenly you meant to be unbalanced and unbiased? What a cop-out!
When you are deliberately not fair in your critique, your argument is moot. And perhaps there is a reason for all the self-loathing in the British railways. Rather than use mental gymnastics to console yourself, why not be brave enough to face reality and advocate to improve things?
Watching the second part which criticizes the station design really upset me. While I like and respect the British designs of the stations, I don’t think Japan stations have any problems or aren’t as favorable as British ones. Japan stations often integrate super well with other services like commercials, office buildings etc, so it provides the convenience that old British stations can’t. Shinjuku station, which doesn’t look good at all, integrated seamlessly with a ton of services, including a large bus terminal, both subway and trains, and of course stores, and offices. Do I want a station that looks good but provides limited services, or a station that looks “bad” (modern though) but provides everything I need? I’d say both are equally fine!
This. I’d take the more convenient station over the “beautiful” station any day.
Agree... aesthetic is secondary to function. I choose boxy station with lively market inside and convenient network transfer over beauty. On top of that, people need to pip down referring old building as beautiful. Those 'beautiful building' are often way too expansive and maintenance heavy. Better spend those extra resource to poor people.
Not only do the Japanese stations integrate well with other forms of transport and have extensive underground/elevated pedestrian access but they have a lot of retail outlets too, often inside the ticket gate area so you can get something to eat or drink if you are changing trains. Like most things in Japanese cities they are extremely functional, if not architecturally stunning.
one time i was panicking as i didn't have lunch and was going to be on a shinkansen in 15 minutes.
thank goodness for convenience stores in major train stations.
This bought up a lot of good points half the reason why people act like Japan's a superpower in the railways is probably due to them only ever showing the good part.
You mean China?
The issue is not that "they only show the good part", the issue is that holistically, they have a superior and innovative system. Nothing is perfect, but having lived there, I can't seem to find much fault comparing to my place of origin, NYC.
Having said that, last time I was there, I would think that improvements with bike network is a much better priority.
you should see MTR Hong Kong then ;)
Yeah you almost always see the good parts of other countries rail networks but half time you only see the bad parts of your own.
Also Japanese people are overwhelmingly supportive of their transit system. Even if people are inconvenienced daily by bad frequencies or slow tr supportive of their transit system. Even if people are inconvenienced daily
MTR HK is a great system, sadly now that it's part of China, I'll never visit again, HK is also a small city compared to Tokyo and Japan as a whole. @@wisehat_yt
except tokyo does have a main station, having to switch main stations in cities like london and paris is always a pain (and paris has direct connections between every main tgv station at least)
Technically, tokyo has seven: Tokyo, Ueno, Omiya, Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Shinagawa. They are all connected by the Yamanote line. 28 of it's 30 stations interchange with other lines.
The Yamanote Line does not go to Omiya, I'd stop at the other 6 (or replace Omiya with Shimbashi) which still proves your point.
One thing Tokyo does NOT have is a central downtown; the major Yamanote Line stations *are* their own district in practice.
This was an enjoyable video, but i feel like you have never been to Japan and therefore maybe is not the best person to be talking about this. I live in Japan and here are a few of my thoughts on some of your comments.
1. JR looking to vertically integrate and build out stations to have a huge range of services located at the station makes sense, almost nobody drives here in major cities, so keeping services centralized at stations is what people want here in Tokyo and other major Japanese cities. I don't see how this is a fault at all, in addition in Asia, huge VI conglomerates are very normal.
2. Station design / grandeur is a little unfair on Japan, old buildings don't get to survive here, constant earthquakes, which happen almost weekly, take their toll overtime. Buildings don't get to grow old in Japan, its simply unsafe. Not to mention most of the old stations of Tokyo were destroyed by either the great Kanto earthquake or the bombing campaigns of WW2.
3. Slow speeds in regional areas are rarely an issue to be honest, as the shinkansen gets you close enough that you don't need to be on a slow train for very long or you can easily rent a car and drive the final 50-100kms to where you want to go.
I wasn't necessarily saying that the JR's other activities were bad (indeed I explicitly said they made sense), but I was rather highlighting how their financial efficiency isn't really to do with how they operate the railways.
The point about earthquakes and bombing is very fair, and I defer to that. But many Japanese stations could be dressed up a little nicer, with more coherent station-wide design. It is nit-picking, however - you are correct.
There are plenty of people who cannot drive, though. And there are still many major city-to-city connections that are far slower than they should be.
@@GWVillagercheers; also I do agree that many stations here are unacceptably maze like and even locals don’t like them. With so many exits, direct entries into office towers or shopping malls it can be extremely confusing.
But in the extreme heat and humidity of summer being able to get to your office without going outside is a huge win. So it does kinda make sense.
I do wish they just had signs at each fare gate that said ‘fastest way out’ with an arrow though.
@@TheRealUnconnected That would be great. This is something I love about London - there are always clear black and yellow signs pointing to the nearest exits, and thankfully this is being rolled out all across the UK too.
@@TheRealUnconnected I have to throw in, that you can get lost for instance in shinjuku, but overall it is quite manageable even for a German tourist. I have been to Japan 4 times up to now and I can attest, that travel was never complicated or stressful. You do a great job there.
Most Japan "Main Line" services has been replaced by Shinkansen, running on standard gauge offering much higher speeds. The legacy rail system thus complements the Shinkansen network, where a combination of both (with timed transfers/through running e.g. mini shinkansens) effectively decreasing travel times for the average passenger. The branch line speeds are not dissimilar with the UK - 70mph on the West Highland line, 60mph on the Heart of Wales Line. The fastest narrow gauge services once reached 160kph/100mph on the Hokuhoku Line, but was no longer necessary given the opening of the parallel Hokuriku Shinkansen. The Japanese train network might not be the best as some might think, but it is still important to learn from international best practices and their mistakes in order to build a world-leading system.
Certainly - on the whole it’s a fantastic system and we have a lot to learn. But the Heart of Wales and West Highland lines are perhaps some of the most remote lines in the country. My issue with Japan’s speeds is on important - but not trunk - regional routes between provincial cities.
@@GWVillager Another big issue is that Japan runs narrow gauge, so achieving higher speed is very, very difficult. Japan only ran narrow gauge trains up to 160km/h with the Hokuhoku Line, a dedicated, shinkansen like track. Conventional line are only safe for 130 km/h operation. In the end, they figured that if you are building that much dedicated track, might as well build a shinkansen. You need to keep in mind that the train speed record for narrow gauge trains are only like 240 km/h or something, while standard gauge is 580km/h.
However, problem with Japan's regional network is that they don't really have something between Shinkansen and Conventional line. There are no legal framework with it. Given how conservative the Japanese are its either Shinkansen or nothing, and lot of cities cannot afford Shinkansen. This is why regional transports are lacking. That said, most limited express trains are still generally okay.
@@sbeve7445 Conventional lines aren't restricted to 130km/h because of their gauge. They're restricted to 130km/h for other reasons.
@@lbsc1201Indeed, Odakyu actually managed to safely operate a regular scheduled service at speeds of up to 160km/h on their narrow gauge Romancecar line between Shinjuku and Hakone-yumoto (also demonstrating the impetus for a wider gauge high speed line that later became the Shinkansen) but later dropped that down to 130km/h because of that law you mentioned.
@@lbsc1201 Tracking is definitely one of them. Operating at higher speed requires much better track geometry and higher vehicle maintenance
Who said Japanese trains were perfect? No one did, the fact that its a train centric culture with many types of trains and had the first high speed rail, gets Japan alot of attention from train enthusiasts. As far as the mistreatment and bullying of employees, thats all old stuff, most of that was done away with almost 20 years ago, ive not heard of recent examples of this.
The overwork of train crews its more a national issue and its part of Japanese culture.
As far as quality of trains, Japanese trains are known for cleanliness, punctuality, and frequency of service. You must remember that there are many different train types in Japan, from local, rural lines, commuter trains, limited express, shinkansen, light rail, luxury trains, sleeper trains etc. The experience you get is dependent on where you are and what you are willing to pay for, as Japan has such a extensive use of trains, the experience will not always be the same. I agree Japanese trains are too expensive, though, and commuter trains can be packed and uncomfortable in the big cities. Its hard to compare Japan to other countries because of how diverse the trains are in Japan with so many private lines and JR lines, different companies have different piorities and have different age of rolling stock, as many railways are very old. Japanese trains are mix or old and new at the same times, which makes it very unique.
As far as speed, Japanese rail infrastructure is very old compared to other countries, many lines were built for local trains but now have limited express trains running on them, couple that with the use of narrow Guage and older track geometry due to challenging terrian, its not suprising Japanese trains are slower than some other countries. The Shinkasens are limited in thier maximum possible speeds due to maintainence concerns, train spacing, and noise pollution is a problem because of how densly packed Japanese cities are.
Large stations can be confusing and rural Stations can look very outdated, but once again the type of stations you see is dependent on where you go, as many places in Japan have muliple lines going through them and stations have various ages. Its not reasonable to expect every station to look pristine and new, as there is not enough space or funding to makeover every train station in Japan
I have traveled all over Japan via train and outside of weather, earthquake delays suicicides on the tracks, most trains in Japan are on time. People forget Japan does get alot of poor weather, from heavy snow, to typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and strong winds. Despite this the trains in Japan are still very relible and i have planned and completed many many successful trips by train in Japan. I just went from Hokkaido to rural Kyoto by shinkansen, limited express, and local trains. I Took 4 trains and they were all on time, even the last local single car train got me home when i needed it too. Sure Japan has some issues, but as far as train options and the amount of connectivity avalible, ive never seen any country come close to what Japan has to offer.
The raise in JR rail pass is largely due to the severe over tourism after lifting COVID restrictions, and the JR company has to limit the passengers and reduce over crowding.
Japan is also developing new vehicles that can do 360 km/h with the test vehicle alpha x. That said I find Shinkansen rides much less comfortable than China or the TGV
The most impressive part of the Shinkansen is that it has very short stop spacing, around 13km on average. Yet it still creates a very fast service. This is because their trains are super light and very fast acceleration, reaching 2.6 km/s. The TGV in comparison does something like 0.5 km/s. Japanese shinkansen are acceleration and curve optimized, not top speed optimized (though the top speed is still respectable). The N700S trains can do 285 km/h on a curve with radius of 1800m. The H5 series can do 320 km/h on a curve radius of 4000m. Just for comparison, the original 1800m are set with a design speed of 210 km/h. And just for comparison, for Eurpoean HSR, lines with 4000m curve radius are limited to around 250 km/h usually. Unfortunately, these traits does contribute to its rougher ride quality.
The decline of rural railway is to be expected though, as Japan as a whole is declining. In fact, there are strong incentive to NOT improve rural transport that much because it would just accelerate rural area's depopulation. This is evidented by the opening of the Hokuriku shinkansen and several cities along the line like Iiyama city.
It's interesting that you didn't mention any of the 10 major private railway companies, because THESE are the ones that hold sway over Japan's cities, not JR. 4:00 JR's operational style is a carbon copy of what all the other rail companies have been doing along their rail lines since before WW2. These investments are chiefly to increase ridership. 5:20 this was JR West's terrible working culture that caused the accident. Each of the 217 rail companies in Japan have different working cultures and many of them are fine (more should be better though).
8:52 Wouldn't the right comparison be between the tube map and Tokyo's subway map? The unofficial Suica map you showed includes lots of areas where Tokyoites would only go on overnight vacations, let alone commute into to the city.
9:35 Have you read about JNR's passagification of stations? In order to cope with the huge number of passengers, JNR changed its layouts so passenger flow is constantly moving, instead of making people wait in stations like in Europe. Stations (and to some extent trains) are in practice an extension of the sidewalk. As much as I think many British stations are nice, nobody in Japan would actively choose to use a station more just because the outside is more western or ornate.
14:38 You conveniently forgot to mention that almost all Japanese train lines are cape gauge. This severely limits the speed and stability that's achievable in comparison to standard gauge. I still wish it were faster though.
16:00 more like overinvestment in road transit. the LDP doesn't want to reduce infrastructure funding and ends up building tons of (quite useless) roads that kill slow Japanese trains' competitiveness.
17:45 this is more a result of decline rather than what causes it. 18:52 Japan has rarely looked at being eco-friendly in the past, but if you have enough people the least consuming one happens to be the cheapest. 19:33 YES. Japanese people tend to over-trust rail companies, even defending sudden frequency cuts in the name of efficiency. We could use a little more of the Brit's voiced discontent with their railways, because after all, the lines exist to serve the community.
In any case, it is true that in the long run, Japanese rail is only going to get worse over the next few decades. And unless European countries do something about their systems as well, they're going to start falling off as well. It's a shame you only focused on JR, because that's really only half of the story here in Japan, but I'd love to go try the UK's trains again someday.
Thank you for your insightful comments. A lot of the things you mention I do indeed know about, but didn't really consider relevant to the video, and there is a huge amount of nuance missed out in my video that I would have put in if I were making a balanced assessment of the rail network.
Stuff like the passenger flow in stations is impressive and indicative of the many things we in Britain could definitely learn from Japan - but I bring architecture and speeds up because, regardless of the reasons, which do exist like the narrow gauge etc., are still areas that Britain excels at, and perhaps ones that we shouldn't be so defeatist in (it's really quite common to hear passengers complain about the service and say stuff along the lines of "this wouldn't happen in Japan", when in reality they're facing a pretty universal problem).
As for the maps, the London map used in the video isn't the regular Tube map, but rather the Rail and Tube map, which also includes heavy rail suburban (and main) lines that run quite far out. It's essentially the equivalent of the Tokyo map.
Heavily agree with you on the focus part. The videos' called "Japan's trains..." and yet the focus is on Tokyo (where most subway lines are not even run by JR East) and the "rural" (which is very poorly defined, Hokkaido/Shikoku/Kyushu rural is not the same as Kanto rural) lines.
And putting the main focus on JR East (a regional company) and then comparing it to Switzerland (a country) is just very unfair, the geographical and demographic contexts are completely different between the two. Of course the video would easily be over 2 hours long if you delved into the other JR companies and private rail companies, but then you shouldn't say "Japan's trains...." but instead say "JR East's trains..." to clear up the focus.
Even if you focus on JR companies alone, JR East's operational and business model is drastically different than say, JR Shikoku, JR Hokkaido, and JR Kyushu. I would say the JR rail pass hikes are completely justified though, seeing how cheap the Yen has been for the past 2 years or so and how many tourists have been going to Japan post-COVID. Also, European rail passes are fucking SHIT compared to JR rail passes when you consider the user experience and what is included in the rail pass package.
His architecture point is spot on though, Japanese stations feel very copy-and-pasted for the most part. They really fucked up the new Harajuku Station design for example.
You bring up some of the things I saw, but better spoken. In all honesty, it's pretty tought to make a video about the shortcomings of the rail networks of Japan, because there really is a lot of good in the system.
I mean, architecture? Really? I'll take an on-time train in an ugly station ten times out of ten over a pretty station and random train delays.
In Tokyo area ,JR is the biggest piece, it represents more than 50% of the lines in the sector.
In Nagoya area , JR is also the biggest piece, more than 50% of the lines.
In Keihanshin (Kansai) it's 50% because Hankyu is a big competitor.
In Shikoku, Kyushu and Hokkaido the JRs dominate.
@@Lodai974 Non-JR companies beat JR in passenger numbers by about 5:3. 確かに線路長でいったらJRの方が長いけど、私鉄無しで日本の鉄道は語れないよね。
Hello from Japan!
As a Japanese railroad fan, I think the content of your video points out well the problems about Japanese railroads.👍
The cold treatment and disregard for social workers in Japanese society has led to poor treatment of railroad workers.
Privatization has led to excessive efficiency and service degradation as money is sought to be made from the railroads, which are supposed to be infrastructure.
Neither the company nor the public pays attention to station design, guidance, seating, and other onboard amenities, and the level of service is significantly lower than in other countries.
The ministries that take the reins of transportation policy are reluctant to do so, there are no politicians to address the problem, and there is no coordination among the various companies and transportation agencies.
As you say, the increase in the speed of railroads is partial. Many people oppose even the construction of a new bullet train or linear motor car because they consider it a wasteful investment.
Thus, politicians and the public are not interested in transportation, so there is little chance that the structural problems of Japan's railroads will be improved in the future.
Thank you for this excellent and accurate video about Japanese railroads.🙇
(Translation used)
Some additional pushback beyond what's already been offered:
Regarding architecture, you saying that Timeout "couldn't even get to 10" for the Japan list and that "many more come to mind that aren't listed" for the UK list isn't really fair, as that partly just reflects the limits of what *you*, a Brit, and whoever wrote those articles happen to know. I'd offer that there's in particular a lack of knowledge of more recent constructions. Omissions that come to my mind include the monumental sloped roof over the tracks at Osaka; smaller stations also with capacious and interesting roofs like Minami-machida Grandberry Park and Takanawa Gateway, both around Tokyo, Universal City in Osaka, and Hyugashi; and a number of newer station buildings on the Hokuriku, Hokkaido, and Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansens.
And the attempted belittling of Shinkansen speed and frequency is particularly weak. "Various countries achieve 350 km/h": there's... *two*. While China has an admittedly impressive network, the other, Indonesia, only has a single short line using exported Chinese technology. "HS2 will run at 360": countering with a delayed future line for which there are expert question marks about actual operating speeds is... something. And it's countered by Japanese efforts to continue improving speeds - they're not sitting still either. See JR East's goal for 360 km/h operations based on the ALFA-X experimental train, and JR Central's 500 km/h maglev that's partly under construction. "...and have up to 18 tph, more than the crowded Tokaido Shinkansen": the accompanying visual speaks for itself. Note that this claim was also questioned in the first place.
My point was not at all that this is Britain being better than Japan at high speed rail - I agree it would be wrong to claim as such - but rather to highlight that Japan is by no means far superior to much of the rest of the world, which is a common opinion. There is certainly competition and many countries are in the same league.
Though you are largely correct with stations. I deliberated over that point for a very long time, and in hindsight should have left it out.
The stations issue was labouring the point I think - not only did it take up a bit too much time for something that doesn't really make a practical difference to service ( it may make your day a little better, but that is too subjective to be part of this imo ) but also I think reflects differences in culture. I can't say Euston or Brum New St make your day any better either :P.
It was a video worth making. I'm not sure you can really directly compare two countries where one seems to be either all megatropolis or wilderness, and another that only has three conurbations ( by Japan standards only one, really ) and the rest of it's population splattered about all over the place but these "stop being so hyperbolic" videos are necessary.
@@Karibanu I agree, the stations point really deserved no more than a minute. I just wanted to portray a relatively unequivocal picture, but in hindsight it was largely irrelevant.
While I love the Japanese railways and many of their aspects, I love that you legitimately criticised it and acknowledged its shortcomings. It seems that many media outlets really exaggerate the greatness of the railways, and I think even I have been gullible to think it's all done at a well enough standard, especially considering that it's rather hard to really know if the situation is well when you haven't even properly experienced the situation.
The points on the work culture were as you mentioned, a much broader look on Japanese society and its horrible treating of the common people. I'm based in Sydney, and while I think we have lots to improve on, work culture probably isn't one of them. Unions are highly prominent and workers are treated well, like actual people rather than just labour to use.
I hope that the situation can improve, and to not constantly dunk on our own systems while solely praising somewhere like Japan's. We're all trying to get to these various transportation goals, which means looking at the downsides of various systems and how to avoid them; which of course, includes the ones that we praise most. Thank you for making this video, it helps in truly understanding how we can improve rather than just being kind of blinded.
As others have mentioned, a lot of how JNR became JR Group can be attributed to the bubble bursting and was later also replicated with the privatization of Japan Post a few years later as well.
What you’re missing is these companies are massive vertically. Japan Post is the country’s biggest BANK for example. And all railroads in Japan are huge real estate companies. It’s their job to develop properties like housing estates, shopping malls and office complexes.
Take Tokyu Corporation for example. Their railway network takes up all of southern Tokyo metropolis and a lot of Kawasaki and Yokohama in Kanagawa. Needless to say, they also operate all the office skyscrapers in Shibuya and downtown Yokohama as well as a lot in between. The focus has always been on getting people to and from these developments as quickly as possible, so the stations are designed that way.
Also no talk of through-running here - almost all suburban regional trains run into and become central subway metro routes. Again, no need to have lots of ornate stations to change modes when the train you spent an hour on getting into the city is also the subway that lets you off under your destination as well.
Wake me up when HS2 has a chance at being constructed
Thank you for your video. As a swiss I see happening something similar with our rail system. Especially internationally it often gets praised as one of the best systems in the world while problems get overlooked. Of course it really is good with the clock face scheduling, in punctuality or having the strong support in the population and all that, but that dosen‘t mean that it hasn‘t any flaws.
Be it the high prices or that also SBB suffers to some degree from the fact that they are technically privatised; we face in many things the same issues like in most european countries. SBB also has/had a fair share of internal issues especially in miscommunication between divisions. It led to things like that older train carriages had dangerous doors where even DB warned them and recommended to replace, until a horrible accident had to happen.
Also while the infrastructure is well maintained, Switzerland has a similar problem like the UK, a lot of routes are over a 100 to 150 years old and very curvy which don‘t allow for any faster trains. And if they can run faster, due that all rail running on the same tracks, faster trains often get scheduled slower because of slower freight trains. Especially the west of Switzerland gets neglected in that regard. Trains are really slow and it takes ages from Bern to Geneva.
The trains themselves are nice, but most SBB Intercity trains are not on a ICE, TGV or even Railjet Level in terms of service or comfortability. For Eurocitys, where SBB actually has for some lines fancy high speed trains that can go 250km/h, they still often use standard carriages. Even in the national network they regularly just use S-Bahn/Regio like trains for IC/IR lines. To be fair it is better to provide a train instead of nothing.
I don‘t want to shit on the swiss system, I know that the problems here are very minor compared to many other nations. Though I think it is important to keep in mind that people often tend to positively (or negatively) exaggerate other things compared to what they are used to. Nothing is perfect and there is always room for improvement.
I'm not really acquainted with the transit advocacy side of the internet but Japan definitely is the best place for train nerds. The sheer variety of trains, terrains, and services is unbeatable, and the transit companies are very accepting of the fandoms surrounding them. The train enthusiasts that take photos are notoriously rude though
Why would they be rude?
@@tachobrenner they're often really inconsiderate of others. They illegally enter private property, destroy plants, and pilfer train parts all in an effort to get better photos. The community itself is quite toxic too.
I do want to point out a few things where I think you glossed over a bit too quickly.
With the 2005 incident that killed over 100 people, including the driver, you are correct in that he was running 90 seconds late and had recently already served a harsh punishment,, however the running "late" is probably not the (only) reason for him entering the curve at that speed. He also had made a different mistake that morning and just heard the driver at the back of the train reporting that mistake over the radio, which could have also distracted him. One of the recommendations to come out of the investigation from that accident was that there was an urgent need for cultural change within the Japanese rail sector whereby the type of punishments handed out really had to change.
You mention the steep increase in the cost of a JR pass by 70% and compare that to the Interrail pass which hasn't seen any increase in recent years. But what you fail to mention is that the JR Pass hadn't seen any increase in decades and was becoming the victim of its own success. When you have queues at the travel centers where you can exchange your vouchers of sometimes over 2 hours, when it becomes difficult to make a reservation because the green car is full of tourists on a JR Pass, you have an issue. The pass simply had gotten too cheap.
I love myself a beautiful station, and you can actually find some of those in Japan. But not having beautiful stations to me is not a problem. Just have a look at what the costs are for maintaining those beautiful temples of the railroads and compare that to what the Japanese have done to ensure that a lot of their stations actually generate a positive income from turning them essentially into shopping malls.
While there are a lot of slow lines in Japan, the slowness often comes from the twisting lines to follow the landscape. And at that point in time I feel it is also important to note that roads for cars have to do the same thing. Any train that doesn't stop every couple of minutes should still be faster than a car on most journeys, at least if your destination is within proximity of a station.
Japan's debt might be the highest in the world, yet it is more sustainable than that of other countries because of who is holding that debt. While most countries sell most of their debt papers to foreign investors, with Japan, most of the debt is in the hands of Japanese companies. So where China could potentially bankrupt the US because it holds so much of America's debt, it is unlikely that Japan would ever find itself in such a situation as those holding the debt would also suffer dramatically should they allow Japan to fail on its obligations.
At the end of the day, we should learn from the positive things that other rail networks have to give, be it Japanese, Swiss or even the good things about British railways. There are positive stories to be found everywhere. Perfection doesn't exist but we can aim to improve.
Thing: 😐
Thing, Japan: 🤯
Fr it's so wild how people refuse to admit that Japan is a country with flaws just like anywhere else instead of some amazing utopia where the grass is greener.
Japan is seen as the utopia of the right. Sweden as the utopia of the left. In reality both are great countries but not perfect and have problems much like everywhere else.
What can’t be argued about Japan’s railways is that in percentage terms the proportion of journeys made by rail is far higher than other first World countries.
@@lawrenceporter8389 if Japanese is utopia of the right, why the rights mostly against building public transport?, like they always said cars are freedom or something
@@lolololo-cx4dp It's privately owned public transport. As long as all of that fat cash ends up in the pockets of some "Übermensch", they are happy or something ...
@@ixian_technocrat it's true that they are private, but they're being watched by government strictly.
My understanding is that both JR shikoku and JR hokkaido are not private but still government owned along with the the freight part of JR. A quik wiki search also shows JR shikoku and JR hokkaido are 100% owned by the government owned JRTT.
The interrail pass is a nightmare that requires you to plan your entire journey months ahead of time because otherwise 'all interrail seats on this train have been sold out' also it has shit tonne of hidden fees the French railways being of course the most famous for having these fees but certainly aren't the only ones. IMO it's not comparable to the JR railpass which is hassle free and allows reservations free of charge and does not require booking trains months in advance. Interrail/eurail is something that exists for railfans due to it's complex booking system and way to many exceptions and fees.
Yes, JRs Hokkaido and Shikoku are Government owned companies, but they’re still companies. I discussed this in the relevant footnote, but did not consider these exceptions important enough to put in the Final Cut of the video.
@@GWVillager They are actually still government supported. They are drawing on a Management Stabilization Fund set up by the government during the privatization process because they determined that JR Hokkaido and JR Shikoku will have financial difficulties due to declining population and poor population density in their assigned regions. JR Kyushu was also drawing on the fund until recently when their real estate business helped them to break even in 2022.
Most of the characteristics of Japan’s railways are the results of its topography rather than mythical Japanese ingenuity, and just isn’t replicable in most of the world.
With 70% of its land being uninhabitable mountains, its 120 million people are living in dense urban areas. Hi population density means high demand of public transportation and easy access to affordable labor pool, so it’s easier for railways to reach profitability.
Little enclaves of habitable lands are spread apart amongst rather long and narrow island, which increases demand for speed.
Frequent typhoons makes airplanes unreliable.
Its low energy sufficiently also makes car travels expensive.
Japan has to have fast, efficient, reliable railways.
Low energy self sufficiency and tough terrain also means that speeds are low even on roads, making very tiny 660cc cars actually viable, though the advent of hybrid and electric cars have started to make these kei cars become less popular.
One also has to bear in mind that when we consider best train system in the world, both West Europe and Japan are world leaders. Second point is punctuality, I think it is proven that regular punctuality is the most important aspect passengers perceive when it comes to transportation, where from Europe probably only Switzerland beats Japan.
I often wondered why Shinji’s mind train was an old fashioned, wooden interior, train like a 1920s or 30s Tube. Seeing this footage of the wobbly single-carriage rural trains, I guess it was just meant to be a rural train! He did live rurally before moving to Tokyo-3 to be with his dad. I guess that was the train he took to move out to/back from the sticks.
Smashing video mate, really really interesting.
Incredible production quality for the size of your channel! Hope you grow a lot. You have some extremely informative and insightful videos.
While I apprechiate the video, the argumentative trick you pull at around 14:00 feels a bit scummy and deceptive. "The Shinkansen [has a] maximum speed of 320km/h, and an intensly frequent service, but it's not the fasteset in the world, [...] and Britain's HS2 will run at 360"
You're comparing the Shinkhansen here with a train that does not exist, you're comparing plans and dreams with actual trains that run at this second. That feels weird, at the very least. Yes, China, France, Germany, Italy -- we all have fast trains, *too*, but the Shinkhansen does have an edge because it's frequent, fast, punctual, and has a fairly wide network.
That's really neat! And HS2 *might* be frequent, it'll be fast, but will it be punctual? Eh. And the network is one line that's like, cut in half. That comparision really is a bit silly. And the German ICE network is fast, has a wide network, but the frequency is "eh" and punctuality is very low.
This isn't to say that the Shinkhansen network is perfect - I haven't used it, so I don't have a strong opinion on the matter. But comparing UK dreams with existing japanese infratructure that's carrying passengers right at this second is weird, and imo almost deceptive.
to compare HSR by speed seems superficial. The Tokaido Shinkansen's 80% share in the market (plane and rail) between the two of the busiest metro areas in the world tells you everything you need to know about how speed is not everything.
I'm canadian, I've been to London, and went to Japan in october. i was one of the last people to really take advantage of the rail pass before the price increase. I don't really drive and take plenty of public transport.
My biggest problem with Japanese transport was how convoluted it was sometimes. Theres too many cooks in the kitchen. in Tokyo, you had JR, Tokyo Metro and Toei, which have very little compatibility with each other. You have an integrated fare card at least but zero fare integration. Need to get from a TOEI to a tokyo metro station? double fare. The connections also become labyrinths if you have to change systems. same system? great.
And thats not speaking of all the private lines that have even less integration with the major rail lines. Other than long distance trains outside of London, this felt like a nonexistent issue in London unless you were taking the bus. The fair zones are super straightforward and you have simpler interchanges.
In british terms, Japan feels like it hasnt completely left the time when the metropolitan and district railways were competing with each other.
Absolutely - other nations in east Asia have user friendly networks in this way.
Very interesting. A level of quality of presentation and analysis I don't usually expect on YT!
Fantastic video, it's my first of yours but you certainly earned my subscription. Lovely animations and footage, and great points. Thanks from Utah, USA!
I am one of those guys who hyped up Japanese public transit, and become train weeb (densha otaku) thanks to my first dip in Japan back then. But ever since that, I've been staying in Japan for work (real salaryman job, not social media or entertainer stuff), instead of being a tourist. It quickly brought me to reality check about why Japanese have a lot of complaints, even about their own seemingly excellent public transit services.
In general, I would divide the negativities between "cultural East Asian" and those that are uniquely Japan - things that makes Japan great, but costs them a lot.
"Cultural East Asian" is what makes Taiwan transportation to be accident-prone (plane crashes, train derailment), Korea's Asiana crash landing, China's safety lapses, as well as Japan's accident in near-accident free operations (including those happening in their airports recently, the Haneda collision, and yesterda's Chitose collision). I just never trust that they will learn from those accidents, even the way Southeast Asians learn from accidents. It is in the culture: the school-like institutional hierarchy, strict textbook adherence (instead of balancing them with observational learning), students conformity, hiding mistakes due to intollerant society, and teacher only focus on numbers, problems are not solved, instead considered finished when we found the culprit. It is easily finger-pointing problem solving model. As Chinese descent myself, this is a very familiar habit, even in my own family when we discuss about accident news.
That being said, Japan being an island nation, also highly suffer from "Galapagos syndrome" - a problem uniquely their own, and their acceptance of the problem being part of their "culture". One way Japan is super behind its own neighbours of Korea and China is when they have to deal with "unusual", "non-regular", or "changes" that is not in their training or textbook material. It is saddening, frustrating, as well as comedic to watch the chaos in Japanese fashion. It reminds of me and my friends back in highschool, when we forgot to study for exam or when a pop quiz question didn't exist in the textbook material.
Japan is keeping everything artificially cheap (to the ridiculous early 1990s level), incuring losses, taking debts, all just to please its aging boomer and retiree populations. They refuse to let prices increase, salary raise, and upgrade stuff. That exarcebates the phenomenon of Tokyo "sucking everywhere else" dry.
One way Japan often deals with problem is to solve problem with even more complex solutions. Toyota become a success simply because they accept "working solutions" no matter how ridiculously simple or mundane the suggestions. But typical Japanese business people often think that "if things were that easy, I don't need to pay you that much, don't try to fool me." You will see Japan clinging on to a lot of outdated stuff simply because they have a lot of functions and processes complicatedly tied or meshed into those outdated stuff in a very convoluted rules that they made themselves.
However to be fair to Japan:
It is a big nation. It has 27,000 km length of rail network, super mountainous and natural disaster-prone. It is not the tiny mountain villages of 5,000+ km Switzerland. Europe is much smaller than everyone thought. Yes, we can't learn everything from Japan, but then again, European solutions are not exactly fit for bigger nations like Japan.
Shinkansen, especially that Tokaido network is 295 kph limited, but it linked 505 km city pair (Tokyo and Shin-Osaka station) in just 2 hours 20 minutes. It is easily the fastest service around, even China and Spain's 400 kph Talgo and Fuxing trains don't go between 500 km city pairs apart that fast.
Frankfurt to Berlin is just 550 km, and it takes the Germans 3 hours 57 minutes, with a train capable of reaching 345 kph. Top speed is meaningless.
Japan's slow regular train speed is simply because of their cape gauge 1,067 mm rail network that is prone to hunting oscillation beyond 130 kph, according to their own study. An accident can delay the entire service, close the line, and rendering the speed bonus useless.
Moreover, what's wrong with Japan's TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) model? Air travel is heavily subsidised because of their refusal to bear the actual cost of running airports and its navigation facilities - which are either subsidised by the government or operated at a loss by the airport operators. With real estate subsidising transit services is good - it also serves the transit users. Of course, it doesn't always work everywhere, especially in rural areas.
Slow conventional line speeds are not due to the use of 3ft 6in gauge lines. The Hokuhoku line ran express trains at 160 kph for two decades without incident. In addition, the standard gauge conventional network has similar speed limits.
Been on japanese trains and the staff are so polite I got a bow from the driver as I got on train was on time very comfortable and had a buffet car with fresh food staff had smart uniforms all with peak caps
i love watching videos covering the problems of such extensive railway networks like the JR group or the ones in the UK while i'm here in mexico with only a handful of railway projects that seem more like tourist attractions than anything serious
excellent video btw
It's definitely interesting to see videos about Asian and European railways that point out the problems and the downsides. It seem like there are so few videos that actually acknowledge that there is any negative attributes to them at all.
Certainly, there is a lack of criticism in English.
The main problem with government operation is that they are bloated. They have tons of personnel that do pretty much nothing.
The main benefit of having a operation private, is to fut down on personnel, and in that case you have to get rid of personnel to do so. Its just in the nature of how things works.
In Europe, not only in UK, but also in Germany, Sweden and a few other countries with problems. The issue isn´t that privatization failed, despite a lot of people think that. The issue is that there have been to much expansion with to little new rail.
When Japan was building new rail in the 60s and 70s. Europe was pulling up rail. The load factor on European rail is just way to high.
Its a bit unfair to say that interrail is for tourists. Interrail is mostly used by people living in Europe. So while its used so to say for tourist use, its used for local tourists, that is very different to tourist that fly in
"various countries reach 350km/h"
Exatly one.. china. And with exactly 2 trains. The CR400 and the TR-Shanghai (that does reach 430km/h).
It might not sound like it, but de-elecftrifcation may be a good thing. The issue with electric network is that it cost quite a lot in maintenance, regardless of if being used or not. A train consume very little fuel (at least at modest speed as 160km/h) and the power and acceleration is really not that different today between electric and diesel trains at that speed. You really need to go past 200km/h for electric train to have a significant advantage.
1. I (and the majority of people with common sense) would take punctuality and reliability over architecturally pleasing stations any day. Enjoy waiting for your delay in your beautiful station though.
2. You ignore that Japan does transit-oriented development (TOD) far better than anyone in the West. This is where vertical integration and private ownership help a great deal. TOD boosts ridership on the rail network, increases economies of scale, and lowers car dependency, which are all good things for costs and the planet. The railways’ investment in real estate, which supports TOD, is therefore very good for society, and not a bad thing at all.
In terms of costs, while the Shinkansen is pricey, commuter rail and subway fares in metro areas (which is what non-tourists use most day-to-day) are still cheap. Fares in the Tokyo area had been unchanged for nearly 30 years (except to account for increases in the sales tax rate) until last year’s 5% fare hike.
Japan also has London and most western cities beat in terms of integration between suburban rail and subways, with thru running and shared ticketing systems that removes the need for a rail to subway transfer at a rail terminal in the center city (you can do this in London only with Crossrail and Thameslink but not much else, while every major suburban line in Tokyo runs thru direct on the subway).
I did ignore these things - but as I clarified in the description, this isn't a balanced assessment of the Japanese rail network. If it was, I would obviously have brought them up and would be largely positive. Instead, though, it's a collection of criticisms.
I've been around Japanese trains all my life and they are quite the marvel, not without its problems but you could say that with anything. While not "perfect" Japanin my opinion has the best trains and railway system in the world from what I've experienced.
a fascinating video on a really underdiscussed topic! loved it
This was a very balanced video covering the issues facing Japan's railways. Overall, Japanese railways are excellent, especially considered to the rest of the world, but there are cracks beneath the surface. Fares are very high compared to Europe, while rural railways are in poor shape. Furthermore, speeds could be higher on suburban and rural railways (this would require funding for grade separation). Japanese rail companies' decisions to invest in realn estate is a great idea since it allows them to profit from development made possible by railway expansions, but I do think the government should. I also liked how you pointed out that while Japan's railways are great, we also have similarly great systems in places like London and Switzerland. Japan just manages to have good railways everywhere (rather than just in Tokyo), but the system is in bad need of revamping and grade separation, ideally with an infusion of public dollars.
I think a big part of the problem is land. There isn't much physical space around the tracks in the major cities. Grade separation is being carried out, but slowly. Again, due to space issues. The Odakyu Electric Railway fought NIMBYS for 10 years to elevate and quadruple the tracks of its busiest section to increase frequency. Over past few decades several rail lines that were previously ground level tracks have had some sections elevated (i.e. Chuo Line, Keikyu Line, Hankyu Kyoto line, etc.) Effort is underway but it is very difficult. Just go watch some of the cabview videos here on youtube. You will realise how close the tracks are to the roads and buildings.
In Japan, many companies offset their employee's commute fares.
Real estate investment has become something of a necessity to keep the railway company afloat financially. Most of them are using the profits to offset the losses from upkeep of rail services. Unless I am mistaken only JR Central is making a serious killing off its tokaido shinkansen.
Many cities and towns in Japan want a shinkansen. Several railway companies have formed committees to promote shinkansen in their region. Shikoku shinkansen, Trans-chugoku shinkansen are some examples. So far, none of these plans have materialised due to poor potential returns. A shinkansen line is built with part government funds, part prefecture funds, and part railway funds, with the state footing the largest share.
Rural railways are often suffering from deep financial losses. The closure of railway lines in japan isn't straight forward. It requires all the major towns and prefectures affected by the closure to agree. Often, they won't agree unless there is some form of satisfactory service replacement (i.e. buses). The closure of a large portion of the Hidaka main line was a great example of this. JR Hokkaido determined that the cost to repair the line damage from Typhoon 17, considering the ridership and maintenance costs, was unstainable. It took 5 years of negotiations before all the towns agreed to the closure.
This transport video is truly informative and with a broad perspective. Thanks for sharing 👍
Thanks for sharing your balanced view point on Japanese Railways. Lots of good info in their on how things actually are.
One thing though. I imagine they had lots of historic buildings and stations before they were carpet bombed relentlessly.
Looking forward to them leading the way and trialing the intercity Maglev. Upgrading frequency and points and things. Lot of challenges ahead to see if it's viable and by how much.
Thanks man.
Our country ain't perfect just like any other country lol It's interesting watching the two extremes of westerners claiming 'Japan is living in 2100' and 'Japan is a living hell' fight each other on the internet when it's always a lot more nuanced than that. Thanks for the vid
The transit density stood out to me when I was browsing Google Earth, looking at Japan's network. Even in cities there's very large gaps in the rail transit network, and between that and the abundance of expressways, it's quite evident why Japan, despite being a "rail faring nation" has a surprisingly high car ownership rate. My limited experience of the UK was one where I didn't even need to think about a car, both because of London's great network, and because the lines though the countryside actually take you to places you may have reason to go. Indeed, while the Beeching Cuts stripped out a lot of trackage, those routes often are trails or treelines with little redevelopment, making them potential candidates for reopening should they be needed, making the current network even denser.
Another point I noticed that seems to be a historical trend rather than an active decision is that of grade separation and good junction planning. In mainland Europe, as well as the UK and here in North America, while level crossings do exist, a lot of major or very new routes barely interact with road traffic, if at all. Meanwhile Japanese routes often have numerous level crossings straight through neighborhoods within well developed parts of cities, which probably plays a large part in collision rates and the correlated speed limits. Japanese networks also seem to have a lot of flat junctions where lines cross each other or even share signifcant trackage in some areas, which could prove to hurt service frequency in the long term, whereas the rest of the world is focusing heavily on flyover junctions and cross-platform interchanges. This isn't to say Japan isn't doing that at all, the non-JR private company, Hankyu, is doing some pretty impressive grade separation and interchange streamlining such as at Awaji Station.
One thing I do have to give credit to with Japanese railways is the real-estate element. Many major railway companies who created some of the greatest passenger (and in some cases even freight) networks did so through the real estate model. The US and UK in particular seemed to largely abandon this when nationalization or city-control of services occured, trying to make fares pay for the systems, rather than using the larger economic activity that they produce and enable. In the US this seems to be changing, as Brightline and CalHSR seem to have a substatial realestate development angle.
Building new grade crossings have been been illegal in Japan since 1987 and have resulted in huge and often unnecessarily large flyovers all throughout the country as you have mentioned. The reason many of even the mainlines aren't grade separated is because all of them started as interurbans in the late 19th and early 20th century.
You're wrong. Car ownership in Tokyo is really low. People don't just rely on trains, buses and bicycles are also very common for people who live further from train stations, and that works well. You don't need extreme coverage.
@@gourmetbacon5750 What about car ownership *outside* Tokyo?
@@lbsc1201 She was talking about the network density in the large cities.
"The US and UK in particular seemed to largely abandon this when nationalization or city-control of services occured" - The UK didn't abandon it, it never existed in the UK at all except for the Metropolitan Railway, due to legal obligations to sell off excess land.
A brave take to honestly address some concerns about the Japanese railway culture. If you are going to read through this, I highly appreciate your patience. My biggest complaint is in point 5 which can be read on its own. Here are some things I'd like to add: (most info is from memory)
1. Finance of JRs: Despite the obvious success, merit has not been equally distributed across the branches of JR. The "Big 3" of JR: JR East, JR West, and Central JR quickly became sustainable as they respectively owe the regional businesses of Tokyo, Osaka, and the hugely profitable Tokaido Shinkansen alongside Nagoya. However, the leftover JRs, particularly JR Shikoku and JR Hokkaido do not enjoy the comparable advantage of having a huge metropolitan region that guarantees ridership and are left as victims of the declining rural. The two are not financially sustainable and have to rely on Gov subsidies. JR Hokkaido, in particular, has to deal with the natural heavy snowfall and the subsequent delays, maintenance, and extra manpower required, which makes it the most vulnerable. (A former president actually killed himself in 2011 over a derailment accident). It is hoped that with the upcoming Hokkaido Shinkansen connecting Tokyo and Sapporo they can finally have a saving grace as a survivable business.
2. Company culture: As mentioned by other comments, JR West has been seen as the one having the worst employee treatment, partly due to the fierce competition they have in the Kansai region with the numerous private railways, which more often than not, run through the denser part of Osaka and can focus on their fewer assets while actively enable through running trains across companies. Train service by JR West therefore has to be much stricter and staff are often under pressure. Speeding was a common practice to avoid delay which resulted in the infamous derailment in 2005. In 2017 an N700A Shinkansen train had a broken bogie, and it took the staff 30 minutes to find out due to the confusing protocol. (There is probably more stuff to accuse of, but they are beyond me. Could check them out on the Japanese side of UA-cam)
3. Quality of trains: The state of trains and trams running can be seen as hugely disjointed across regions. The reasons are complex, but they are largely to blame for the rural decline(again). By law, whenever a new Shinkansen line was to be built, the responsible sector of JR had to give up on the old regional rail. The local Gov would take it and set up a separate company to transfer and manage it, with the hopeful (but more often than not, wishful) goal of being financially sustainable. The business environment is inherently harsher as their very route are replaced by HSR, which is superior in every way and lets passengers skip all the local towns that the old rail serves. Trains are leftover old models from JNR and obviously, they would not have the resources to be modernized. In effect, they are relegated to legacy lines and the hope is to attract tourists who enjoy the scenery and goods of rural towns. Inside a great corporation like JR, it is reasonable to assume new trains are invested into denser urban routes first, while older model would see their later life in the rural network. The hierarchy would repeat so it would not be surprising to find current models of trains in Tokyo serving the Tohoku region in the coming decades. However, it is erroneous to assume rural regions can't enjoy new trains on their own. New tram/light rail systems are built in more rural cities like Utsunomiya, where they have the main station exit completely renovated (a topic I will touch on) that serves 3-car low-floor trams. Toyama (an even more rural city blessed by new Shinkansen service) also saw its main station completely renovated and finally enabled their tram lines to connect north to south through it, a first in 50 years or so. They also enjoy the service of the low-floor trams, too.
4. Pricing: I say first and foremost that, yes, traveling by train in Japan is hella expensive. I believe it is both a cause and a result of the high living costs in metropolitan areas in Japan. Prices are often directly, and reasonably, correlated with the level of monopoly the railway company holds over the regions and/or the end-to-end connection. This is the exact reason why Central JR could be so profitable as the Tokaido Shinkansen is easily the faster, most direct, accessible, and interconnected service between the three biggest metropolitan areas: Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Even airlines have to constantly lower fares to compete with them. In other cases when companies face competition, prices would be more reasonable, and every level of service would tend to be covered of some sort (entry economy class). *HOWEVER* , the news you gave about the price jump of the JR pass is a bit laughable in this context. As you have mentioned, it is tourist-focused. And after 2022 tourism bloomed so virtually every sector related to tourism raised their price tags. Well, are you gonna pay for it or just don’t come here? Especially when Yen/USD already fell like 30%?
5. Coverage (I have a few more personal comments here): The wayfinding and interconnection are indeed not the best in Japan, especially in Tokyo. This is partly due to the plethora of private rail companies all doing their tracks and services separately and putting much less work into integrating with one another, mostly in the past. However, development has slowed since then, and companies have realized the importance of making railway interchange efficient and elegant. Digital wayfinding is everywhere in the system. The two subway companies, Tokyo Subway and Toei Metro have collaborated to eliminate some literal walls in stations and enable easier transfer. Private railways jump on the train (pun intended) of enabling through running that allows easier travel between suburbs by running in metro tunnels. Where before, passengers had to get off in some central Tokyo stations, suffer through the commute, and get out on the other side. Double fares, although still required in many instances, are reduced. For example, since 1998, a direct through-running service between Narita Airport and Haneda Airport was created that enables travelers to switch from the regional airport to the international one on a single ride across 70+km. I sincerely could not think of an equally impressive service around the world. And I haven’t even touched on the associated Bus services, which are mostly run by the railway companies themselves to promote ridership of their services by connecting local areas with stations. *Here comes my biggest, major complaint from this video.* Although I agree with you that the more spread-out part of the city would get lesser station coverage, by the nature of the Kanto region, basically everywhere around central Tokyo is suburban to it, and this is a fairly common sight for suburban rail. The map at 08:10 is technically not Tokyo, but the Kanton region that Suica serves. That includes legally Tokyo Metropolis itself, along with portions of Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Ibaraki Prefectures. As I have mentioned before, they serve as suburban areas for Tokyo itself. So the map you have shown is actually, in the majority, just the suburban railway, and in itself, only tiny portions of major stations are shown. Not to mention the lack of information within the suburban network, let’s take a look inside the centre portion. Within the oval-shaped black-and-white line of the Yamanote line, can you see the coloured lines that have suspiciously very few stations? They are the very subway lines that serve the most important stations in the CBDs, and I reckon there are close to 100+ subway stations missing from this map. Yes, your method of comparison is very nonscientific. And yes, the Tokyo and Kanto region railway network is really in another league on its own globally.
6. Station and their architects: This topic is very subjective and the personal preferences on stations artistic designs vary. But I do still have a few things about Japanese stations to say. Europe certainly enjoyed its early leap in railway development, and as a result, had much more major grand stations than Japan in earlier days. It was not until the 20th century that the Japanese had the resources and interest to commit and expand station designs, although they were largely utilitarian in nature with modern concrete structures. A surviving member would be the main building of Ueno Station which was completed in 1932. I said ‘surviving’, because however nice of the station were, be it wooden or concrete, they would just be bombed to dust in WW2. In the post-war era, very few plans were to be implemented to restore the former glory of the stations, and most major stations just got rebuilt based on development needs like Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Shibuya of today, and are mostly function over form. Only recently (2012) that the red brick Tokyo station(09:31) was rebuilt to pre-war looks, which had its top 2nd floor (following the British way of floor numbering) blown away by bombs and remained as a 2-story shell until recently. Not that the Japanese don’t care about making old stations nice, however, as seen in the grand modern structure of Umeda(Osaka) and Kyoto stations. The photo at 08:00 featured a station from the Ginza Line (the oldest subway line in Asia), it had only recently been renovated in 2017 into that sexy look. Previously stations along the line were just another dystopian white and yellow, hospital-looking murky stations.
7. Speed (and efficiency for that matter): As mentioned by other comments, most Japanese railways came with the historic handicap of being built on a 1067mm narrow gauge track, compared to the 40% wider 1435mm standard gauge of most of Europe and that of the Shinkansen. That serves as the main hurdle for a speedy local service. Although some trains in Shikoku and previously Joetsu regions could run 120mph service, a lot of compromises were made. However, to make up for the loss, most railway companies are obsessed with providing express services that could often leapfrog traveling time and serve as main weapons to steal customers from one another by providing ever more efficient transport options by new stations and tracks, such as converting old freight track into passenger use which has the added benefit of inherently fewer stops. So I do not necessarily agree with the notion that speed is the only metric of efficiency. And the efficiency of the Japanese rail network (large cities in particular) truly shines in places not felt directly. The location of stations being the hotspot itself, the guaranteed success of using travel cards even across the country, most lines are (arguably) up to the tasks of their ridership…These are the true firsthand experience of a passenger and the system functions very well considering the needs of millions of people it needs to fulfill.
P.S. From 03:20 to 04:30 you mentioned how JR East had tons of businesses outside of railways. I would say this is a common phenomenon for conglomerates (Zaibatsu in Japan, Chaebol in Korea) in East Asia to control multiple branches of businesses across society, and in some way dictate its functioning. MTR from Hong Kong is another example. Make of it as you will I guess.
Oh god. The ‘few points’ had been expanded into a 1900-word comment. Basically, every other concern and problem you have raised are important and the Japanese do have to find ways to overcome them. There are tons of other problems like accessibility not being on par with European or some regional suburban services simply not existing. I do not see your video as faulty, but rather thought-provoking. I love Japanese railways to my heart, even to the knowledge of its deep flaws. I certainly hope they can find better solutions and actually improve their own lives through the system
I am very aware of the fact that your channel is British-based, while I have zero experience of any European system. So any observation starts from here the east without much knowledge of the west. Some attributes may be more, or less desirable from your perspective. Again, make of it as you will.
(kaya9994's comment is quite valuable to me. Although not with the same assumption, their questions are worth taking a look too.)
@@brokeafengineerwannabe2071 yeah I didn't really get why he mentioned the JR Pass. Like you could use the 青春１８切符instead
@@brokeafengineerwannabe2071 Thank you for your comments. I'm by no means an expert in Japanese rail, so I will take your comments on board.
As for Point 5, it is excellent to hear that wayfinding and integration is being improved. However, for the airport example, I can think of another - The Elizabeth Line in London. A direct, frequent service between Heathrow and London City Airport (a smaller, more regional airport), on modern, stylish trains in truly spectacular infrastructure.
Also, I should have made this clearer in the video, but the maps were as close a comparison as I could find. The map used for London is also a suburban map, showing heavy rail lines that extend quite far out of the city. I made the measurements in such a way that the "outliers" that curve back into the map were not included. The 88km figure was made over the city proper.
@@GWVillager Thank you for reading my comments and I appreciate that a lot. Disregarding that the City Airport is much smaller than Haneda, with 3 fewer runways and about 10 times fewer users, it would not undermine the Elizabeth Line which is undoubtedly an impressive rail project, serving not only passengers to and forth airports but also as an express route through London, stopping at important stations that intersect other systems. I also hope the City Airport will get a direct airport-to-airport express service as well someday.
As for the map usage, I have less complaint about the scale (as in distance in km), but about the detail contained. The Kanto region map you used is a massively simplified one that heavily distorts the geography to a lateral shape. I have checked the map and it isn't actually missing any stations (My mistake). It is only the compressed file that simply wipes out all the small stations to pixels. I would liken the structure to that of a fractal, in which if you zoom out details will be lost by eyes and the scale seems fine. In reality, the map treats distances between stations disproportionally the further it gets away from the centre, even if just slightly off the Yamanote Line. Stations outside of it are compressed together while those inside are stretched. A more appropriate solution would be to zoom in on Tokyo in the same size as London first to compare the density, then to zoom out linearly to see the true scale of the suburban network to avoid losing details. IMO, London and Tokyo are pretty comparable within a certain radius.
It is a great pleasure to interact with you and I certainly hope to learn more about the British system from your channel too!
"The broader corporate culture in Japan appears ... to be better than in the west".
Japan's corporate culture isn't really good. It's too risk-adverse, and emphasizes overworking employees.
Although government statistics show Japanese workers work OK hours, it's probably because Japanese corporations don't report overtime well. Japan's culture of overwork is very well-known, and Google has a lot of articles on it (and underreporting overtime). Eg. "Japanese working more unpaid overtime: survey" by "The Mainichi"
Japanese corporate culture is also too risk-adverse and hierachial, and dominated by old people. This means Japanese people don't switch jobs, which misallocates labour. Additionally, companies don't take enough risks, as with their slow Electric Vehicle strategy. Companies also won't listen to junior employees. There's a reason why Japan has had 3 lost decades of economic growth since their bubble burst in the early 90s.
This was a really interesting watch and brought up some really good points. Certainly integration and wayfinding is something I've noticed seems to be very lacking from some of the videos I've seen about Japan's railways.
I've never visited Japan so can't say how accurate this is but it almost looks as if a lot of Japan's railway infrastructure (or at least Tokyo's) looks very retro-futuristic in that it looks like what someone in the late 80s/early 90s might have imagined the future would look like.
It is an interesting look. I quite like it, but a lot of the network looks undeniably forlorn.
Thank you for this video, it makes many convincing points, however, I must object to the assertion that Japan's railways are slower than in other places.
While the Shinkansen does not have the highest possible top speed of any bullet train globally, the Hokkaido Shinkansen does have the highest average speed as it can maintain it's top speed of 300+km/h for much of it's route, a feat few other high speed trains can match. The only genuinly slow Shinkansen, the Tokaido Shinkansen, can have its low speed attributed to being built in 1964 and severe over-crowding. Even this point of weakness is difficult to critise however, as it is currently being replaced by the even higher speed Chuo Shinkansen.
It is true that Japan doesn't have many 150-200km/h routes like the UK does, that is mostly due to many of those lines having been replaced by truly high speed Shinkansen lines. Far from only connecting the largest cities, a fair proportion of the Japanese Mainline rail network has been replaced by Shinkansen.The Hokuriku, Yamagata, Akitia and Nagasaki Shinkansen serve quite small cities that might not even have rail service at all in many developed countries. The city of Nagano, in Japans mountainous interior,is served by a full-fat buttlet train dispite having a population of less than to that of Cardiff. A Shinkansen line is currently being built to Tsuruga, a city of 66 000. The crazy thing is that isn't even the least used Shinkansen stations, there are areas far less populated with Shinkansen service.
The remaining lines connect town of 100 poeople to other towns of 100 people through mountain passes, those kind of lines are not fast in any part of the world if they even exist. For all of the real flaws Japan's rails have, many of which are very well detailed in this video, speed is not one of them.
Very well said. I largely agree with your points there, but there are still plenty of regional trains (particularly along the West Coast) that are slower than they really should be. I’m referring more to lines that operate between cities, but not Tokyo - inter-regional transport, stuff like Nagoya to Nagano.
@@GWVillageraren’t new lines being built to deal with this?
"there are areas far less populated with Shinkansen service" - because they happen to be inbetween far more populated areas. The idea that the non-Shinkansen intercity lines are solely about "connecting town of 100 people to other towns of 100 people" is nonsense.
@@lbsc1201 Look you're right, I was making a bit of an exaggeration to service the point that the vast majority of lines that you'd hope to be faster than 130km/h (or that you'd expect to be in other countries) are already shinkansen and the remaining regional lines criss-cross the mountainous interior, and for whom urgent traffic have shinkansen alternatives much of the time. Obviously, there are exceptions but the bulk of Japan's main/trunk lines are indeed served by Shinkansen now.
@@GWVillager Narrow gauge has its limitations.
I came to this video with scepticism, as coincidentally recently I had begun obsessing over Japanese infrastructure (I literally spent 3 whole nights looking at just Tokyo's highway infrastructure), but I must say, you have made some pretty good arguments. While I may not agree with all your points, you have definitely brought my attention to some flaws. I still believe Japan has the best infrastructure in the world (and that is coming from a Dutch person, and I firmly believe we have the second best infrastructure over here), but there is always room for improvement.
At last someone finally talks about stuff like this. Thank you very much
My findings from 5 weeks in Japan:
+ The service is very good, for example there's staff everywhere and even very remote stations feature free toilets
- Service integration is bad, there seems to be minimal cooperation between different operators. You'll need more than one ticket for many of your journeys.
- This also extends to information in general. I didn't find any website or app where you can search for connections in all parts of the country. There are only the (very outdated) websites of the respective operators, and maybe a consolidated system for a small region.
- Things look very run-down. Even in Shinjuku station, one of the world's busiest and featuring something like 50 tracks, you can find rust everywhere. It gets a lot worse in rural areas, as shown in this video.
- Lack of investment: Apart from the Shinkansen lines, Japan seems to have stopped building new (or rebuilding existing) train lines. For example, no effort to get rid of level crossings at all.
idk what you mean by "no effort to get rid of level crossings at all." The number of level crossings has been halved in the last 50 years from 70,000 to 35,000. In total there are 38 lines under construction and 168 that have already gotten most of their level crossings removed.
Also your not finding a website sounds like a you problem? Norikae-annai, Ekitan, Navitime, Eki-supaato among multiple others that cover all Japanese trains, planes, busses and boats. And the official website thing I don't get. They are much more comprehensive than most you'd find in Germany or France, for example.
Having to get different tickets for each train company is annoying though, I agree. At least in most cases we can use our transit card.
@@LGVRhin-Rhone I was there 10 years ago, looks like the situation has improved since 👍
Can't help but think you've prolly never been to Japan. Living in Tokyo and I'd say I expected this video is gonna mythbust the problem... that commuter trains do have delays every day, especially in Kanto area. It's simply as that. They have timetables that would only work in an ideal setting, but in reality a minor delay in Saitama in the morning would easily propagate into some 15-30-minute delay the entire day in Yokohama, thanks to the extensive through service (in Kanto) and timetables without allowances for minor issues.
I'm not sure but it seems you haven't covered much about the daily ride experience (except aesthetics). Is it because the video ends up mostly about JR (which doesn't have much through services to other railway companies), though you conveniently added that extensive Kanto railway network map for comparison with London, when in reality (again) nobody is commuting between Chigasaki on Kanagawa shore and Utsunomiya?
The point about the train fare/rail pass price hike is also unfair imo. Most Japanese companies pay for their employees' monthly tickets, which sometimes even include shinkansen or limited express trains, though indeed I won't like it when I'm going somewhere not covered by the ticket on the weekend. The increase in JR passes' price is very justifiable though, seeing how yen's been doing these years and the post-covid overtourism. Don't forget the passes still have much better coverage than rail passes in Europe and allow access to shinkansen and limited expresses cheaply, at least much more economical than for a local.
I'd also say their business model cannot be applied universally but works well with Japan and metropoles in East Asia in general. Really don't think the omission of private railways is something considered while producing the video. It's kind of a core to this nation's railway development.
Absolutely agree
exactly JR is secondary to the private railways
As you mentioned punctuality and timetable at the beginning, I think the timetable somehow has some allowances but just a bit (maybe round 10-30 seconds?) because frequency of the lines around Tokyo should be at least 12-30 trains per hour to satisfy the huge passenger demand in the rush hour, so it is nearly impossible to leave plenty of allowance (especially dwell time) in that situation. And I also started to suspect that commuter trains in Tokyo are not that punctual as the media said after I saw the platform staff spent nearly a minute to close the door while struggling with pushing people into the train 😅
@@yatstransportbureau8848 the rush hour dwell time extensions are included in the scheduled time. As long as a railway company doesn't run its trains earlier or later than scheduled it's on time.
14:30 Let me add one point here: Japan's rural trains are slow in comparison mainly because they are running on the narrow track gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) which is a considerable disadvantage compared to the 4 ft 8.5 in (1435 mm) common in the UK and continental Europe, a gauge which in Japan is reserved for high-speed trains and a small number of underground lines.
Excellent video, really appreciate you trying to bring balance to the often insufferably ignorant fawning over trains in other countries, particularly Japan.
Now that was a refreshing watch. Thank you for your report.
Very interesting film with good commentary - thank you.
Thanks for this great, informative and well-balanced footage, in my eyes, but I wish to add just one point: 07:36 The price hike for the Japan Rail Pass was simply inevitable because the major Shinkansen lines (Tokaido and Sanyo) are already running beyond capacity. There is simply not enough room left to handle those additional three Million tourists entering the country every month, of which a considerable amount uses the Japan Rail Pass for "free" rides when- and wherever they want to. If you ever happen to ride a Shinkansen "Hikari" train between Tokyo and Kyoto during cherry blossom season, cramped with foreign tourists and their luggage in particular, you will understand.
The Japan Rail Pass is tempting its owners for unnecessary short rides such as between Osaka and Kyoto, or Tokyo and Yokohama, using the Shinkansen, just because it's possible. Also because of the speed and reliability of the Shinkansen, long distance return-travel such as Tokyo - Hiroshima or Tokyo - Morioka, on the same day becomes feasible, leading to even more overcrowded connections. So the aim was to reduce the overall traffic and thus to make tourists travelling through Japan in a more thoughtful and planned manner. There are other great means of travel in Japan such as night buses and planes as well, and using them more frequently will be something foreign travellers will benefit from as well as the people living there.
That being said, in my opinion, Japan Rail Group has missed the opportunity to rework the Japan Rail Pass itself here. Whereas the Japan Rail Pass enables the user to take an unlimited number of rides within a period of time (one, two, or three weeks), the European system requires to select from a number of days on which to travel, or even gives a certain number of trips to select. In my opinion, that would have been a better solution than just increase prices for the Rail Pass.
Oh certainly, there are reasons to increase the fares. But they have happened, and it is off-putting.
Perhaps the JR Pass would benefit from a Deutschland Ticket arrangement, where you can travel on local trains for a very low price, but have to pay extra for the Shinkansen.
@@GWVillager I'm sure you looked into the plethora of other cheaper tickets available the last time you came to Japan? What about the 青春１８きっぷ or any of the free passes the individual JR companies provide
@@LGVRhin-Rhone I haven't actually been to Japan. If I ever do, though, I will be certain to investigate them.
@@GWVillager I had feelings you hadn't. I commend your bravery for evaluating a system without having ridden it; I surely couldn't. When you do come to Japan you'll definitely find a lot of things that are worse or better than you think it may be now.
Nice Video. Its nice to see the flaws of the Japanese Rail Network. Especially the demand for being on time, id much rather have a train be delayed by 7 mins and a driver have nothing come of it over a 20 second delay ruining a drivers life. Likewise, i think the Shinkansen difference to rural lines is a good point as well. Whilst Japan has been heavily investing in Shinkansen, its left the rural lines to be somewhat run down, wheres as here in Britain, our trains may be 20+ years old, but they and the tracks they run on are well maintained. Even more rural lines are well kept, which is in a bit of stark contrast to Japan, as the clips show the trains wobbling at low speeds.
In fairness, the wobbling is largely down to Japan’s narrow gauge, which naturally makes trains appear less stable. It’s not necessarily indicative of track maintenance, though there are clearly some areas that could do with a bit of work!
You cannot compare 128M population Japan (35Million in Metropolitan Tokyo) to less populated cities of London. The 51 Busiest Train Stations in the World- All but 6 Located in Japan
Hmm... not sure it's really honest to cite the historically extremely underpriced JR Pass as an example of some unbounded price increase. Previously if you were making just one round-trip from Tokyo to Kyoto, getting the 7 day pass would be economically sound. Why would a pass that gets you unlimited JR line access throughout the country be so cheap. Even with the price increase, it's still a great deal. Furthermore, general train prices have seen little to no increase in decades.
Sure, a 70% price hike feels like a lot, but in the context of foreigners who have spent thousands on flights to get there, it really isn't and considering just how much you can get out of it, it is still a fair deal.
yeah not to mention, area passes also exist (Hokuriku arch pass for example) as well as private passes (Kansai-area daypasses) and are still extremely valuable for the tourist.
Great video, I especially like the call out of the work culture as Japan gas very toxic work (and school) cultures that do need to be addressed.
Very good arguments, and a very balanced video on your behalf though I will point out a few things (Especially for those in the comments who are now pretending Japanese railways are rubbish because of this video and are going all out to dunk on them):
- Aesthetics: Japan has earthquakes, especially ones such as the Great Kanto one demolished a lot of old, cool looking buildings like the ones we have in the UK - bricks and earthquakes are also not a very good mix. Also given how little flat, habitable land there is in Japan having a big rail station with no other purpose (i.e. apartments or shopping centres) is very wasteful use of land thaf Japan cant afford to have.
- The metro map comparison includes places such as the Yokosuka and Boso peninsula, which while part of greater Tokyo, are far from urban, think towards Amersham on the met line or Central line towards Enfield - as you mentioned its a schematic so its very out of proportion and in many areas in Tokyo you cannot go a couple hundred metres without a station, areas that only exist in/around zone 1 in London.
Overall Japanese society is in decline, I think we both Britian and Japan (as a British-Japanese person) have been punching above our weight for a long time (two smallish island countries with smallish populations being bigger economies and more developed then places such as India/Brazil/Areas of africa/ ect... forever?). Japan can still be a powerful country and it should definitely take care of its declining birthrate (being a bit more lax on immigration recently) and rural depopulation certainly to make sure this is the case.
I don't exactly think its Japans fault that all these (probably not as well informed) news outlets keep harping on about our railways like they do. However, for all the haters in thw comments, don't act like you wouldn't love to have at least aspects of Japanese railways in Britain/elsewhere and that you've seen the flaws of Japanese railways all along - especially when there are the clowns at places such as TPE (no explanation needed), Avanti ("Free government money") and LNER (Whatever the hell that new 70min flex ticket is) running the UK railways. Very well integrated tickets and rail systems between different operators, very frequent service, cleanliness and customer service (though maybe not at th expense at the employees as much please!), very cheap fares (£7+ for a zone 1 day ticket are you kidding me !!?!?!) - 600 yen (about £3.50) for an all day Toktyo metro pass !!!
As for GWRVillager, once again great video - as someone with a lot of experience in Japan and Britain I couldn't agree more with your final point - what is best is what works for each country: Japan and Britain are two very different places and while we can learn from each other, we have to find what works best for us
"Bro just wrote a whole thesis" - Happy Saturday evening everyone !!
Don’t worry about writing a lot - I love it when people provide genuinely insightful comments.
I never really considered that with the architecture, it does make sense. As for the maps, a lot of thought went into that behind the scenes. Tokyo’s map curves in on itself around the edges, with some of those lines extending very far out of the city, as you point out. I chose two opposite points on the map that were roughly at the boundaries of this distortion (I.e, the most distant points that were not doubling back in on the map), and measured the 88km from there. This obviously does ignore some of the extremities, but it’s a case of “steel-manning” rather than “straw-manning” and provides a more representative comparison.
japans problem is mostly with overly concentration on urbanisation towards large cities which i see it can be a huge problem particually when privatisation starts to kick in
I think you bring up some small minus points, but there are many plusses in japan (and not just the high speed trains). They are able to run a huge number of stopping/limited express trains on just two tracks, where other countries would need four tracks for the same level of service. Also they build their trains with all seats facing the direction of travel and seats rotate at the end of the line. In Europe we lazily assume passengers will put up with facing backwards, seats not aligned with windows etc. All to make production of the carriage cheaper.
"stopping/limited express trains on just two tracks" key here is maintenance of passing loops, unrivaled scheduling practices, and precision of driving speed.
Hankyu Railway seems to have mastered the art of scheduling I feel
Japanese railways aren't perfect but this video lacks research. Most medium sized cities in Japan have decent and adequate mixed mode public transport. Sapporo, Sendai and Fukuoka have subways. Utsunomia, Hiroshima, Kumamoto and many more have trams. All are in addition to JR or private main lines which run commuter/metro services. Conventional express trains are slow because Japan has already done what the UK wants to achieve with HS2 - build dedicated new lines for long distance service, so local stretches of the main lines can run as frequently as metro services. JR has taken safety seriously since Amagasaki derailment accident and the statement of apology remains on the home page of JR West Japan. In fact, there was an incident where one rolling stock manufacturer built Shinkansen trains with flawed steel. The manufacturer has since been forbidden from building new trains for one of the JR companies. This is quite unimaginable in Europe due to competition law and lack of options outside the big companies.
Excuse my rudeness, but did you even watch the video? I said precisely that about cities, with the exception of the rolling stock manufacturers, which is interesting and impressive. Thank you for informing me.
@@GWVillager You have stated that Railway in Japan has been weak in regional and rural services. I disagree. In fact I specifically point out examples of third or fourth tier cities, the equivalent of Leeds or Sheffield, which have been well served by public transport. Thanks to the Shinkansen and the bubble period, Japan has converted the regional railway to urban commenters. From Sendai to Kagoshima, urban train services are almost unbroken, covering most rural areas along the line. The Hokuriku Shinkansen extension is the ongoing example of this approach - Fukui now sees 8-10 trains per direction per hour. About half of those are express trains between Kanazawa and Osaka/Nagoya, making local trains not as good. The extension will see all those express trains replaced by Shinkansen. This will release track capacity for local trains, improving the services of both local and long distance travel. This also means the fact that Japanese express trains on conventional lines being not very fast is very much done on purpose. For places where demand exist and Shinkansen has not yet covered, the express trains are decently quick.
In fact, to study public transport in Japan, JR in Tokyo is not a good example. Rather, see how private railway companies in Tokyo compete or cooperate with each other (or even JR), how JR West competes with private railway companies by differentiating factors such as cost, speed and comfort, and how cities with limited population, such as Fukuoka, bring JR, subway and private railways together and create a seamless system. These are just some examples against your view on the railway in Japan. And to be honest, these are not even the most significant aspects the Japanese have done right with public transport - it is impartial, universal within the entire country, and it is passenger oriented.
@@barrielui I agree. But, again, I said this. Transport in provincial Japanese cities is much better than in the UK. 10:55
the Japanese rail network is undoubtably better than the UK, but Japan is actively performing the beaching cuts as you brought up, local lines being killed while mainlines are improved, while the UK is improving both. If the JR companies keep on this path, it's not impossible that the UK's non-highspeed lines might pass Japan's non-highspeed lines, at least that is my view.
In some regards Japan is better than the UK. My general impression is that safety, for instance, is better in the UK.
@@lbsc1201 In what ways is safety better in the UK? Genuinely curious
I feel more impressed the amount of comments I see about people mentioning the Specified Local Lines act/JGR-South Manchuria Railway topics.
I suppose your claim that Londons rail network would be better than that of Tokyo is some sort of a comment bait rather than your honest opinion.
I had 3 different G60s over the space of 20 years, a 1968 then a real clean 1974 model and an even better 1978 model and iv never seen a truck as well looked after as that. Original paint is mint the bonnet braces are still glued on and the roof lining 👌. Excellent truck mate that's a once in a lifetime find, my 78 was the same and engine gearbox & transfer case were rebuilt and like new . I'm absolutely gutted I sold it and should have held on to it .
18:09 are you talking about London?
Love the video ❤ SUBed
I have Japanese roots and I'm currently living in Switzerland.
A lot of Swiss people praise Japanese rail, but I always say, as you mention, that the Japanese system is only impressive in the cities and Shinkansens. Of course, the safety culture and precision in Japan is imo one of the strictest in the world (with exceptions like the tragic accident of the Fukuchiyama-Line, but the Shinkansen had no major accidents since their opening in 1964), however the Swiss public transit system is ridiculously underrated, as every village has the right of having a regular connection to public transit.
Additionally in Switzerland, the timetable guarantees perfect connections between busses, trains and even ships at practically every station. In Japan, this is not the case (esp. on the countryside), so it's not uncommon to have to wait for the next bus/train for several minutes.
Overall I think your video is really great, thank you for pointing it out!
p.s. you mention that the speeds of Shinkansen is lower than in other countries etc. They can easily build Shinkansens which could travel at 400kph (incl. prototypes like the Fastech360) but they're always a bit more conservative (for various reasons - safety, punctuality, efficiency etc.) when it comes to commercially operating these trains...
Disagree with the London part. Yes teh stations are way more beautiful and interesting, But at least at my last visit 7 years ago there is almost no tube coverage south of the river and the overground lines are not really well integrated and switching is everything but seamless. I had a hotel in crystal palace clearly not a fancy part of the city and it was not very easy to reach that on a friday night. This is unthinkable in Tokyo. Overland travel is still a breeze in Japan, even in remote places.
No Japan is by far not flawless, but any comparison with european train services is useless. Think of shinjuku station handling 3.5 million(!) people every day. Without massive packs of people colliding with each other and almost without touching each other. That is more than ten times the amount of people in London Liverpool street.
While interesting video, I find this almost hype up the problems that Japanese railway has while glorifying European railway's triumps. From what I can find there are only 3 things the UK in particular is ahead of the Japanese. Train station architecture, higher speed in conventional lines and also working culture within the train company.
Aesthatic are a subjective, Japan's architecture has always been clinical in a country that prefers function over form and also jolted by earthquake every other Tuesday, and while architecture are great, new 'aesthatic' station can take years to complete, look at Stuttguart 21 and even Berlin Hauptbahnhof taking nearly a decade if not more, while relatively boring and spartan Japanese stations like Takanawa Gateway and Kyoto station only took 3 years from ground-breaking to opening. While I am on about aesthatic, I believe Japan's train, when you compare things like the Hida trains, several Odakyu and Kintesu trains and even some Shinkansens like the Nishi-Kyushu and Akita Shinkansen are far better 'aesthatic' than anything in Europe, but that is based on my opinion.,
the Japanese conventional lines widely adopts the cape gauge standard limiting them to a lower operating speed than the wider standard gauge used in Europes, which not only adopts a wider gauges but alos a narrower profile than Japanese conventional line, improving high speed stability. Additionally, while I understand it is a Western thing for seats to be placed permanently fixed forwards or reverse to the direction of travel and sometimes facing together, the Japanese rotating seat always ensure the seats are facing forwards, which I find much more comfortable and I believe having better seat pitch.
The one thing I can't argue are the working condition of Japanese train company. In addition to the refusing to operate GOa3 and above of driverless train, they frequently stress their workers to perform almost robotically. But given how Japan's railway are operated where many different lines and different trains each with different destinations / speed and stops all operate on the same track line, it is important to keep everything working almost like clockwork. Japan has begin to move towards driverless train operation as Japanese train companies, and the wider industries begin to face extreme labour shortage.
While I can go on, I have no expereience riding on a UK train outside of watching train videos, and however sat in many different Japanese trains. While Japanese trains have problems, almost none that you highlighted is what I belive are Japan's train problem, which i believe is a Japan problem, which are declining population, toxic working culture and appaling geographical hazards.
Well, one thing that puts both Britain and Japan above my country, America, is that all of their largest cities have some form of rail
Based transportation for passengers, My hometown, the Capital city of Ohio, for example, is the largest city in the United States without any form of passenger railway serving it, and i know there is at least one other major US city that lacks a rail connection as well.
Very enlightening video, thank you.
3 looooooong complaints:
If I remember correctly, most of the bullying reports were coming from JR West, which is the company that caused that horrible accident in 2005. Not all JRs or Japanese rail companies are like that, and I think a lot of Japanese people who know the history were deeply disappointed that such culture still exists in JR West. Although employee treatment is a very, very deep problem in Japan, such practices and “educations” are considered ridiculous bullying even in Japan.
I don’t particularly agree with you that Japanese rural trains are not as great as that of the UK, since I personally thought THAT line you showed on the video was very specific (I have never seen such a bad-looking facade of a train. The furnishing inside was a popular one, and you see them often on local trains in rural areas, but are British trains always new and fresh everywhere in the UK?). Take an example from, let’s say, Hokkaido island’s Sōya Line. It runs through a very rural area, but the trains used for the “limited trains” do not look as bad as that car. In turn, in the UK, you have places where HST + carriages which are not so up-to-date, and I think situations are not remarkably different in Japan and the UK in terms of the quality of cars running on the rural railways. (Well, if you meant England when you said “the UK”, maybe.)
Speaking of regional transport, yes, some Japanese trains can be very slow, but I am not sure if the British railway network service is any better at this. Yes, Swiss train system is great, but it’s mainly because Switzerland is such a snowy and mountainous country (in almost all areas) with many cities situated close to each other, which hinders efficient transport by cars on motorways or by aircrafts. I don’t know how much of this can be applied to England or to other countries in the UK. Also, I am not sure about the point on the speed. Yes, less than 50 minutes to Birmingham is great, but even after the currently constructed HS2 is open, London-Manchester is 1 hr 41 minutes, and Tokyo-Nagoya is 1 hr 40 minutes (both are apart by roughly 260km as the crow flies). If you discuss the part of HS2 beyond Birmingham, I do not see why you would exclude the Linear Shinkansen (Magnetic High Speed Trains). They might both be around by 2030s, and the linear one is planned to be as fast as 500 km/h. I also believe that most of the Japanese transport systems are well organized and coordinated for most passengers in most major cities, so I do not know if the German example overdoes cities like Tokyo, Osaka, or Nagoya.
But overall, yes, I do agree that Japanese railways are never perfect, and many Western European train networks, in some cases, are much more profitable, more electrified, more sustainable, or faster. And, speaking of speed, Chinese High Speed Trains, TGVs, and ICTs have better records. I think each country has its own problems and unique ways to address them, and that Japanese landscape of very narrow and long archipelago with mega-cities are somewhat different from the British, and, as you and some other viewers pointed out, sharply declining population and such a huge amount of unprofitable rural railway lines with national government’s preference and utter emphasis on developing motorways over improving railways are certainly not similar to the issues of the UK railways, so I agree that Japan is probably not the best example to follow when designing a new era of British transportation (it may be one of the sources for inspirations on where to improve, but probably you cannot find an answer for “how” to do so).
The situation at one major rail company can be used as evidence against a broader system - how it was allowed to come to that is a valid criticism. For example, I would (and do) use Avanti West Coast’s failure as an example of the British system’s failures, even though things might be great at, say, Greater Anglia. If I were making a balanced review, I would bring up better conditions elsewhere, but this is more of a one-sided critique - there’s plenty of praise to be found in other places.
I felt the same way when comparing the rural networks. The average rural British train is rather nice and modern, but I thought I may as well compare the worst of Japan to the worst of Britain. Those two interiors I showed (the Classes 150 and 153) are widely regarded to be the worst in the country.
@@GWVillager Thank you for the reply! I see your point that such a huge company like JR West can represent some issues of the entire rail system.
I'm surprised that all British trains' interiors look relatively new, even the worst ones! I still don't think that those British trains' interiors are better than Japanese JNR-era ones, but I recognise that this is extremely subjective and I now understand your points. Thanks for your clarifications!
I love many aspects of Japanese railways: high maintenance standards, cleanliness, high availability of level boarding, among others. But other aspects, outside those mentioned in the video, are not great. Ticketing and wayfinding gets unnecessarily complicated, especially between different local railway companies, and requires extensive and confusing reading beforehand, as well as using apps like Google Maps, if you're a foreign visitor. Integration between different modes and operators is minimal, despite sharing station buildings - a good example of which are the completely separate Tōkaidō and Tōhoku Shinkansen lines and platforms at Tokyo, and lack of through running. And Japan's corporate culture (or perhaps cult) is one of the most toxic in the world, which heavily contributes to their social problems.
16:43 One more thing: The term "Hybrid Train" not only refers to trains with Diesel-electric engines, but also trains running on hydrogen fuel cells. Given that electricity in Japan is being produced emitting a considerable amount of carbon-dioxyde (e.g. produced mostly by burning Coal and LNG), those technologies actually are capable of reducing the CO2 footprint of trains.
I feel like once people start understanding the Tokaido Shinkansen for its business model around the stations instead of its top speed, people will start understanding the complex networks and concepts that bolster the success of Japanese Railways.
For starters, try to see Tokyo not as a single hub, but an agglomeration smaller of seven stations connected by a loop railway.
(also applies to Osaka but to less of an extent)
IMO the most important narrative is modal share/gravity model of trade between the two cities, as well as the smaller cities along the line.
Japan DO NOT go full america they lost so many lines and are left with nothing
In a way given Japans decline in population in general closing down lines and limiting service is very forward looking instead of shortsighted.
These videos are excellent
Finally someone that doesnt praise Japan into a Blivion.
In my opinion Swiss Railways are by far the best and most relayable. And the most quality packed one.
Great video mate!
Saying that Switzerlands system is flawless is just wrong. There are many problems like way to hard seats in Stadler trains, slow speeds and many trains are only one man operation. SBB is only this punctual because there is a lot of reserve time in the timetable it the train is on time it will probably run 10-20 km below the speed limit.
He'll need to make a video on the shortcomings of Swiss rail next haha
schedule padding is not necessarily a bad thing. a lot of people would prefer a train that arrives on time later to a train that claims to arrive earlier but is often late
They also have their poster child rail network due to the funding they put into it, just don't ask how they came across those funds.
The point about speeds in Japan versus UK needs to be put in the context of geography though - Japan is famous for it's mountains and impressive wild landscapes, most of the places where people in the UK live and commute between are a walk in the park compared to what Japan has to deal with.
Oh indeed, but it is nonetheless a benefit of being in Britain.
@@GWVillager but does it actually make your trip overall faster though? If I am in a smaller town on a regional line in the UK and want to go to one of the big cities on the ECML or WCML, my train to the main line may well be quicker than the Japanese equivalent small town trip to the main line.
But then my express train to the big cities may take significantly longer and run much less frequently in the UK than the Japanese equivalent Shinkansen. And that is before we take into account the better Metro and suburban rail coverage in Japanese cities, or that UK mainline journeys have many more delays and disruptions than the Japanese mainlines. So my overall journey time might still be slower depending on the nature of the trip.
@@BigBlueMan118 Yes, it may be slower, but that journey to the mainline is faster, and many people will only make that journey. My point is not that all trains in Britain are faster, but that some are.
0:36 that’s suck a weird photo. New LIRR Kawasaki M9’s sitting next to Japanese rail cars
I understand your point, not everthing is perfect, but, compared to other countries, Japan's rail system is good, but, they have some problems
18:15 correction: Public debt is incorrect. This is government debt. Calling it 'public' falsely makes it sound like it is the public that are in debt - quite the opposite.
Government debt means spending on/to the public, creating public surplus, not public debt! Therefore the public is richer.
Anyway, GDP is a meaningless figure. And so is government debt. So you're dividing a meaningless figure by a meaningless figure to get 260%. Useless. Doesn't tell you anything.
Tell me, also, why it 'cannot sustain' 260% debt which it is paying off at near 0% interest? It cannot 'runaway'.
Public debt refers to Government debt - if it were the debt of the individuals it would be private debt (though there are a huge number of definitions).
GDP is indeed a largely meaningless figure, but it does have some relevance. The fact is undeniable that Japan has far more debt relative to its economy than most of the developed world.
This is unsustainable as it can lead to "crowding out", whereby investors are discouraged from investing in private enterprise as there is such an abundance of safe Government loans to give.
Additionally, there is also the concern of actually paying back the debt. If a country is incapable of doing so, it may be forced to default or rely on harsh bail-outs from elsewhere, as happened in Argentina or Greece. Even if that does not happen (which is, granted, highly unlikely in Japan), interest payments can take up a larger than desirable portion of Government spending. It is not true that Japan is able to pay of its debt with no real impact - about 22% of the Japanese Government's spending goes towards debt servicing, an alarming figure.
I agree that national debt is not the be all and end all. There are other far more important issues in every country. But high debt is also not *good*, and it certainly presents problems.
Really cool video
Thanks for this refreshing video, I was always skeptical about all what’s said about Japanese trains, in France it’s really common (and even for some railway workers) to say that our railway is shitty AF, and that compared to Japan, and even (lol) Germany, it’s completely borked, while there is in fact many similar downsides on the Japanese network than on the French one
(don’t make me talk about Germany, it’s just a joke at this point, and in accessibility standards too)
I want to share another perspective about other good things that are said about Japanese railways: it’s wheelchair user accessibility (i am one of them).
Most people that don’t know railway stuff always said that Japan is awesome about that, because they have seen some inspiration-p-word fueled videos about how railway workers in Japan put ramps for wheelchair users… sometimes people say that to me, that it only exists in Japan, and I usually say to them « go to Châtelet les Halles on the RER at 9am and you will be in Japan then ».
But, outside of this, I don’t know what Japanese disabled people want, but it’s really not great from my European disabled perspective.
In Europe, while it’s slow, we tend to do as much as possible to have independent travel, with level boarding with an automatic gap fillers, unsupervised elevators… it’s still not great, there is many holes in the system, but the main objective is to have as much autonomy as possible (even if sometimes, government underfunding slows everything down).
In Japan, everything seems to be around assistance services, manual ramps, slow elevators integrated into escalators that need a guard to be turned on… all these things grant access (and do many views on inspiration fueled videos)… but do not grant autonomy at all, as we still have to contact a guard to take a train, which takes times as he has to see if he can do it in time, he has to call the other station, and might be busy for other tasks that are really needed to run the railway (especially with understaffing)
The only attempt at an automatic gap filler in Japan is from a video from 2021 (it’s not the same kind as European gap fillers, they are station embedded and not on the train)… in France. The first train with a button released gap filler dates back from around 2003 and is level boarding on most stations nowadays at the 55cm standard height… I don’t know if we are in these early, or if they are late, but autonomy when possible must be prioritized over assistance services.
Thanks for your video nonetheless ^^
I don’t know too much about accessibility in Japan, but it’s interesting to hear this. I was quite surprised too to see that video of a ramp being deployed supposedly making Japan the “best country in the world” - as you say, this happens essentially everywhere. The real test of accessibility is autonomy, and given how similar most platform and train heights are in Japan, it’s really quite shocking that level boarding hasn’t been implemented, even on new trains.
By that measure even the UK beats Japan 😱 we need to ask for a ramp in a lot of places, but more and more trains are finally getting level boarding. It’s overdue by 2 decades, but it’s coming.
And thankfully since the ScotRail nationalisation, and the increased staffing, I’ve never had to wait for a ramp. Prior to the recent nationalisation, I often had to wait 10-15 minutes even in major cities. I’d still prefer level boarding, but having someone always waiting sure beats having to chase down a staff member (or even block a door sensor to get someone’s attention).
One thing is very clear. German railways are way better than French ones at rural and regional service. The service many lesser lines and connections receive in France is absolutely pitiful.
@@bahnspotterEU yes, and it’s getting better as government funding is increasing.
But many people in France tell that Germany is better in terms of speed, reliability and regularity on mainlines/ICE, which is not at all.
@@kaitlyn__L Interesting that there was a noticeable difference after nationalisation. There must have been something actively preventing service like that before - I struggle to believe this but there must have been explicit instructions to focus on other activities.
The main problem about Japanese railways is lack of unitary vision from the central government. Subsidies are low because the central government simply doesn't care about deciding anything and everything is left to the local governments, even for stretches of infrastructure that should very much be considered of national interest. And honestly, the Japanese central government is really lethargic about anything (this does have its good points but all of them are very in different areas from public infrastructure).
As a German I know the problems of our system but there is one thing I always think is actually pretty good. While we too suffered from closure of lines etc we still have a lot of regional lines that serve even really small towns. You can take regional trains to get from all the way in the south to the sea in the north and regional trains punctuality is okay I would say. Still needs improvement but over 90% of trains are either on time or with a delay of less than 6 minutes and over 98% with a delay of less than 16 minutes isnt unusable as some people make it out to be. Like I said it still needs a lot of improvement and I know the flaws of the German rail system but its not like Japan does everything better either. One thing I still dont get is why even in major cities in Japan there is a "last train" that basically leaves you stranded after midnight if you dont catch that one.
I think Japans rail system is seen as overly postive without looking at the negatives because an average tourist just doesnt experience those negatives. They usually visit large cities, see the well working system in those and think that Japanese trains/the system in general must be amazing
IIRC they close tracks during nighttime hours for regular maintenance operations, which I can imagine would be important for high traffic areas like Tokyo
@@firetruckenthusiast8596 Afaik they only do that with the Shinkansen lines because they are highspeed but still use normal ballast tracks. All the other lines wouldn't need daily maintenance of such scale
gw is the goat fr
love this video
I usually gave an example of japanese rail in comparison to Sakhalin rail (as Sakhalin rail is of the same track width), but since JR closed half of lines in Hokkaido this comparison works better in our side! :D