Jul-21
2007
Taking the Tokyo Train
Topic: 2007: Living in Tokyo
My apologies to the late Richard Scarry for stealing this post’s title from one of his stories in the wonderful book Busy, Busy World.
For an authentic 19th century experience in the US, all you have to do is hop on a train or subway anywhere in the Northeast or mid-Atlantic states. Although the train cars and stations have become quite run down since then 
. My end of the “El” in Philadelphia is shut down for over a week this month, and for over 2 weeks next month, as part of a renovation project that’s been going for about 10 years, with 2 years to go. The El is the subway I take to work everyday, and it’s the primary public transportation line for moving east-west across Philly, and on into New Jersey. SEPTA has been substituting shuttle buses during the shutdown. They picked the same time to raise fares, to make sure that if the inconvenience of the buses doesn’t drive you away, the higher fares will, thus maximizing the traffic the buses have to slog through. It all adds up to doubling my commute time from 45 minutes to an hour and a half (another reason for my recent dearth of blog posts). It’s only 7 miles from my house to my office, which means if I were in better shape, and it weren’t so blazingly hot, I could jog home in the same amount of time. It boggles my mind how much time – and therefore money – is wasted across the US every day, with people sitting in traffic for hours (not to mention the gas expense and pollution).
A Shinkansen "bullet" train
My extended commute gives me plenty of time to sit and pine for the Tokyo trains, revisiting pleasant memories of riding modern, clean, quiet, comfortable trains that go absolutely everywhere, and are almost always exactly on time. The Tokyo rail system is a marvel of urban planning and engineering. No matter where you are in the city, you’re rarely more than a few minutes walk from a bus stop or a train stop. During rush hour, you might have to stand instead of sit on the train, or at worst, wait 1 – 3 minutes for the next train. The days of train workers having to push people onto the trains because they were so crowded are mostly gone (but it does still happen for brief periods at the busiest stations at peak hours).
If any of the major lines in Tokyo shuts down for more than a few minutes during peak hours, it can quickly cascade into massive delays and confusion, as the vast majority of Tokyo’s population gets around on the trains. But the rail companies are extremely efficient, and such delays are rare. They even perform rapid cleanup after someone kills himself by jumping in front of train – less than 30 minutes to get the trains moving again! Grisly but true. And unlike SEPTA, if a station is being renovated they don’t shut it down – instead they find ways to keep people moving through it, and even add an artistic touch.
The Philadelphia metropolitan area (i.e. Philly plus its closest suburbs) has a population of about 6.2 million. The population of Tokyo is about 12.5 million. The main subway line through Philly is the El and the main line through Tokyo is the Yamanote. The El carries about 132,000 passengers on a typical weekday. The Yamanote carries over 3.5 million. Even if you adjust for population, that’s a staggering difference. Just picking two lines like this is probably not a really fair comparison, but it gives a rough sense of the difference in reliance on mass transit.
A driver on a Yamanote line train
Watching the Yamanote drivers at work is amazing. If there’s such a thing as an elite among train drivers, these guys and gals must be it. I think they are monitored by video camera, as they are constantly gesturing with their white gloved hands towards their speedometers, and towards the specially mounted analog pocket watches that are on the dashboard of every train. The pocket watches are a great touch – all the other systems are computerized and digital, but the most important time piece – the driver’s clock – is still old fashioned. A popular video game in Japan is a Yamanote line simulator, where you can experience what it’s like trying to keep on time, and always stopping at the exact right spot so the car doors open precisely on the platform’s marked spots.
Monitors on the Yamanote line, showing constantly updated train information and, of course, ads
Your average US train is an antique compared to the Japanese trains. In Tokyo, you can ride the fully automated (i.e. no driver or conductors) Yurikamone line, or ride the Shinkansen at almost 200 mph to other cities in about the same time it would take to fly (depending on how far you’re going). The Yamanote line sports TV screens in every car that constantly update you on your current location, the number of minutes to reach upcoming stations, and news on any delays on other lines (in Japanese and English). And, as I mentioned before, I’m in love with the woman who does the recorded English announcements on the Yamanote line.
Some of the train lines in Tokyo have cars reserved for women only, as a way of combating the problem of women being groped on crowded trains
Another thing I’ve mentioned before is Japan’s low crime rate, but one crime that the Japanese have had a difficult time stamping out is women being groped on crowded trains. When I first visited Japan in 2000, there was a publicity campaign going on, with posters in the stations showing a high school girl raising her hand in the air and shouting “chikan!” The intent was for her to quickly grab the man’s hand and pull it up in the air to humiliate him, turning the shame aspect of Japanese culture back on the perpetrator instead of the victim. I didn’t see these posters anymore while I was in Japan this time, but I did see new signs indicating certain train cars were reserved for women only during peak travel hours, which is probably the most straightforward solution.
Tokyo has a dense network of subway and train lines, all of which are privately run, although the majority of the system was publicly owned and operated until 1987 (when the Japanese National Railways was privatized into Japan Railway). Something I always appreciated in Tokyo was that different lines that cross or come near each other share stations – even if they’re run by different companies – making it easy to switch between them. In contrast, in San Francisco, if you want to switch from Caltrain to BART, you need to walk about a mile or catch a bus. Here in Philly, the 100 line and the R5 have probably half a dozen stops within a half mile of each other, but somehow they couldn’t get even one shared stop between them.
The start of Suica and Pasmo in Japan in March was avery big deal – ads were everywhere at the train stations
One challenge with switching lines, even with shared stations, is buying additional tickets or dealing with transfers. In March of this year, that all went away in Tokyo, as almost all the trains and buses started honoring Suica and Pasmo cards. With either card, you’re simply charged when you come out of your last station, regardless of how many lines you switched between along the way. The cards have also become general purpose charge cards – you can use them for purchases at many stores. You can set your card to get automatic refills from your bank account if your balance gets low, and you can download it to a FeLiCa-enabled mobile phone if you don’t want to bother carrying the card around.
If you scan the data matrix (the black and white square in the middle of the sign) with your cell phone at this bus stop in Tokyo, you’ll get an alert when the bus is on its way
The buses are equally high tech. Many bus stops in Tokyo have a data matrix, which is essentially a next generation bar code, that you can scan with your cell phone. You can then get an alert on your phone when the bus is nearing your stop (you can specify how many minutes of advance warning you want). Before I knew about this system, I would stand all by myself, waiting in the rain at the bus stop near our apartment, and marvel at how people would just appear from nowhere a minute before the bus arrived, even when it was running late. Also, I’m fairly sure all the newer Toei “non step” buses are hybrids. Their engines turn off whenever they stop, just like our Prius (”non step” means they’re wheelchair and elderly friendly – another interesting Japanese turn of English phrase).
Like I said, I’ve had time to reminisce about all this while sitting endlessly on the SEPTA buses this past week. And with a two week El shutdown scheduled for next month, I’ll have plenty more time to keep thinking about it while enduring more interminable bus rides.
July 26th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I really appreciated reading your post. I found it via the blog Septawatch. But, I thought in your analysis and critique of the current state of our public transit systems (and praise of that in Japan), you neglected to mention a few important differences between the US and Japan or Europe (or even many cities in South America). Those places are all highly URBANIZED. We are (to quote Andreas Duany) a “Suburban Nation”. Public transit does not function very well in the suburbs because of the low density settlement and employment patterns. If you look at the regional commuting patterns for most metropolitan regions you will find that over 50% of job commutes today are from suburb to suburb. This leaves public transit systems in a tough spot. The traditional role of transit has been to facilitate movement in and into cities. Even if you figure out some way to solve the perennial funding problems, the problems with the unions, and the mismanagement of transit, you still have not addressed the one fundamental problem that transit faces today: How do we build a public transit system that serves a suburban nation? What’s the point of spending billions on fancy trains zipping into and through the city when all the housing and jobs are being built on former farms 30 miles outside the city?
Even more than you I would love to see Philadelphia and many other cities revitalize their public transit systems. Just try and convince the majority of Americans that its a good idea.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Thanks JR – your point about urbanization is absolutely correct. Living in Tokyo, you don’t need a car, not only because of the ubiquity of the trains, but vital services like grocery stores are almost always within a short walking distance of anywhere you might live in the city. A few months back I wrote a post on Jusco, which is an Asian department store chain. In Tokyo they run their own fleet of shuttle buses (one of which came within 2 blocks of our apartment building), so even when you want a “big box store” shopping experience, you still don’t need a car.
You’re right that Philly and its surrounding suburbs can’t sustain a dense network of train lines, given the low population density. But that doesn’t mean substantial improvements can’t be made. If SEPTA could address the main things I complained about in my post – old and dirty trains, lack of modern technology and conveniences, lack of shared stations between lines, and unduly disruptive shutdowns – they could probably double or triple their ridership. Simply put, if the current system could be made clean, comfortable, and reliable, that would go a very long way in persuading people to use it. We’ll never get to Tokyo’s levels of mass transit use, but we can do a lot better than we are now. Unfortunately, you’re probably right that the political will (and therefore the money) isn’t there to make it happen.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:58 am
I agree that ridership might be increased by basic things like improved fare collection, cleaner trains, better routing, etc. etc. But, in my opinion there are only a few things that would double or triple ridership.
Make it really expensive to drive. This means not only taxing gas but also changing parking in the city and possibly (although this would not work in Philly) a congestion fee for driving in the city.
Make it really expensive to develop sprawl. Every time a developer wants to do greenfield development, they should pay for it. All of a sudden infill development might be more attractive. Portland has had mixed success with this model, aka. the urban growth boundary.
Get the weight of the Federal government behind this. If left to their own measures, most regions like Philly will not choose the path that leads to increased transit ridership. Unfortunately, there must be top down leadership on this issue. For example, New York had $500 million Federal dollars dangling in its face to put together a congestion fee plan and the jokers in Albany almost killed it (it appears to be somewhat back on track now). If New York can’t find the political courage to tackle these issues places like Philly are seriously doomed.