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Comment by socrates1998 | Hacker News Reader

socrates1998

The train guys all compete with each other in Japan to be as close as possible to exactly arriving and leaving at the scheduled time.

You will often have a train/subway stop before it gets to the platform, just a 200 or 300 or so meters away, then start again.

I heard this was so that they would arrive at exactly the time they were supposed to arrive.

It's one of the things I miss most about Japan, a simply amazing dedication to their craft.

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I have only seen a stop like this happen when there is another train at the station that has not cleared (or will not clear a track cross-over). The reason for a stop is announced by the conductor when the stop occurs. This happens every 30-50 trips on a busy line. I've never experienced an arbitrary stop to "maintain schedule" in the several hundred Tokyo train/subway trips I've taken.

I have experienced several long slow approachs in Zurich so that the subway could arrive and stop as the second hand ticked to 12.

They announce the reason for substantially all unscheduled stops. The most common is 信号待ち (waiting on a signal)。It is my impression that, in Japan, the lion’s share of those are discretionary on the part of the station staff for safety reasons. (This is not true of the US, where ops on railways are rather substantially more... organic.)

Source: uncle worked in dispatch room in US; many of my salarymen comrades were train buffs and they tried to convert me.

Well, that's nonsense: if you just arrive early and stand longer at the platform, everyone wins.

@gpvos - That doesn't always work. Sometimes a train will arrive early, but another train is scheduled to arrive before them, so they have to wait until the other train arrives and departs before they can enter the station, or they'll screw everything up. The train system in Japan isn't a single-line system, like the ones that exist in many cities. It is extremely complex, with express trains and trains that stop at every station all using the same platforms. The arrivals and departures have to be precise for the whole system to work.

Well yeah, I'm assuming the platform is free. Otherwise the train has to wait, obviously; that's the way it works in most places.

Is the platform guaranteed empty during a time when a train is not scheduled to be there? It seems to me there might be a lot of benefits to knowing that a train is either going to be there or not. Having a system that runs on time, and then having trains arrive when they are not supposed to is not necessarily an advantage.

An arrival jingle plays when a train arrives. If it plays early, people are going to rush thinking they're about to miss the train.

It's better to arrive exactly on time.

Well, that's silly too. They should play a separate pre-departure jingle 30 seconds or whatever before the train is expected to depart.

Hmm, I can imagine that having the jingle play automatically on arrival is easier and more robust to implement (no further human intervention needed) than your proposal. So that is a somewhat reasonable explanation.

A very long time ago I read a biography of Ronald Reagan, who had the same policy. He was punctilious about being on time, neither early nor late. He would arrive at an appointment 5 minutes early and then wait outside until the precise minute it was scheduled before joining the engagement.

I tend to do the same, unless the meeting place is somewhere you might go anyway (say a bar or cafe). It's always felt slightly impolite to me to arrive anything more than a minute or two early.

As a rule, I always arrive exactly 15 minutes late to people's houses, I'll even wait in the car. Chances are they are late preparing everything, taking a last minute shower or vacuuming.

Basketball coaches that would make me run a suicide for every minute that I was late to practice and not out on the floor ready to go, have forever instilled in me the habit of getting places at least fifteen minutes early.

Oddly enough, I tend to do that as well. Though that's more through social anxiety than wanting to be exactly on time (I don't want to be late but I don't want to make the meeting host feel awkward either).

I prefer to think of it as being considerate.

Meanwhile, people had to sit on a train that was stopped 200 meters away from the platform for no reason.

This happens in every country already, but generally you’re late when you’d get off, not on time.

It doesn't happen just for fun, it happens for a reason, such as the train is waiting for another train on the platform to leave.

You assume "the" platform. Often times, "a" platform is available, but pulling to a non-scheduled one would be disastrous.

> for no reason

Keeping trains on schedule is a reason. A very good reason to do something. It is unlikely that earlier arrival would have benefited anyone in cases like this, where they likely would have had to wait the equivalent time at a different transfer stop or signal, given that the whole system is timed so well.

How does waiting outside the station keep trains on schedule any better than waiting in the platform? And while people with appointments may not benefit from the train arriving earlier, people who are just going shopping / to the park / what-have-you definitely do.

I'm not sure it's any better at all! It's likely also a cultural difference, as I would prefer to use a system that would arrive early. I'm just saying that there are reasons a train system might like its trains to arrive on schedule, rather than early or late. Saying that there are "no reasons" to arrive on schedule is just silly. There are lots.

The train system is operating near peak capacity. Any deviation from schedule is going to ruin the entire rush hour. You get miles of traffic jams only with trains.

Propably because the platform is not yet free or they can't yet get a route to the platform (because some other trains need to pass through first)?

That's not what @socrates1998 said, though. The platform isn't in use if the reason the train stops is that the driver wants to arrive precisely on schedule.

A station becoming unexpectedly busy may have knock-on effects (e.g. taking longer to make your way through and thus missing a train), so it might not be a net benefit.

assumptions. If you can get out early and start the next leg of the trip, that's better than waiting inside the train and be locked to predefined gates.

The opportunities of an idling train, accessible at a platform greatly outweighs a non acessible idling train

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