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Comment by qmarchi | Hacker News Reader

Japanese culture is very strict about being being precise and having high expectations of each other and of companies in general.

Some may not know this, but trains, and railcars in Japan are accurate _down to the second_ and if there's any deviation from that, the management company for the line will generally offer an apology to the riders.

The easiest one I could find was from 2017 where a train left the station 20s earlier than scheduled. Source: https://www.mir.co.jp/assets_rti/pdf/2017.11.14.pdf

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I was on a 3 hour Shinkansen trip that was 2 minutes late and the staff profusely apologized when we arrived.

I have also been on a cross US Amtrak trip that was literally 30 hours late and they rationed food and the staff became increasingly rude and unhelpful.

Same here in Canada. I used to take the train between Montreal and Toronto frequently and I don't actually remember it ever being on time. It usually was 30-60 minutes late, since Via Rail shared rail with freight trains, but had a lower priority so it often needed to wait.

I must commend the Berlin transit system. Except for the occasional strike, I found it to be extremely efficient, clean, and rather polite. Especially the trams.

Did you and I live in the same Berlin??? The S Bahn is literally always late.

I have a strange compulsion to leave for things much earlier than I need to, and I arrive early always. I honestly didn’t notice, looked down of the platform and checked when the next train was coming, and wait. The tram was fantastic, I took it every day and really liked it. I was there for three months in the fall.

I see. I lived almost a decade in Berlin, and both in west and east. I cannot say enough good things about the trains. However I will not say they are always on time!

I lived in the Washington, DC area for ten years and used its train system every day, and it pales in comparison to Berlin. I've also tried New York City, San Francisco, Paris, Sydney, Moscow, and Atlanta, and Berlin was just top notch. I envy you immensely. The cleanliness, politeness of its passengers, above and under, it was just wonderful.

I've heard very many complaints about Deutsche Bahn though. On the other hand here in Switzerland trains are crazy good, perhaps not as much as Japan, but if you have a 5 minutes connection you can normally assume you'll make it.

Deutsche Bahn is notorious for being late or having technical problems. It's like a running gag. Everytime I have to take a train in Germany, I make sure to have at least 1-2 hours between connecting trains/flights.

And yes, Japanese trains are crazily accurate. Not only are they (almost) always perfectly on time, they also stop exactly at the position that is indicated on the platform, so you can line up and wait right in front of the train door.

In Wales, I've had a train scheduled for every hour that has both just not shown up and has ran straight through the station without stopping (lol).

Pretty awesome watching the train you've been waiting for just sort of keep going :D. (The magic of newtown Wales!)

IIRC buses in London do that when they are overfilled.

The worst is tho running and rushing and then finally making it into train car that turns out to be going completely wrong direction.

It's easy to apologize profusely for something that is well within expectations.

On the other end of that spectrum, I can also empathize a bit with an increasingly unhelpful crew of a 30 hour late train. Yeah, you don't have to be rude about it, but at some point, there's simply a decreasing amount of help that can be given.

And I'd imagine everyone on board was becoming rude and unhelpful.

Amtrak sucks so bad.

I wonder why the Japanese culture is like that. Obviously, some other nations could use the same precision and keeping companies (and governments) to high standards. But out of all countries, I can only think of Japan that does that.

Is it because of language? Religion? Genetics? Isolation? What is the reason?

Heavy laws and discipline?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZLGqL1FMo

I presume then they are computer controlled? If so, how does one actually leave early or late?

They have a driver.

There’s a limited amount of computer control, you have people checking to see that the platform is clear and it’s safe to leave. Meanwhile, the computer is controlling a physical system and it’s not like the control will be perfect… everything from weather to mechanical failures will affect it.

The signal will often go green (or in the case of this line, ATC will show that the train is cleared to proceed) prior to the actual departure time. This is because the trains are not allowed to close their doors until they have a departure signal, so this has to happen well before the actual departure time. Depending on the station configuration and signalling technology the signal clearing may simply occur automatically once the line ahead is clear, so it's up to the train driver to ensure that they don't depart too early.

Computer control is nice but it's one tiny piece. If wayside infrastructure fails during rush hour, trains are going to be delayed, so they have to assure that won't happen. Station dwell times are another big issue that computers don't have any control over (the train can't leave when someone's backpack is caught in the door).

Computer control is more of a safety issue than a reliability enhancer. Computers are pretty good at stopping trains before they crash into another train or rocket off of a curve some idiot took at 80mph, but not so good at driving the train at its safe limits. Ever ride BART? It's been fully automatic since its inception (in normal operation, drivers have an e-stop button and make announcements) and it isn't setting records for on-time performance.

I think the fascination with Japan's on-time record is a little overblown. I went to high school in Tokyo and I was late plenty of times due to train problems. Snow? Schedule is fucked for the entire day; trains canceled, trains late. Someone falls in front of a train? You're not going anywhere for an hour. As a rider of the New York subway system during the "meltdown", I can tell you that you can absolutely do worse than Japan. But the MTA was still happy to hand out vouchers explaining why I was late to work.

> Computer control is nice but it's one tiny piece.

I don't know if they do this, but I'd imagine if they built in buffers and then controlled the train speed based on arrival/departure times they could get pretty accurate. If a run's maximum average speed (mouthful) is 120 km/h then plan on 100 km/h which gives you +20 buffer to play with in order to make sure the time is right. A computer would allow that +20 to be evenly spread so passengers aren't aware of it.

That, of course, has much less to do with computers and more to do with planning and eliminating and accounting for unknowns as much as possible.

> the train can't leave when someone's backpack is caught in the door

It can, if the door slam shuts instead of attempting to reopen and close.

Japanese train drivers are trained to the extreme, with periodic auditing by the trainers that involves being timed with a stopwatch as they cover the speedometer. https://youtu.be/xzkU6tmdImY?t=205

The high punctuality isn't necessarily without its faults; it creates a high-stress environment to adhere to schedule. 106 people died in a train crash that is hypothesized to have happened because the train was 60 seconds late. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment

I’m under the impression it’s a similar thing in Sweden regarding trains. I heard they give you money to cover a taxi if the train is late by a few minutes or something.

They don't give money, but they do get you a taxi if you missed your train change. Alternatively, a night at a nearby hotel and a new trip the next morning.

Only if there is no other option. If there's another train in three hours, then you are waiting three hours.

I heard they give you money to cover a taxi if the train is late by a few minutes or something.

LOL. If that was true the Swedish train companies would have been bankrupt decades ago. Swedish trains are extremely unreliable. As someone who used to take the Stockholm-Gothenburg train a lot for work I was happy every time I arrived less than an hour late.

In Finland you can claim money if the train is late 25% with 60 minutes and 50% at 2 hours... Also taxis are done sometimes, but people really need to know their rights and demand it.

With Stockholm public transport, you get up to $130 for a taxi if the (expected) delay is more than 20 minutes. My guess is that it works out fincancially because so few people know about it / can be arsed to send in the paperwork.

For intercity routes you get 25% off the ticket after 1h delay and 50% after 2h delay.

Not at all, trains and tracks in Sweden are old and not properly maintained. And the official statistics regarding punctuality is insanely misleading.

Yes, if they screw you over you might get a taxi ride. But most probably you'd just have to wait for several hours and get up to 50% of the ticket price as a voucher for the next trip.

Trains are one of the most embarrassing part of Sweden. And we are probably going to spend and absolute fortune on new tracks and new slow trains (slow because costs have already spun out of control).

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