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How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

arun.is

71–80 of 158 posts

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#71
post #49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is roughly the size of Montana, with the population of almost CA and TX combined.

Shouldn’t that extra population in a limited amount of land lead to more demand and better outcomes for rail and roads?

The locals value silence. It is not easy to put rails or roads. until recently people used to protest the noise of windmills (thats changing now).

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JR is big, but 62% of passenger volume is not JR and that remaining 38% is split by 7 companies Further, in the big metro areas, the private trains do just fine. JR East is #1, Tokyo Metro is #2, JR West is #3, Tokyu is #4, ... the next JR, JR Central is down at #9 with #5 #6 #7 #8 all private. Tokyo Metro is private, Toei (is the city run subway, it has 4 lines as is far down the list).

At least where i live, subways and railways aren't really considered to be the same thing

The line gets really blurry in some places in Tokyo.

Asakusa (one of "my" lines!) line, is definitely a subway inside central Tokyo, but you can stay on the same physical train going all the way from Narita to Haneda (think RER in Paris?) — I think it would be qualified as "light rail" anywhere else in the world.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#73
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its because deep down they know japan has something which they destroyed with there ideology and hate in there own country.

"which they destroyed with there ideology and hate in there own country" Arguably the ideology and hate are prerequisites for a country to have a monoculture. With ideology and hate comes xenophobia and racism == monoculture.

[flagged]

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#74
My personal experience of the multiple operators in Tokyo while traveling there only once for tourism was that it is a mess and not very convenient for users. Like having a station with almost a same name but different operator, a few hundred meters or a km away. And the difficulty of commuting between lines.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#75
post #3

A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company but in Japan it helped make all these efficient and meticulous changes possible, and avoids issues of privatisation like neglecting maintenance / short term profit maximisation.

The short term profit maximisation thing comes from leadership culture rather than employees per se

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#76
post #56

For those of you planning to go to Japan, please make sure you actually calculate how much JR train trips would cost you. They upped the price a few years ago and, since then, it's basically impossible for the JR Pass to be more affordable than single tickets. For one of my recent trips, I was actually more better served with a local pass (Kansai Wide Pass) than the JR Pass. Too bad because it used to be a really goo…

> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal... Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...

This is exactly the reason why in germany we have now a broad ticket for short distance trains. Government realized they fail to meet EU regulations in reducing CO2, so they rushed to implement a cheap german wide ticket. Initially just 10€, now 60€ a month.

Still a bargain, you can go anywhere as mich forth and back as you want (just not the dedicated long distance trains, so going through all of germany takes a bit longer).

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#77
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal... Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...

Trains can use renewable energy.

I just realized I interpreted your comment the opposite way you intended... Apologies

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#78
post #56

For those of you planning to go to Japan, please make sure you actually calculate how much JR train trips would cost you. They upped the price a few years ago and, since then, it's basically impossible for the JR Pass to be more affordable than single tickets. For one of my recent trips, I was actually more better served with a local pass (Kansai Wide Pass) than the JR Pass. Too bad because it used to be a really goo…

> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal... Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...

Making it cheaper for people to fly across an ocean to travel around on mass transit is the last place the price needs to go down.

Re: How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

#80
post #56

For those of you planning to go to Japan, please make sure you actually calculate how much JR train trips would cost you. They upped the price a few years ago and, since then, it's basically impossible for the JR Pass to be more affordable than single tickets. For one of my recent trips, I was actually more better served with a local pass (Kansai Wide Pass) than the JR Pass. Too bad because it used to be a really goo…

> Too bad because it used to be a really good deal... Considering the environmental woes & collapses coming down the pike, I'd like to see a trans-border effort to drive down the price of mass transit _everywhere_. Put it on the G7 agenda, the OECD agenda, the UN General Assembly agenda, ...

The JR Pass has never been (and still is not) aimed at locals, who are not even allowed to buy it. It's for tourists only.
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