Global Railway Effectiveness
Timely and efficient travel is a necessity in this fast-moving world, and trains are one of the best tools to do so. When looking at how different countries approach railways within their infrastructure it becomes apparent that some countries have a significantly higher success rate than others either in their approach towards commercial imports and exports or through moving their population to save citizens time and money that would otherwise be spent on traffic and gas. What do different countries do better than others and how large of an impact does it make on the core foundation of the infrastructure of a country?
Looking at three countries, the U.S, Germany, and Japan I found each country uses its railroads in vastly different ways. Japan has the least amount of railroads in of the countries sampled but surprisingly moves the most people of any of the countries. This shows us that the infrastructure for Japanese railroads is focused very heavily on commercial transit for Japan’s population. It is so much of an outlier in fact that Japan is moving people 4x the distance of both the United States and Germany.
Looking at the opposite end of the spectrum we can focus on the United States which has an astronomical amount of cargo that is moved throughout the country to be exported to other countries or is being moved within the country commercially. This shows us that the U.S. though being a large country doesn’t actually focus much on transporting its population throughout the states but rather on cargo and other goods. When put in the context of having the most rail lines of any country polled it is shocking to see specialized yet equally inefficient the United States is in utilizing its railroads. Using less than half of the rail lines than that of the United States, both Germany and Japan move passengers twice as far utilizing less than a quarter of the rail space that the U.S. does. The U.S. is so specialized in moving cargo from point A to point B that it sacrifices its ability to transport people effectively and in a way with quality that can be seen in the other two countries, especially Japan.
The U.S. has its large foundation of railroads from the transcontinental railroad which made up over 1911 miles across the country. This created a foundation in which a majority of cargo and goods could be moved across the country but still, there was more of a focus on transporting people than the U.S. does now. In contrast, Japan created its railroad system to help enable people to travel to the different prefectures as well as to transport goods, although it was/is at a much lower scale.
Germany was a wildcard in this dataset as it is a hub of Europe exposed to many different countries which is allowing for many different connections and imports to be made. I was surprised to find that Germany having only slightly more rail lines than Japan only barely outperforms Japan in regards to transporting cargo while still yielding to Japan’s otherworldly transportation of population. Germany acted as a control to help to emphasize how much of an outlier both the U.S. and Japan are in their respective ends of commercial transport. Still, seeing how the U.S. is grossly underutilizing its railroad systems and systems that have been in place for over a century to focus on commercial goods shines a light on the capitalistic nature of the U.S.
There are many external factors that impact the railroad systems as well as how each country utilizes them, oil and automobile companies have changed the trajectory of how transportation as a whole is viewed in the U.S. which also changes how it is utilized by its people. When compared side by side we can see just how drastic the differences in how transportation as a whole is used and seen within a country and how that in turn impacts the culture of transportation as a whole within a country. Japan will remain an outlier for not only efficiency but also how to move large masses of people long distances while not neglecting imports within the country. Japan was the most efficient country with Germany establishing a baseline for what we can expect from a country with many connections, and the U.S. was the least efficient with the most railroads by far but being so niche and specialized only moving cargo and imports that it has an entire aspect of public transport that is being neglected when compared to countries doing far more with significantly less.
