Why Japan's Railways Are So Good

Japan's railways are pretty cool...but why? And suck rails British do why?

[TransportSupremo]

8% the speed of a bullet fired from and ar15. That one got me, bloody hilarious

[invictusvis]

Honestly, the most surprising thing about this is that a Private Rail monopoly has created an effective system that does not rob its customers blind.

[il-dottore]

Japan: Guys, I can expla-
Russia: Your high-speed passenger rail runs at 320 km/h at a maximum!? Ours runs at 250 km/h at a maximum
Great Britain: 250 km/hr at a maximum!? Ours run at 200 km at a maximum!
United States: You guys have high-speed passenger rail?

[generaln.gabriel]

In Japan an 1 hour delay makes the news?, Here in Eastern Europe we cal an 1 hour delay a blessing from the god

[arsu]

More people need to know about this topic. Absolutely nobody understands how amazing trains are.

[chienbanane]

To be fair, giving a complete monopoly to 1 company and expecting them to do a good job and not abusing their power is the kind of thing that can only make sense in Japan

[altaccount]

"If it's over an hour late, it'll make headlines"
*cough*
"Japanese Train Company departs 20 seconds early, issues apology"

[IKEMENOsakaman]

When I was on a flight from Tokyo to New York, some engineers from Kawasaki Railroads sat next to me. We chatted, and they told me that they were on their way to New York for an annual check-up of the New York subway. They complained that American workers were always so unprofessional and never took care of their infrastructure, and every year when they went there for a check-up, nothing was fixed, and it was always worse and worse.

[charonsferryold]

Could be worse, it could be America where you just plain can't travel to most of the country by rail.

[metallica]

*Japanese train is late*
Japanese: GASP! 😲

*British train is early*
Brits: GASP! 😲😲

*Philippine train exists*
Filipinos: GASP! 😲😲😲

[lilacdoe]

Tom Scott has a video showing the British rail route than ran without any passengers for like a decade. They closed the terminal that went to a ferry that no longer existed, but kept running the route because it was cheaper than not going 🤣

[thekernel]

As an American, thank you for the Ar-15 reference🙏 I now know how fast those shinkansens go.

[peterjerman]

Railway owned housing,
Railway owned restaurants,
Railway owned police,
Railway owned schools...
Yep it's ANCAP Japan time.

[kikivoorburg]

Britain had a system extremely similar to that of Japan’s today between 1923-1948. (4 major companies competed among each other but cooperated when it came to inter-regional services, they owned everything, and they were able to make money from adjacent services to the railways.) It is overwhelmingly considered to be the Golden Age of Britain’s Railways.

[davidlawand]

"...best thing since hentai..."
-BritMonkey

[TheManFromWaco]

"Mussolini made the trains run on time."

Hirohito: "And I took that personally."

[maycontainnuts]

I'm British and I found that moving into the city instead of commuting was cheaper than paying for a train ticket every 3 days or buying a railpass for a year.

[jmsalgorithms]

Really did a good job pointing out the factors that many don't see when mentioning Japanese trains.

While the economics is largely true for the JR group, it is also the case for the major private railways. A lot of these private railways are part of massive conglomerates which basically allows them to have complete control of operations.

I think many don't realize this but their definitions for "Commuter Rail" and "Subway" are largely different compared to at least the western world, and certain methods of operations (such as through services of commuter trains running on subway lines) may further explain why Japanese rail operations are superior.

[valerievankerckhove]

I'm half-Chinese half-Belgium, and moved to Belgium a few years ago. Once, my Chinese mom was visiting and she said 'The UK has beautiful small villages! We should plan a weekend trip! It's close by and there's a train from Brussels to UK!' So we looked up the train schedules and we were rather shocked to see the travel times. There went our UK small village weekend getaway plan...

[pablojp]

As a spaniard i hate how we are always overlooked in this things. We're the second country with the most high speed trains kms (not per capita but overall!) and I've never heard problems due to heat. Furthermore, high speed trains are always on time and when they aren't they speed up to arrive to the destination on time.