Illustrations of Japan’s “unseen” workforce of trains that work at night (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Illustrations of Japan’s “unseen” workforce of trains that work at night (2019)

spoon-tamago.com

199 pointszdw153 comments

NYC is proud of its 24/7 subway service. Tell a NYer another city’s subways are better because of XYZ and they’ll shake their fist and say “but we have 24/7 service and they don’t!”

But I can’t feel part of the reason for the NYC subways many woes is because of the 24/7 service and the lack of maintenance and cleanup.

I love taking the subways in NYC. They have such a rich history and it’s so easy and affordable, but yeah… it’s also incredibly filthy.

I, too, love riding in an antique tin can (likely 50+ years old) driven by a maniac and infested with rats the size of dogs. It is still the best way to get around Manhattan...

I’m no bike zealot like some here, but I make it a point to avoid the subways as much as I can in favor of biking around Manhattan.

The only time I venture underground is when it’s pouring rain.

Even dodging cars, I find it a much less stressful experience than the subways.

I fully understand this isn’t for everyone though. And not just because of cars.

I grep up in a city where the last train would start its route at 0:15, or 3:00 on Friday nights. The first would be at six or so.

No problems with maintenance and cleaning whatsoever. Then again no homeless either, considering it's closed for a few hours of the day.

I gotta agree with this.

If I'm waiting at 2am for a subway in NYC for 1 hr, versus waiting 6 hours for the first subway to kick back in if it's say, 12:01am in Japan or South Korea? Then IMHO it's better to just eat the cost, take a taxi, feel the burn of $100 to get home vs. say $2-4 for a 3am subway ride, and give the NYC MTA subway system time to work on repairs, renovations, additions, etc.

24 hour subway leaves no time at all to do any maintenance.

I really, really, really really really wish that NYC would just straight up plagiarize Japan or South Korea for their metro systems. Even their "next stop" displays are far superior than what NYC currently has.

One can dream...

NYC recently replaced some of their subway cars with brand new ones.

I’m in Seoul right now as I type this. Was in Taipei a few days ago too. The brand new NYC subway cars are already filthier than the older Seoul and Taipei ones.

I lived in Taipei for about 3 years. Technically it's against the rules in both the NYC metro and Taipei metro to eat on the train. Technically it's a weakly enforced rule in both places. A lot more people eat on the train in NYC than Taipei.

I would also say the behavior extends to more than just eating.

I don't know why they don't at least put a trash can on the train. If people are going to litter anyhow why not at least provide the off chance that hey they might toss their leftover food into the bin, instead of letting it roll all over the train for the next 16 hours. It's like the great ashtray removal in the last few decades. People aren't going to quit smoking because you took away the ashtrays, they will just toss their cigarettes on the ground where there used to be an ashtray.

Fire risk. Someone will toss a cigarette but in there and the next thing you know the train is on fire.

And this being NYC, you know it’s bound to happen sooner or later.

I once ate hamburger on an intercity train (Namba to Wakayama) in Japan because I hadn't eaten all day.

The train was parked with its doors open awaiting for departure time.

Just as I was taking another bite of sandwich, someone walks into the cart, sees me eating, and turns around and walks right out to walk over to the next car.

How do I know it was me?

There were only 2-3 people in the entire cart.

Guess I should've known better.

If you were eating a basic (nothing exotic) rice ball (onigiri), they would not look twice. Can you guess why? Smell. (You also did not mention if fries were included.) My advice: Eat the hamburger on the platform and take the next train. Or, try something with almost no smell.

It's common to see parents feeding onigiri to their kids on the train, even if it is "technically" (the best kind!) against the rules.

And if they were eating durian, everyone else would gang up on them and throw them off the train.

Even a durian crazy country like Singapore explicitly bans them on public transport, definitely won't blame the Japanese :)

I never thought of it before, but I don't think there is any food you can buy at Japanese station-platform kiosks that really smells. Very different case in Korea. On long-distance trains, there is always that guy with a bag of dried octopus...

Sometimes I’d shop around for a car or two for a perfect, heaven mandated seat for me, when the train isn’t leaving soon anyway.

It should be no big deal, unless people are really keeping distance from you and standing in the next blocks of seats. That happens, like, a man with garbage bags is grumbling nonsense. Bags of fries and 551 takeouts at 5PM usually won’t trigger that… just appetites :p

    Technically it's against the rules in ... the NYC metro

This is incorrect. Google something like "can i eat on the nyc subway?" and you will find many articles telling you what is and is not allowed on the NYC subway. Eating and drinking is allowed. A NYTimes article from 2017[1] says the main reason to allow eating & drinking on the subway is for children who ride the metro to school. Many eat their breakfast on the train. There is a real public health concern that, if eating on the NYC subway was banned, many children would not eat breakfast before school.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/nyregion/mta-reconsiderin...

I stand corrected. This is probably a more authoritative source, though:

https://new.mta.info/document/36821

But do note this:

> (f) No person shall bring or carry onto a conveyance any liquid in an open container.

Nice follow-up. During my short research, I was surprised to see they make a specific carve-out for drinks from an open container! I guess it makes sense, as the train might stop on short notice. Also, if you really think about it, it is weird to travel on a train drinking something from an open container(!). It would normally have a lid/cover.

I’ve generally understood open containers to include drink containers with lids, at least for legal restrictions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-container_law

> The possession of cans, bottles or flasks or other vessels containing an alcoholic beverage could potentially result in a violation of open container laws.

> To be “open”, in most cases, means that some of the contents have been removed, the seal is broken, the cap is off or the alcohol is otherwise readily accessible.

Even the wording above makes it sound as if interpretations can vary, though.

> There is a real public health concern that, if eating on the NYC subway was banned, many children would not eat breakfast before school.

Why is that a public health concern? Not eating breakfast is completely normal. Many children already don't eat breakfast.

Exactly.

Maybe the problem with many things in the US is that institutions that should not be dealing with certain issues are forced to deal with them by various interests.

The MTA should not be in the business of ensuring schoolchildren are fed. Nor should they be in the business of being adhoc homeless shelters.

Ezra Klein just wrote an article on this exact topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/opinion/democrats-liberal...

Thank you for sharing this. That was an informative read. I’ve seen Ezra’s name around before, but I’m not familiar with what he’s known for.

not eating breakfast isn't healthy, thus making it a health concern

the health of the children of a community is a public concern of that community

> not eating breakfast isn't healthy

In what sense? It has no adverse effects. Are you worried about spiritual pollution?

in the sense that not eating breakfast does indeed have adverse effects on children

You technically have to pay to use the NYC subway too. You're also technically not allowed to smoke crack on it.

Or just nap in a capsule for 4 hours before taking the first train home.

NYC subway is basically a situation where the horse stable owners got their industry codified into the law. For example, there is a pension earning position on each train that is merely responsible for closing the doors, because this was needed with the technology of the time a century ago, but the transit workers union has ensured this good paying job will not be eliminated now that we have came up with ideas to solve the operator closing door issue (like a platform mirror). Now labor costs are twice as high for no good reason to run a train, since NYC subway needs to run them with two people while other transit agencies can run them with just one, or entirely autonomously even. Chances are there are a lot more positions like this, completely vestigial at this point, adding to overhead, but to be preserved seemingly until the end of time so that no one is told the bad news that their job no longer exists.

I know about the duo-operators in MTA. Before I came to NYC I didn't understand it either.

After I moved here and saw how violent and hostile people are towards the train, I actually came around on the duo-operations. If MTA doesn't do that it's likely many many people will be crushed by the doors, and you'd get a lot of broken trains.

I never saw as many riders actively breaking the train doors in eg. Japan/HK/DC/Seattle/SF subway.

>If MTA doesn't do that it's likely many many people will be crushed by the doors

Train doors look ominous, but are designed in a way to not seriously harm a human in a way.

Not the ones in NYC. I am telling you they hurt a lot more than ones say the Yamamoto Line's. I know people who got deep bruises from them.

The MTA train operators will aggressively chomp the doors closed on passengers attempting to hold the door for their friend or squeeze themselves into an already packed train.

That said, the NYC subways have far bigger issues than passengers getting bruised from aggressive door closing. Problems that don’t exist in many other countries.

Like slashings. Or being pushed onto the tracks in front of a train.

I still don't understand why that takes a separate job. Most other subway lines the operator does this too, even barks on the PA and sounds an alarm over the problem door, as well as has an internal camera they can switch on to see inside the car, but you don't need a second staffer because by definition the operator is no longer driving while doing doors at the station. MTA on the other hand has decided it needs to pay at least one person to sit and do nothing at all times during the train operation: the train operator who does nothing while the door operator futzes at the station, and the door operator who does nothing while the train is traveling.

That reminds me of the SNCF train workers in France who are retiring at 52 because of the "dangers" of operating the trains (from when they had to shovel and breath in coal to keep them running). The fact that they can shut down so much of the country when striking has made it very hard to change.

    24 hour subway leaves no time at all to do any maintenance.

This is incorrect. The NYC subway has a huge amount of extra tracks (side tracks and local/express tracks). I would hazard a guess to say more than any other system in the world. (How many other systems in the world have so many local & express tracks? It is incredibly rare.) This allows them to run maintenance at night, while there are much fewer regular trains running. This is partly why you need to wait so long for a train between 2 AM and 6 AM. A long time ago when I lived in NYC, during these "dead hours", waiting at a station, I would frequently see maintenance trains passing through the station.

To me, the real purpose of 24 hour train service is make the city a "24 hour city" -- for economic purposes. People working late shifts in office buildings (cleaners, maintenance) or factories (food, clothing, whatever) or restaurants/bars/nightlife can all use a very cheap, albeit slow, delayed, and low quality, metro 24 hours a day. What is strange to me: Why not replace nice service with bus service? It would be cheaper to run and they could spend more time maintaining the tracks below.

Last question: How many 24x7x365 metro systems exist in the world? I struggle to think of five.

The whole system? Does the whole NYC system run? That's impressive. Chicago has 24/7 operation on the red and blue lines but the others are generally off from roughly 1-4am give or take a bit.

Certainly all lines that enter Manhattan. Even the dreaded "G" line between Brooklyn and Queens runs 24x7x365, although you will be lucky to get one train per hour. You walk faster most nights. My guess: The (single) Staten Island line might stop for a few hours.

The Copenhagen metro runs 24×7×365. It's also a driverless system.

For maintenance they'll close one track and have the other one operating for both directions in that segment (at reduced frequency)

Hat tip! I do remember riding the metro very early to go to the airport a few years ago. The fact that the whole system is driverless is amazing.

When I lived in Tokyo, and would miss the last train, I would walk as far as I could until I would give up and grab a cab. This would only happen because I was drinking out at the clubs and it would be entertaining at first, but once reality set in, it was time to grab a cab.

> once reality set in

I wonder if that's a good way to work off the alcohol. When you start using up all the alcohol in your system, you start sobering up and then sobriety allows you to view reality. :)

> feel the burn of $100 to get home vs. say $2-4

Just so you know, this is not a choice most people can even consider. Mass transit isn't just to save you on an Uber, it's a public service.

In a lot of cities where train/subway closes at night they have express bus service that take you from 1 part of the city to another and then you can take taxi from there. So with a properly planned public transport system it should not cost you $100 nor would you need to wait 6 hours.

>24 hour subway leaves no time at all to do any maintenance.

I can guarantee you that they do maintenance 24/7. Having a break in service at night might help, but the idea that a system can complete all the required maintenance in a 3 hour window in the middle of the night is a bit silly. Many repairs take longer than that.

I can live with a few hours for maintenance here and there, but I generally wish my city's tram service was more continuous. I don't think they do maintenance every night and it feels like defeat to have to take a taxi just to get home after midnight.

As someone who lives in a city where we have both a train network that doesn't run 24/7 but also seems to have crippling malfunction once every 2 weeks that causes delays of hours across the whole network; the number of hours that transport is shut for per day are not reflective of how many hours there are for maintenance.

Which city is this?

Probably Sydney. (Not a bad train system, but definitely in a bit of a local minimum at the moment)

Sure sounds like Boston.

The lack of maintenance is an issue, but it's got very little to do with the 24/7 service - it's set up so they shut down half of each line overnight and do maintenance on alternate pairs of tracks, which should be a fine way of working (and is the same way that e.g. European night trains work - they'll keep one line open overnight for night trains while they work on the other). It's just decades of not doing it, not having enough funding, and more generally a total breakdown in state capacity to do anything.

Taipei's subway system is explicit and clear that the nightly downtime cannot be reduced for maintenance purposes: https://english.metro.taipei/News_Content.aspx?n=034BD8E0AB8...

It's magical when you can rely on public transport in a city to work during declared hours... You move without having to think about it, like fish in water. Any unplanned downtime always throws a wrench in the plan, if they are frequent then people will prefer private transport and clog the roads.

Taipei say they need 3:30/night for maintenance i.e. 24.5 hours/week. That lines up pretty closely with London's 5:00/night 5 nights/week, i.e. 25 hours/week. So I could believe that NY needs to shut each track pair for 25 hours/week to do adequate maintenance. But they can achieve that just as well by shutting one track pair for 7:00 each night rather than both track pairs for 3:30 (indeed you can probably get more done in one 7:00 block than two 3:30 blocks).

True, but that is assuming Taipei doesn't have extra tracks factored in...

I suppose there are other reasons for redundant tracks (a train malfunctions and needs to stop somewhere while the next comes to serve?) and during the times they are in maintenance there is no slack.

New York has the only consistently 4-track subway system in the world; they have convenient tunnelling geography and built it back when life was cheap. The ROI on building a new 4-track system would never stack up today (I suppose you could argue that it doesn't stack up for NY either in terms of the cost of doing twice as much track maintenance, but I believe they do use all the capacity during peak hours so it's not like there's really a business case for dropping down to 2-track).

Interesting!

Re ROI, I never thought it had to be positive for public transport... most wins from functioning transportation seem less tangible like increased public mobility (better for economy), reduced road congestion (=> less mortality while waiting for ER or police, better air quality), mental health etc. But I guess that's USA.

The maintenance cycle is also amazing for nightlife. In Tokyo the majority of late night establishments are open until 5am when the trains start back up.

Not really. Plenty of times people would be willing to stay out until 1 or 2 am but they go home at 11pm because they don’t want to wait until 5-6 am.

Agree. This is classic fantasy thinking about Japan life. The "all night out" thing is something that most Japanese people only do a few times in their life, with many regrets (horrible hang over, etc.).

I live in NYC and am well aware of the so-called 24/7 service. The fact is that it's 24/7 only in midtown Manhattan. If you are on the 1/2/3 or ACE or 4/5/6 lines it's likely you'd get 'For the next 3 weekends services from some outer borough station to 178th street will be suspended from 10PM to 8 AM. Please use the connection bus from blah to blah."

Even the Q line, that is less than 10 years old, went though the same hassle in Feb, and that's squarely in midtown.

The 24/7 claim is exaggerated. Just ask the 7 line folks at the Hudson Yard's end what they think of the claim.

Also, during the weekend I find taking the bus to usually be faster than taking the subway. Literally buses creeping across New York is faster trains.

That has a lot to do with which parts of the system are 4-track.

As a user I don't care if a line is 2 track, 3 tracks, or quad tracks. What I care is reliability and convinence (and price too but my company is paying for it so blah).

If you live in the Bronx, there's a good chance you won't be going home at 1AM by trains, even if the crazies don't get to you first.

The point is that if you have a four-track system, you can shut down two tracks for maintenance and still maintain service.

I think this is the comment the entire thread needs.

Not sure if I'm helping but here's my attempted visualization[0]

0: https://gist.github.com/numpad0/6e77028ab3e073e4b02f17cf50d0...

Agreed. I'm sure Byford knew intimately all about it. In the end, NYC's problems didn't get solved because of Cuomo.

I assume that underground lines need more maintenance than overground. Does anyone know why this is?

> But I can’t feel part of the reason for the NYC subways many woes is because of the 24/7 service and the lack of maintenance and cleanup

Come to Boston. We don't have 24/7 service and still close lines for entire days, weeks, or months to do maintenance.

That’s a spare ratio/labor problem not a 24/7 service problem.

I wish we could just do maintenance in the US. Here in Boston, we underfunded the MBTA for a decade[0], and now the system is hanging on by a thread.

Roads are falling apart, lighting poles are falling down, our natural gas infrastructure is leaking like crazy. Why can't we just take care of our stuff?

[0] To pay for more car stuff which ended up being a boondoggle in its own right, of course https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/i-team-big-dig-root-mbta...

You can't privatize competently maintained infrastructure.

most japanese railways are privately owned and operated and maintained, and turn a healthy profit

Which is why they shut down vast miles of their networks in unprofitable rural areas...

And that is why rail is so expensive in the States; transit decisions are not made on the basis of profitability.

(Note that in the case of Japan, some of these private rails were converted to "Third Sector" aka public-private rails, where they continue to be run by the private rail company under the financial subsidy of the local prefectures through which the rail line runs.)

> (Note that in the case of Japan, some of these private rails were converted to "Third Sector" aka public-private rails, where they continue to be run by the private rail company under the financial subsidy of the local prefectures through which the rail line runs.)

I'm sure there are some differences, but this is true for Amtrak in the US too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#

But there are still countless lines in use where you’ll see one person get off every 3 stops.

It’s sometimes insane how lines are kept running in Japan.

Right, those are "Third Sector" lines, where the stops or even the line itself are subsidized by the local prefecture.

> Which is why they shut down vast miles of their networks in unprofitable rural areas...

The Japanese countryside is ageing and depopulating. Any railway operator, public or private, has to face this reality. You can either shut them down, or reduce service, or subsidize them; all three are painful in their own ways, and all three are done in different places, depending on local conditions.

Furthermore, a line may be "unprofitable" on paper, but still be worthwhile overall because of network effects.

The rural decline is at least being managed with more rationality than the senseless Beeching cuts[1] (and at that time, British Rail was wholly under state control).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts

This is a lot more complicated than your pithy quote is making it sound. Japan has a mix of public, private, and quasi-private railways, and while many of them are profitable on a cash-flow basis, that's only because the government assumed (and passed to taxpayers) the majority of the debt of the former public railway entity (which was mainly from costs of construction) as part of the privatization program in the 80s and 90s. This amounted to something like 30 billion dollars that the companies didn't have to pay.

+1 - add in that they also get a lot of money from developing land adjacent to their rail lines, and operating things department stores, apartments, bus lines, etc. They don't get all their money from providing rail services.

I barely remember that, but that is how the old dos game A-train was based off of.

Yeah, although IIRC some/many Japanese railways are still profitable even discounting the land development interests. Twitter trainman @380kmh has written about this but I can't find the thread right now.

It's just the private version of transit-oriented development[1]. It's a good way to align incentives. The railway increases the value of the land around the stations, so the railway company gets to enjoy some of that benefit. Having the most salient product/service as a loss-leader for the real money-maker behind the scenes is a very common business strategy. Hell, it's how American railroads got built in the old West. It's how London became Greater London.

Many governments seem to have forgotten this basic stuff ... they'll do silly things like keep restrictive low-density anti-retail zoning codes in the areas around train stations. And then they wonder why the promised benefits of the railway didn't arrive and people still drive everywhere. Or they won't see any benefit to pre-emptively expanding the network into new places because "nobody lives there", reversing cause and effect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-oriented_development

Yeah it's really interesting. Something like a substantial portion of profits come predominantly from the bullet trains and non-transportation businesses (like JR West Hotels). But not all regions are as lucky, so government assistance has still been called on.

Specifically about the bullet trains, they are absurdly efficient in speed, they had to outpace air travel. Absurd speeds incredibly early on, and to this day only really China has surpassed them in terms of nation coverage and speed - a dominance Japan held onto for a good 50 years.

Fascinating to learn about, but not so great to apply blindly to other places.

The Shinkansen is actually more expensive than domestic flights though. I don't think the people asking for HSR in America realize this; it's more convenient, more comfortable, faster up to some distance (because you don't have to go to the airport), and usually full, but it's basically business class travel.

The shinkansen is not equivalent to business class travel. Flights between Tokyo and Osaka cost roughly half of a shinkansen ticket, but that doesn't include transport to and from the airport. It also takes way more time to fly, including transit time to and from the airports.

The average person is willing to spend an extra 10000 yen to save 2-3 hours and the hassle of a flight.

Funnily enough, the business travelers I know in Japan actually take the plane, because it's cheaper for the company and they can keep the miles.

Notionally private, but often the government is the biggest shareholder. And the tax and planning regime channels a lot of funding towards them. (Though the way I see it the problem is more the opposite: the US tax and zoning regime diverts a lot of public money to subsidise car travel, implicitly and explicitly, which means it undercuts fairly-priced rail transport).

Exactly this.

Tokyo Metro: 100% owned by the Government of Japan and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Toei Subway: 100% owned by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

JR East: The vast majority of their infra was built before privitisation using cheap or free gov't money. Also, during their 100+ year build-out, the Japanese gov't would regularly favour their own national system over private systems (grants, loans, approvals, etc.). This gives them a huge economic advantage that lasts today.

Let's see Tokyu, Tobu, Odakyu, Hankyu, and so on. (though such private trains only profitable on metropolis.)

Keiratsu aren't truly private industry; they tend to have at the very least close political connections.

>Notionally private, but often the government is the biggest shareholder.

Better than British railways (and energy suppliers). Private companies with a government as the biggest shareholder. Just not the British government ...

If roads are falling apart, maybe we should contend with just needing less of them?

Somehow infrastructure is very contentious in the planning phase, but once it's built it's also nearly impossible to get rid off. Which is obviously a bit of an issue in a world where maintenance isn't free.

More accurately, Boston prioritized capital projects and let existing infrastructure decay until it became a proper capital project. And, when it came to capital projects the ones that were prioritized were only the ones required by law, which didn't make the system safer, faster, or more reliable for most riders.

Transit is a mess because ... it became unprofitable as a private business about 100 years ago, was tricky to run way back then, and now politicians that run it only sometimes have goals aligned with riders.

Transit is unprofitable only in North America. Everywhere else public transit makes money.

Not sure if this is satire, but most places lose money on public transit (at least, the ticket fares don't cover operating and capital costs). A few places make money off public transit, such as Hong Kong's MTR, because they own the land around the stations and build shopping malls on the land and profit from the rent.

Of course, there are less immediately tangible financial benefits of having public transit, such as improving a city's economy through moving labour efficiently compared to, say, roads.

Could you share some examples in Europe, Middle East, or Latin America? I'm pretty sure that 100% of them lose money, but they serve an important purpose. The same can be said for expressway/highway/freeway systems. They are a public good and very useful for the economy.

The systems in Japan are profitable, and run by private companies.

That's leaving out the part where they were privatized and the government ate the entire cost of building the infrastructure up to that point

Perhaps, but the claim was that 100% of transit systems "lose money". Japan's systems don't lose money (any more): they're profitable. They take in more money from ridership than they cost to run.

I'm not sure it's really possible to have a totally profitable transit system of any kind, when accounting for all the infrastructure construction and acquisition costs. I don't think even a roadway system would work, if people had to pay-per-use. The cost would just be too high and people at the bottom wouldn't be able to use it, and then the whole society would just collapse, or you'd have people use it without paying like you see in a American cities now (faregate-jumping).

Idk, that feels like an accounting trick to me. Sure, it's technically profitable now, but only because they get to reap the benefit of a network effect without paying for it.

I agree with you though, profitability is an impossible goal simply because the benefits of an extensive rail network can't be captured by fares alone. It's the perfect case for taxation and public investment.

They make a lot of that profit from renting space in the stations and along the underneath of the lines (where the train is elevated and outside). The ridership is also insanely high, partly due to how good the service is, and also partly due to the density (which is a virtuous cycle provided by good service).

It's worth noting that not all of the systems in Japan are privately run.

>They make a lot of that profit from...

I don't see how this is irrelevant in any way. Why should a transit service make all its profit purely from ridership fares, if it can instead make money with these other methods, which help keep the fares low for riders? It's a win-win-win. Maybe other transit systems should look at Japan's systems and learn something from them; I've never seen space in US stations rented out like this. And it's really great too: here, I can grab a confection or gift or something from one of these vendors while I'm passing through the station or waiting for a train.

>The ridership is also insanely high, partly due to how good the service is, and also partly due to the density (which is a virtuous cycle provided by good service).

Here again, other countries should try learning from this example. Making this system work this well required high density, which brings a feedback loop of more benefits. Meanwhile, some other countries are complaining about unaffordable housing because they insist on houses being far apart and driving cars everywhere.

Profitable as a whole, but I reckon as a conglomerate. Private rails in Japan all has real estate divisions. They're not just collecting profit by running metal boxes back and forth, but by running an ecosystem of distributed pseudo kingdoms within the nation.

Japan also has an extremely high population density, and there are not really alternatives for most. It's not really a fair comparison to systems that have to handle urban sprawl and car cultures.

I'd be curious to see if different lines/regions (in Japan) are profitable or not.

Whatever is holding back your trains, it's not lack of density. Here are the population densities of some places:

Japan: 327/km^2

England: 434/km^2

US Acela Corridor (Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-Baltimore-DC plus minor cities and outlying areas): 931/km^2 ... nearly 3x Japan!

Yet Japan's rail network is superior in every way to England's, which is in turn superior in every way to the Acela corridor. When I google "acela frequency", the first result is "12 kV 25 Hz AC", which really says it all, doesn't it?

Then there's Switzerland: 207/km^2 and much tougher terrain, yet their train network is Japan-tier. Compare that to California, with 250/km^2 and no serious rail connectivity at all, despite Sacramento-SF-San Jose-Los Angeles-San Diego sitting practically on a straight line. There are only 16 trains per day between San Fransisco and Los Angeles, and it takes over 10 hours. These are two of the most important cities on Earth, it's ridiculous! There should be at least 10 times as many trains, and 1/3rd the journey time.

Look at Texas: Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Austin, Houston, San Antonio; jointly they are 20 million people and all exist in a triangle less than 500km to a side. The region is perfect for high-speed rail. There should be hundreds of Shinkansens zooming back and forth across the desert each day. In the manner of Texans, they should be even bigger and even faster. But they don't exist.

The US as a whole is thinly populated, but it still has several extremely wealthy and dynamic mega-regions that have more than enough population density to support world-class high speed rail networks (plural).

You must demand better trains!

It's weird that you chose Japan, which includes lots of rural places, including the island of Hokkaido, but you chose "England", instead of the United Kingdom. It would be much more informative to select the area inside M25, then overlay in central Tokyo. It won't even be close. I guess central Tokyo is 2x the density of central London.

Fair. I picked England because transport in Scotland and Wales are devolved matters. A better comparison in Japan might be the island of Honshu, which is only slightly denser than England (447 vs 434). So I think my overall conclusion stands, that density isn't that related to rail network quality. That extra 13/km^2 isn't why Honshu is full of bullet trains and England isn't.

No, I think it's unfair. If you look at a map of the shinkansen lines in Japan, they're not just in Honshu; they span the entire length of the main islands (not including Okinawa, of course). They go all the way from Sapporo in Hokkaido down to Nagasaki in Kyushu, and beyond. The one to Sapporo goes through a deep tunnel under the strait.

So a more fair comparison would be: why doesn't the UK have bullet trains stretching from Cornwall to northern Scotland (past Edinbugh), and another branch going to Belfast in Northern Ireland?

But yeah, your point is exactly right. Density has nothing to do with why Japan has the rail network it has. It's entirely because of political will. If it were just about density, you'd only see shinkansen lines connecting the 3 major metro areas: Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto), since they're the largest three metro areas, and they're all relatively close together. Instead, Japan is happy to build a shinkansen line even out to Kanazawa, which only has 500k inhabitants (but is a popular tourist spot), in addition to cities at the ends of the island chain (Fukuoka and Sapporo).

For context, Tokyo's population density is 6158/km^2

The relevant comparison to the city of Tokyo is London (5,598/km^2) and New York City (11,300/km^2).

This probably includes suburban and rural areas. If you look on Google maps sky view, you will see the western half of Tokyo-to province is mostly rural (forest, mountains, and farms). The central part is made up of 23 "ku's" (cities). According to Wiki, the density is about 16,000/km.

It is interesting that you chose to answer about Japan. My original question specifically avoided East Asia, where urbanization and population density is unmatched in the world. I'm trying to demonstrate that mass transit is almost always a money loser when you don't have the nexus of cheap gov't money, preferential planning, and ultra high urban density.

Boston prioritized capital projects

Because U.S. transit systems get Federal money for capital projects, but don't get Fed money for regular maintenance.

Down for me. Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20230406214102/https://www.spoon...

Looks like it got the ol’ HN hug of death.

"Unseen" article

I was expecting this to be about “Doctor Yellow”, an iconic test train used to maintain the Shinkansen lines.

https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/japanese-cult...

Doctor Yellow is less unseen, though. I've seen it a few times, and I wasn't even trying to look for it.

No mention of "Dr Yellow?"

"Dr. Yellow" is a Shinkansen inspection train. They are painted bright yellow like other maintenance equipment, and otherwise look much like the regular Shinkansen rolling stock. They run at the same speed as regular trains, so they don't delay service.

There's a cult thing of wanting to see "Dr. Yellow".[1] Dr Yellow slowly passing a grade crossing.[2] 8 million views!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j2SHLdL8yI

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXbST7EoNZw

Dr. Yellow is so cool... love that 2nd video. It's so wild.

You don't realize how tall these trains are because of platform heights, but that video puts things into perspective.

Video of inside Dr. Yellow

https://youtu.be/AKxJJka12NE?t=346

The illustration style reminds me of a young children's book of trucks or machinery that I had.

IIRC, besides the normal fascination with big machines, the book seemed to glorify the machines and the idealized and determined workers operating them, a bit like propaganda posters from some other countries.

I think the book I had was from Japan. (Half my family is from Hawaii, and there was a lot of cultural cross-pollination as part of ordinary life.)

We kinda forget about the people that make our cities efficient engines of capitalism. It's only when services stop (trash pickup, water, sewage, etc.) do we take notice of them.

Whether in capitalism or socialism, work needs to be done. The more work done, the more efficient the system is. Infrastructure workers doing great work don't always get the respect they deserve.

Agreed fully. The cultural values are interesting. For example, glorifying people doing good, beneficial work tells you something, and glorifying rich celebrities tells you something different.

These train illustrations are also bit of propaganda (not that I have any issues with them, they are awesome!).

> The illustrations of trains seen here are part of Project Toei, an initiative from the The Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation to highlight various aspects of the city’s incredible infrastructure.

The artist of these illustrations also drew the images of toy boxes, that's where you might recognize the style from?

If you go on their website, you can see that most of the toys are machines: https://www.tamiya.com/english/e-home.htm

These grinding trains can be surprisingly fast. Here's a video of one driving by in Germany, grinding rails at 80km/h (50mph) [1]

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s38VVmlV7kc

This article doesn't touch upon it, but the tasks of these trains are computer vision and AI problems. The majority of inspection work is done by software.

JR has aspirational plans that by 2032 all of these maintenance vehicles will be fully autonomous.

Can you expand on that? The article doesn't explain how these trains do maintenance exactly.

One of the units is described as smoothing the tracks to the micrometer level. I assume this is something like a camera array and tooling combo, where the tracks are imaged in 3D using the cameras, and abrupt changes in surface level are annotated, the grinding equipment is adjusted to the correct placement to remove the changes in surface level. There are a few cars on the unit, so I expect this process happens 2, 3, or even 5 times for a given segment of track.

Would cameras be accurate enough for this task? It seems to me that laser-based measures would be more fit to the task.

Yes, even relatively low resolution cameras can provide enough information to track an object with high precision. For example, optical mice can provide high resolution tracking in 2D.

unfortunately the most recent information i got on it was on live NHK air and i can't find a copy of the video.

here is an english language document i found from 2017 that shows the new (at the time) Automated Obstacle Detection Vehicles but doesn't mention the efforts to eliminate humans from the loop.

https://international-railway-safety-council.com/wp-content/...

and of course there is the infamous doctor yellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow which performs its work at full shinkansen speed.

TIL the US has ~100x (!!) more derailments / year than Japan.

> In 2018 there were just 2 derailments across the entire country. The average over the past 20 years is a bit higher (roughly 10 per year) but have been in a downward trend. And while it’s not a fair comparison, just for reference the U.S. (according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics) had 1376 derailments in 2018. While also in a downward trend, the U.S. has over 1000 derailments each year.

Surely you should be looking at derailments per passenger mile or <goods> mile, not absolute numbers?

Fair point. But while US trains travel longer distances, you can be sure there are many more trains running in Japan than in the US (especially passenger trains. So my guess is that the numbers might be somewhat comparable.

No time for indepth research, but quick search shows Japan with 289 billion passenger/km (https://www.statista.com/statistics/627883/japan-railway-pas...) vs US 10 billion passenger/km (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transportation_in_the_Uni...). But that's not fair comparison since in the US train is mostly used for freight.

Freight trains have been getting longer to save labor. Tight schedules encourage skipping the effort to rebalance the train into a safer car ordering. When braking, a long line of heavy cars at the back can push empty cars at the front off the tracks. https://www.propublica.org/article/train-derailment-long-tra...

Spoon and Tamago is probably the newsletter I've been subscribed to the longest, every single (infrequent) email is beautifully crafted with very nice content, highly recommend.

I saw a yellow maintenance train in Montreal metro once after getting off the last train at night. I had a digital camera with me (2006 or so) and I started to take pictures but I was immediately chased away my multiple (several) very angry employees shouting at me in French. I couldn’t believe that they treated it with such secrecy but also ran the train through while people were in the station still.

"shouting at me in French" implies to me that you don't speak French and had no idea what they were yelling about, which I would be in the exact same boat, er train, er whatevs. Did you find out what they were yelling and if any of it would make sense? Maybe you had a Canon and they were all Nikon fans? Maybe they were die hard film fans and hated digital cameras?

I'm not sure if these are the same trains that are typically accompanied by a team of 10-15 railroad workers and a whole electric lights orchestra. It's such a treat to see them working diligently through the night, dead quiet, passing through sleeping neighbourhoods in perfect unison. It always gave me the impression that the railroad workers took utmost pride in their work.

I love the Tamiya style of illustration so much. This is awesome!

They’re not actually so unseen. Two of the 4 stations near my house have sets parked along the rails (presumably for easy access at night).

It’s true I’ve never seen them actually drive though.

I really want prints of these.

"Japanese trains are renowned for their [...] comfort"

Yes, who doesn't love being packed into a tin can with some fellow sardines?

You have a point - I find riding a train during Tokyo rush hour to be quite miserable. But not everywhere is as crowded as Tokyo, and lots of trains have reserved seating, and they are very comfortable indeed.

Exercise: Ride a Tokyo train (subway or other), during rush hour.

Go to London. Repeat.

Go to New York (Brooklyn is recommended). Repeat.

Tokyo is the place least likely to smell like sardines.

I would make two distinctions by my experience ten years ago, the inter-provincial trains where you go seated, and the metropolitan trains where you go standing.

In the first ones, even in the older trains that takes you to the most remote village, the separation between the seats is very generous, what made them very comfortable, which is strange since the height of the people is supposed to be lower than Europe. If they are renowned this I want to try it and keep criticizing the ridiculous separation of the seats here, like if it were planes...

The second ones, metropolitan at rush hour, on the way to and from work hours, are hell. There is no other definition. But this is exclusively a matter about they would need triple the number of trains in rush hours. Nevertheless, as those companies managing it are private, I'm not sure if that number of trains increment for rush hours would be profitable (probably not due what keeps happening along decades).

Off topic: Clearly in Europe the politics go against car ownership for the next years (bad decision). If trains keep being as they are now, all is gonna be a pure shit and pain. Does exist any kind of prevision over this? In the last years I started to think politicians in Brussels are not able to think. In this aspect I envy the Chinese "politicians" prevision.

That only happens 2* hours a day and only on some lines in some cities.

Also, it rarely smells since people don't eat on the train.

* ok, not sure about this one

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