First-World Transit — Experiences of Japan’s Transit System
A one week experience in Earth’s largest megalopolis and the life blood known as it’s passenger train system
Introduction
8 AM at Kamata station in Ōta ward, southeastern Tōkyō: It’s a hot and sunny day, with news of a typhoon veering towards the west and missing the city being displayed on a vending machine screen. A salaryman down the platform is nodding in and out of sleep while simultaneously standing up, while another behind him is fuming about not waking up on time for a big meeting. School children wait patiently for their next train by another vending machine, while other workers and citizens begin to mull up into orderly lines behind floor signage indicating exactly where each door to each train car will stop at. Without delay, the next Keihin-Tōhoku line train arrives at exactly 8:01, stopping on exactly the corresponding lines, and in seemingly orderly chaos, people stream out of the train and sequentially those standing in line on the platform stream in. Not a sound exists inside the car, except for the pitter-patter shuffling of feet, the quiet “shoop” of the closing doors — only to be interrupted by the trains automatic announcer “次は 大森です。” (“tsugi wa Oomori desu”/“Next is Ōmori”) It’s after this minute of so-called orderly chaos that I realize (while being squashed between my friends and salarymen) that the entirety of Japan’s modern economic and social status rests in its expansive and labyrinth-like transit system, scouring through the cities and country as arteries on the human body. In the tradition of the samurais of yesterday, Japan’s modern blood is forged in steel.
The majority of my professional career has been expended into revitalizing America’s transportation and infrastructure system in a regard similar to Japan’s, especially through the construction of the shinkansen 新幹線, or bullet train, to jump-start the construction and improvement of transit networks throughout the US’s cities. So far, the plan has been moving forward full steam ahead between Miami and Orlando in Florida, Dallas and Houston in Texas, and San Francisco and Los Angeles in California. The track toward the future, however, has been anything but straight and smooth, with California’s high-speed rail project plagued with funding issues and a political maelstrom, and Texas’s Japanese style project bombarded by rural opposition lead by former oil industrialists. Back in my home of Miami, Florida, the county’s own SMART plan to build six new transit lines linking around the privatized All Aboard Florida rail project has been a matter of debate, and has raised an alarm within me to monitor and raise my voice in assisting the project — especially within a county that can barely handle one project correctly, let alone six additional. Elsewhere around the country, critics against transit and rail such as Randal O’Toole has speculated that rail will never work in America, and a new breed of rabid fan boys crowd around the hyperloop as the “high-speed rail killer.” All I’m after is for what works; thus this is my visit to Japan to see “what works” in action.
A Whole New World
“Well, Tokyo is a pretty big city.”, “Be careful over there, I hear it’s a pretty big city.”, “Tokyo is a big city, isn’t it.”; These would usually be the responses I would receive from people upon telling them about my trip to Tokyo to which I would respond “It’s THE BIGGEST city.” Even after the dozens of times I’ve been in New York City, Tōkyō’s massive size (5,200 square miles) and population (38,000,000 million) was still a shock to me for two starkly different reasons. At different intersections and train stations, thousands upon thousands of people will move about to their destinations. Yet car traffic was at a substantial minimal, horn honking was nonexistent, and car/bike accidents were nowhere to be seen, even in the metropolitan Shinjuku ward. “Where are all the 38,000,000 million people?” I would ask myself until I figured out they were all on the train.
According to a Land Transport Authority Academy study in 2014, close to 88% of metropolitan Tōkyō uses some sort of transportation, other than automobiles, the vast majority being on trains. A normal day for many in the city will consist of waking up in an apartment, walking to their nearest station filled with white shirted working men and women bustling about, having had breakfast either at home or grabbing an ekiben 駅弁 (boxed meal), taking the train to the nearest station towards work, walking there and the reverse when returning home. Much of that was true for my friends and I as tourists, where we would spend a part of the day in one area of the city and transfer to another one through many forms of rail transport consisting of conventional rail, subways, monorails, people movers, and bullet trains.
With everything in regard including reasonable cost of living, transportation infrastructure, low crime rate, and social experiences, it’s no wonder that Tōkyō has been rated the most livable city in the world for the 3rd year in a row by Monocle (it’s interesting to note that all the top cities on the list have robust transit systems; the only American city to break into the top 25 was Portland at number 24). There’s never a shortage of choices for one to do in this city, with any activity consisting of only a walk or train ride away. The stations themselves are filled to the brim with transit oriented development, with many stations able to pass on as shopping malls and arcades by themselves. So what makes Tōkyō’s transportation system far more effective and convenient compared those in the United States?
Here’s a bit of background: the combined train system in Tōkyō carries over 40 million passengers per year, over 3000 miles of tracks building up since 1915 — making it by far the largest and busiest in the world. Flooded with an abundance of people, one would think there would be an equal abundance of problems factoring into the system, but no major delays or hiccups impacted any trip I took, and nowhere close to the amount of trouble in far smaller systems such as New York’s MTA and Washington DC’s Metro. One major difference is that the outright majority of the lines and stations are owned by private companies; East Japan Railway Company, Tokyu Corporation, Tobu Railway, Tokyo Metro, and much more are household names. The Japanese business culture hunkers down a culture of precision, punctuality, and profit that these companies abide by while simultaneously providing service in a sleek and secure system. In contrast, the MTA in New York loses close to $6 billion of tax payer money every year in a system ever declining in debt and grunge.
Rather than working against each other in competition, these companies cooperate with each other to serve their passengers, with some companies completely or jointly owning stations where their own and competitor lines intersect. Previously I mentioned the facilities of transit oriented development that these stations offer to passengers, but it goes far and beyond the scope and scale that we Americans are used to in terms of the basic empty stations we’re normally greeted with. Shinjuku Station itself, the largest and busiest station in the world, houses four shopping malls, at least seven department stores, and hundreds of stores in a mind boggling massive complex serving 3.6 million passengers daily. The smaller stations themselves were overwhelming as they were, where I was spending plenty of time trying every different soft drink possible from Japanese vending machines, perusing stores for souvenirs to gift for relatives and friends back home, and indulging myself in dining to spend the horde of yen coins weighing down my pant pockets. A whole new world indeed.
Magic Carpet Ride
Enter the paramount of Japan’s railroad technology — the shinkansen. Better known to many around the world as the bullet train, the shinkansen system spans the majority of the Japanese archipelago and still continues to expand, whisking passengers to their destinations at speeds of up to 200 mph. For much of my professional life, I researched and regarded this system as the pinnacle of rail technology. Now it was my turn to ride it.
My friends and I woke up early in the morning around 7 AM to catch the 7:51 AM shinkansen to Osaka; our plan was to spend the majority of the day in Universal Studios, head to Dōtonbori for dinner, and be back in Tōkyō 320 miles away before midnight. By car or bus? Impossible. By plane? Expensive, and we would be spending half the travel time getting through airport lines and traveling further away from the actual city center. The most popular, and fastest method by far is the Tokaido Shinkansen, the bullet train line established in 1964 and has since carried over 5.3 billion passengers to and from their destinations without a single fatality. In its inception, it reached a top speed of 125 mph, still fast for today’s American trains, but luckily for us we would be traveling at over 186 mph.
The moment we arrived at the station, people were lined up on both sides of the platforms to catch their trains, with one arriving in either direction every two to five minutes. Our Nozomi express to Shin-Osaka arrived at exactly 7:50 and left no later than 7:51. We found our seats to have plenty of leg room, an actual reclining angle, and the ability to get up and walk the train without requiring the person next to you to move out as well. Settled in, I cracked open my Boss Coffee, prepared my onigiri, and dug into my ekiben for smooth breakfast close to 200 mph.
Within minutes, the concrete jungle of Tōkyō gave way to the pastoral suburbs and rural agricultural towns of Japan, bursting with green vegetation and blue roofs in contrast to the urban rainbow plastered on a gray canvas. Outside, Japan’s mountainous landscape whizzed by smoothly, sometimes tilting as the N700 series class train snaked through the curves at a slight tilt to keep its high speed and passengers up in cloud nine. The cabin was filled with the soft droning whir of the wheels and electric motors, only to be interrupted by the opening and closing of the Star Trek-like doors to the next car or the whoosh of an opposite passing shinkansen. It’s also on this quick quiet land vessel where the meticulous nature of Japanese culture, engineering, and diligence comes to light.
For one, the passengers speak to each other in a low volume or completely silent, only talking on the phone in between cars or using the on board Wi-Fi to message friends and relatives or enjoy video games (it’s not rare to see a grandmother/obaasan おばあさんplaying a Nintendo 3DS). Then there’s the technology of the train; from the most minute details like the retractable coat hangers, full size bathrooms with sensor activated toilets and sinks, reversible seats when the train heads in the opposite direction, sleek “duck nose” aerodynamics that not only allow the train to reduce drag at speed but also significantly cut down on the booming noise that occurs when the train blasts into a tunnel, and the all wheel traction drive on all the wheels of the 16 cars carrying it’s 1,323 passengers safely, comfortably, and quickly. What really makes the shinkansen service are the people behind the scenes: this includes the engineers from past and present, the signalmen, the shapely dressed drivers whom race against time, and the ticketing officers and stewardesses who never forget to bow towards the passengers upon entering and exiting the train car.
Within 2 hours and 17 minutes, we promptly arrived at Shin-Osaka station, steps away from the trains that will take us right in front of Universal Studios Osaka. We carried out the dream and fantasy that so many Americans wish to carry out in our own country of having the possibility to visit a city 300 miles away, spend the day either in recreation and business, and return back home. Exhausted from riding Hollywood Dream, JoJo’s Bizzare Adventures 4-D, Harry Potter, and hanging around in the evening Dōtonbori and Shinsaibashi, the crew waltzed back into the last Tōkyō bound shinkansen (with plenty of confectioneries and alcohol packed for the ride). A conversation began on the basis of “how the hell were we able to do all of this in just one day?” to which another one of my friends replied with “Because it just works.”
“It just works!”
On the first day of the trio, a sort of inside phrase was formed between our group, know simply as “It just works!” a phrase connoting the lack of requirement to understand a certain object/program in Japan, but just accept that whatever object/program carries out its function in a simple a complete manner. An often relatable experience for American visitors to Japan are the toilets, with our hotel toilet containing functions such as auto-flush, automatic seat closing, and the terrifyingly unfamiliar bidet — a simple button press and voila, it just works! Sliding doors aren’t automatic on the outside to conserve energy and cooling (Tōkyō is blistering hot in the summer), but press the button smack dab in the middle of the door and it just works. Checking out of any store and instead of figuring out how to hand your change to the cashier, you just kindly place it in the tray on the counter and it just works. The visitors’ philosophy of “it just works” also carries into the train system.
Whereas some city transportation systems require different touch/slide cards for different systems, the Tōkyō area only requires one for your transportation needs: Suica. This NFC enabled card with a penguin printed on its silver and green face only requires a simple tap on the minimalist turnstiles to get you into the platforms, and is compatible with the whole range of company trains systems, buses, and even usable to purchase basically anything at the thousands of stores that accept Suica in and around Tōkyō. Commuters in the city can even use their NFC compatible phones as a stand-in for their Suica card. No need for sliding, scrambling for change, or buying tickets all the time — a simple tap and “it just works.”
“It just works” took decades for Japan to develop as I discovered at The Railroad Museum ( 鉄道博物館 tetsudōhakubutsukan) in nearby Saitama. Inside the massive museum are engines, train cars, and other historical artifacts spanning close to a century and a half of Japan’s modern history; starting from it’s inception in the Meiji period, pre-war build up, monumental devastation in World War II, and it’s revitalization all the way up to today. Unlike most other train museums, there are exhibits behind the innovations behind how certain train services improved, the technological advancement to them, and in relation to the shinkansen, how Japan’s GDP began to rise to a higher rate once the bullet train service began to run.
But the fascinating aspect behind the museum where the people perusing through the train cars and exhibits. Children and families looked in awe and excitement at the older train cars that once carried their grandparents to school and work, and gasped in fascination at a cut-away display of a steam locomotive. On the roof level for the Tōhoku Shinkansen line viewing area, I made an acquaintance with an older Japanese fellow who was eager to show me his collection of bullet train tickets from around Japan and the world that he had been collecting since the first shinkansen debuted when he was a boy. There is the “diorama room” containing the massive and intricate model train layout that had the attention from both young and old at the craftsmanship and level of detail between models and operation timing. The whole feeling of Japanese towards their transportation and infrastructure system culminated into the panoramic stained glass piece on the second floor, retelling Japan’s rail history on the massive 10-panel display. To Japan, infrastructure is holy to them, it’s part of their economy, their social life, their way of being, and in their blood. It doesn’t just work — it has to work.
America too was the same way once; we graced the world with the best infrastructure system for the better half of the 20th century. We had steam trains that reached 120 mph back in 1938, ran with legendary punctuality and service in mind. The Milwaukee Hiawatha of the 1930s and 40s easily completed it’s 400 miles run from Minneapolis to Chicago in 400 minutes (for comparison, that was an average speed of over 100 mph, the shinkansen today averages over 150 mph, Amtrak trains today average only 50 mph). We had stations fit for the gods such as the original Pennsylvania Station in New York City where “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat” after its demolition for the sacrilege that stands in its place today. Other stations stand either dying or dead such as Detroit’s Union Station, and boondoggles across the nation waste taxpayers’ money and time on frivolous mistakes like in Miami where station platforms where made too short due to and “engineering error” for housing Amtrak trains.
There still remains hope as America begins to push itself to rebuilt, with efforts in Florida, Texas, California, and the Northeast to lead the way to greater days. As the Japanese we able to rebuild Tōkyō after suffering history’s most brutal bombing raid, we too in America can also build back in a spirit of cooperation and friendship with our Japanese counterparts. In the one week I spent with my friends in Earth’s largest city, it became clear that proposals such as bringing down urban density and massive public spending do not equate to livable urban areas. The lessons of what succeeds over there can also succeed over here for our own first-world transportation system — in the end, it’s all about what works.
Demetrius J. Villa is the founder and president of the High Speed Rail America Club (HSRAC), the largest and most active online advocacy and research group for bringing bullet trains and better rail transportation to the United States. He recently graduated Florida International University through the Honors College with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration (International Business — Honors) and a Certificate in Japanese Studies.
Be sure to watch The American Train, HSRAC’s hit documentary on America’s rail past, present, and future. If you want to see more HSRAC, be sure to support us on Patreon!
