Fssssssh! Weww! Phew phew phew! Nyooow! Look at that train go.
That’s pretty freakin’ fast.
Japan is pretty well known for it’s mega speedy and super on time railways.
Japanese bullet trains, called Shinkansen, can go from Tokyo to Osaka in two point five
hours at a cost of around 14,000 yen, which sounds like a lot but is only a little over
130 dollars. Compared to the UK, where a journey of similar
distance is four hours and costs nearly 200 dollars.
Speaking of the UK, how are the trains doing there? Surely, these two capitalist island
monarchies who used to be naval powers and had empires should be comparable in their
rail network ability?
So why is Britain’s railway rubbish and why is Japan’s railway the best thing since
hentai? Let’s find out, comparing the speed, infrastructure, and punctuality of the two
systems.
Since the 1940s all the trains and rail in the UK was owned by the government as British
Rail. The service was terrible and nobody used it so back in the 80s this demonspawn
laid out plans to privatise it and give control to for-profit companies.
The service provider rights in each region
of the UK were sold off to the highest bidder and that’s the system we still have today.
Around the same time, the Japanese version of the Tories did the same thing with their
rail, but with one key difference. Rather than just give private companies ownership
of the trains, the Japanese government gave the companies control over...everything.
The trains. The rail. The signals. The stations. The ground the tracks are built on.
And they didn’t give each area to different companies, intercity rail is almost universally
ran by one cluster of very similar and cooperating companies called the Japanese Railways group
(J.R.). So JR is a licensed monopoly that owns all
the rail infrastructure between cities, and operates these lines entirely by themselves.
Not only that, but JR owns the land surrounding the rail too. Originally this was so that
they could expand and adjust the rail if needed, but in reality Japanese Railways have been
building on it and leasing it out. You can go to Japan and eat food in a restaurant owned
by a train company. Or live in a flat owned by a train company. Or go to work in an office
building owned by a train company. All the profits from these ventures get invested
back into the railways, keeping the infrastructure funded without passing the burden too much
onto passengers. This is a pretty smart idea because now Japan has uniformity nationwide,
maintains the profit motive to keep improving the service, and doesn’t cost the government
a dime or yen.
In the cities, the amount of private rail providers is greater, but each provider only
operates a few lines used for commuting. These operators also work with the government to
plan new routes and adjustments, a contrast to the UK where planning comes first and transport
has to make do with whatever convoluted mess gets thrown their way.
So that’s the infrastructure. Now what makes them so fast? Bullet trains can reach a speed
of 300 kilometers per hour. For Americans watching, that’s 8% the speed of a bullet
fired from an AR-15. British trains can do about a third of that speed.
Believe it or not, the majority of train tracks in Britain today are the same rail laid down
in the Victorian era. You don’t need to be an engineer to know that you can’t go
very fast on 150 year old tracks.
We do actually have the money to tear all of them up and replace them but instead we’re
going to build a big useless line from here to here instead.
Okay, to their credit, there is one existing high-speed train that goes from London to
the Channel Tunnel, but...that’s….not…really…enough. And it’s not even usable when it gets too
hot; the track expands in the heat and causes the train’s wheels to buckle so half the
year it’s useless.
And what about Japanese trains? Well, concrete slabs built under the tracks
absorb heat in the same way a heat sink cools down your computer. This minimises heat-related
track expansion. The tracks are also welded together to reduce
vibration, leading to faster speed, and more importantly, a smoother ride for passengers.
71% of Japanese rail is also electrified, which can speed up and slow down faster than
traditional petrol based trains like in Britain. Shinkansen also travel on a seperate tracks
to regular trains, reserving 3,700km of track for the bullet train system.
British tracks are less than 40% electrified and has less than 100km of high speed rail.
That’s not good.
So that’s the speed and infrastructure sorted out. But what about the punctuality?
Firstly, the human resources involved in the operation are almost operated to military
precision. Drivers have strict training to ensure they
always stop at the same spot at stations, as the entrances to carriages are marked on
the platform. Conductors have a set of specific hand gestures
to make that allows the driver to see the command before they hear it, again speeding
up reaction time. Platform signalmen are coopted to also direct
the flow of people, and a cleaning crew can completely sweep an entire train clean in
less than ten minutes.
The average late train in Japan in 2018 was 42 seconds late. If it’s over five minutes
late, you’ll get a certificate of apology. If it’s over an hour late, it makes headlines.
Overall, your standard Japanese rail line running 25 trains an hour for a month issues
certificates of apology to give or take 16 of these trains. That’s 0.8% of journeys
and even then, 94% of these delays aren’t the fault of the rail companies
Compare this with Great Britain, where barely 90% of trains are on time and if it’s late
you’ll be lucky if you get even a partial refund.
This is because as mentioned before, Japanese Railways have complete control over scheduling,
and planners extrapolate from past data to adjust the schedule overnight to accomadate
for fluctuations in passenger usage. To change a route as a British rail provider, there
is a lengthy process that can take months and cost thousands, so it’s literally cheaper
to keep running dead routes with zero passengers.
Those are the infrastructural and economic reasons why Japan’s railway dwarfs the UK.
But there’s one other reason why they’re so good; culture.
Trains in Japan are also seen as symbols of progress. In the Meiji Era, Japanese society
jumped from the 1600s to the late 1800s in just fifty years through rapid industrialisation
(using a land value tax [cough] click click) and the key symbol of this transition was
the steam train. After the Second World War, the economic boom
in Japan known as the post war economic miracle was also charactertised by the new bullet
trains. In fact, even though the railways have been in private hands since the 80s,
it’s still seen as belonging to the people of Japan. Merchandise for the railway’s
flagship stock Doctor Yellow is sold in all the touristy areas.
But it isn’t always down to pride. Sometimes, it’s just down to necessity.
Japan has the population of all these states living on an island the size of this state
. They all need taking to work in the morning. So really, is it too hard for an Island the
size of this state with a population of these states to have a functioning train line that
can take me to Edinburgh in less than four hours!?