Why Japanese Railways Win
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Writing by Sam Denby, Tristan Purdy, and Christine Benedetti
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation by Sara Stoltman, Derek Brown, and Kate Ermolenko
Sound by Manni Simon and Dony Bullen
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster
References
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/42747282.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default:6d072d56559c327d07aea278166c0dfb&ab_segments=0/basic_search_gsv2/control&initiator=search-results&acceptTC=1
[2] https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/es/256221468752350809/pdf/multi-page.pdf
29 Comments
This is a story about how Japan saved its railways, but the reverse is also true – the rail saved Japan. There was a point during the 20th century where it looked like Japan was going fully car centric, de-prioritizing rail. Fortunately they decided to double down on rail instead. I say fortunately, because with Japan's highly dense population, the car centric approach would have paralyzed the country in a permanent gridlock, eventually choking it to death.
As someone who spent a month in Japan last year, I absolutely fucking loved their railway system.
There is also the cultural aspect not considered here.
If you want such efficient and punctual train system, you need good staff, and to get good staff you need to train them. In many countries JR's training regimen and employee treatment wouldn't be culturally acceptable, if not straight up illegal.
From the customer's side, well behaved and cooperating customers can board the train faster reducing dwelling times, making it possible to operate a more frequent service. Such customers also won't damage the train making it last longer and so on.
You now really need to do a deep dive on why the DB and the british rail privatisation failed. Comparing and contrasting the different situations.
To go through so much effort to make an excellent video, but then not make the effort to pronounce the Shinkansan properly. Baffling.
Absolutely insane to try and talk about the successful parts of the Japanese rail network without making strong links to Japanese culture. It is basically impossible to imagine the Japanese system functioning without out the attention to detail and commitment to excellence ingrained in Japanese culture.
I recently got DEUTSCHE BAHNED and it hurts to watch this video
I’m British & id rather walk along the track to my destination than sit on the train
One problem. The JRs are selling off their lines to third sector quasi governmental orgs in each prefecture. Look at how the Hokuriku mainline is now split between 3 different companies in what was formally only JR West.
Japanese railways are reliable because they are not operated by Deutsche Bahn
just austerity everything broken and enjoy sitting in traffic like normal people
I'm glad you made the point about JR owing its success to the initial investment that kicked it off. When you realize that Amtrak never got that, it's amazing that Amtrak has been as successful as it has been.
Another great video! I bet these aren't easy to research and produce. If I had the means, I'd support you more…but, thank you for the interesting and educational videos, I feel like I'm back in a lecture rather than a free video on Youtube. You rock!
18:35 "at best, controversial" is a very polite & diplomatic way of putting it… What we have here in the UK is an utter mess.
It grates my ears how Sam keeps mispronouncing shinkansen. And it just blows my mind how and why he keeps doing this, when he has already been to Japan for two seasons of Jet Lag.
You don't have to know Japanese – it's pretty much pronounced the way it's spelled: shin-kan(kaan/khan)-sen. How does one look at that and arrive at shin-ken-sin?? 🤔
I can’t believe he pronounced it “shinknsen”.
That was a complex privatization scheme- but it worked. With clever planning, it had a MUCH better outcome than just throwing rail companies into the water like in Britain.
Thanks Sam! Another very interesting video about a topic I didn't know I needed! 🙂
cause japan is a first world country, as opposed to some 3rd world shitholes like ameri-nazi-stan. Thats where youre from isnt it?
who would have though that building public transit communities with walkable neighbourhoods, while also having reliable and frequent offers would lead to profits, and ridership ? Whereas running less trains leads to a vicious cycle of getting more and more people to car.
Clearly not north America.
Trains/subway are the best way of transportation. If maintened properly, with enough trains, you have a reliable way to get where you want faster. If you add the car-centric problems (fuel, parking space, maintenance costs) you quickly get aboard trains. The same is right for buses, but they are far more suceptible to road congestion, so without buses-lanes, it's problematic.
I'd get on public transit really more often if there was faster and more frequent options here. And I bet that's true for almost anyone, because even if you need a car (for work or something else like groceries) public transit could compete on the travel time, and cost. But this assumes there are walkable areas to get what you need to do.
it doesn't win compared to Chinese ones.
So it's not really "privatization", so much as "controlled decentralization". Not dissimilar from what my country does with a lot of the less vital State entities. Ultimately the government are often still very much in control.
I think China has better rail now
So, privatization of public services is only profitable due to massive government subsidies?! And yet taxpayers keep tolerating it. One needs to be the special type of idiot to believe running public services by private corporations is actually cheaper, considering the necessary overhead for profits demanded by shareholders….we are DUMB and NUMB
Japan's trains are a wonder b/c they're run by Japanese.
Brilliant, as always! I love this channel!
MÁV:🙄
This video is definitely going viral! 🎥💖
Ah… The benefits of having such a compact, densely populated country! There are downsides to this, of course, but there's no doubting the benefits of a well-designed and well-run train network.
But the lessons for big, mostly empty countries with many population "islands" – separated by hundreds of kilometres – are minimal.