In January this year, an estimated 2,000 disgruntled commuters from Somerset and Wiltshire staged a fares strike against First Great Western. Fed up with paying sky-high prices to spend their daily journey to work in overcrowded and dirty conditions – and sometimes finding themselves unable to squeeze themselves onto a train at all – protest group More Trains Less Strain printed up a series of ‘alternative’ fare strike tickets which were handed to rail staff in lieu of the real thing.
Such outrage and passenger action is becoming increasingly commonplace on British railways. Rail users are furious at having to brave the jam-packed conditions caused by a reduced number of carriages on many routes across the country, fare increases that have soared above inflation and a notoriously unreliable service. Sardine Man, a man in a shiny fish suit who is the mascot of Transport 2000’s Growing the Railways campaign, has been popping up with increased frequency on Britain’s most over-crowded trains, highlighting how oversubscribed many trains already are. Last year, Anthony Smith, the chief executive of the Rail Passengers Council, pointed out that ours was becoming a “rich man’s railway”.
“For passengers travelling long distance, what we’re now seeing is a type of railway where only certain people can afford to travel at certain times,” he said. “People should be able to use the service roughly when they want to be able to use it.”
As a result of these less-than-desirable conditions, travellers – particularly those going cross-country for business who need to be able to put their faith in a reliable timetable – are turning to other means of transport, such as cars and air travel, to get them to that all-important meeting on time. After all, why would you fork out £200 for a train ticket when there is an airline that will fly you to the same destination for half the price, in half the time and, perhaps most importantly, punctually?
Over the years, British rail travel has become synonymous with discomfort, overcrowding and overcharging. However, a trip to Japan soon reveals that it doesn’t have to be that way.
Those who have experienced travelling across Japan on the world famous shinkansen (or “bullet trains”) know that it is possible for a train journey to be super-fast, clean, timed to the second and – dare they admit it – pleasant. The jewels in the crown of the Japanese transport system, this high speed service boasts levels of luxury unheard of on British shores. The romantically-named trains (such as “Light”, “Echo”, and “Desire”) have sleek shells that are aerodynamically designed with futuristic ‘noses’ that would not look out of place on a jumbo jet. Inside, they have neatly uniformed staff and welcoming seats that rotate either to face the direction of travel or to form facing bays for passenger comfort. The carriages are often double deckers and are all meticulously cleaned after every journey. Rather than forcing passengers to lurch through littered aisles to the buffet car to stock up on stale sandwiches or lukewarm baked potatoes, operators Japan Railways provide regular food trolleys that offer beautifully-presented local delicacies in a lunch box called an ebekin, featuring snacks such as sushi, noodles and rice balls. What is more, the bullet trains shoot along at astonishing speeds of up to 186mph, there are departures every five minutes between Tokyo and Osaka – and, despite operating in a country plagued not by fog and drizzle but by earthquakes and typhoons, they have never once been the cause of a fatal accident.
On enjoying such a service in Japan, those UK commuters who are only too familiar with rail replacement buses have grown accustomed to hearing stories of “leaves on the line” and who resort to making grim-faced jokes about the “wrong sort of snow” cannot help but be envious of the shinkansen system. It is, after all, a network that is alien to us in its punctuality: an apology is issued if a train arrives more than two minutes late. Indeed, the timetable operates to such pinpoint precision that trains stop for just one or two minutes at each station. The ticket prices may be comparable to those in the UK, but it could be argued that they deliver value for money. Surely, they ask, we can tread in the footsteps of the Japanese?
The shinkansen was first unveiled in 1964. Overnight, it cut the journey time between Tokyo and Osaka from six-and-a-half hours to four, and since then it has only got faster, thanks to the improvements in signalling, maintenance and infrastructure – the cost of which eat up one third of the railway’s entire budget. The dedicated high-speed railway lines were opened in time for the Tokyo Olympic Games and were an immediate success. By 1967 it had transported 100 million passengers and by 1976 this figure hit the one billion mark. The network soon expanded to include several new lines linking a number of major cities across Japan.
The bullet trains, which serve nearly 60 million people, have successfully competed with the airlines for travel between the two major business hubs, Tokyo and Osaka. The stations have the advantage of being centrally located to cut journey times too, plus there is none of the inconvenience of allowing check-in time.
It may seem the perfect model, but it is a rail system that is borne of Japanese culture and geographical conditions. The country itself is a long and narrow shape, with much of its population concentrated in the cities down the eastern side. As a result, the bullet trains can easily connect them with one line – a system that could not be directly echoed in Britain, as the scattered cities require a spider’s web of railway lines. Due to Japan’s layout of its core cities, the distance between stations is very short, so in order to enable a rapid-transit route, various trains are in operation to meet differing passenger needs, some stopping at stations more frequently than others.
Then, of course, there is the marked difference between Japanese and British culture. As Mike Knutton of the International Railway Journal told the BBC: “[The Japanese] are fortunate to have a very disciplined and compliant public. They do not spray graffiti on station walls or put their feet on the seats and they queue up where they are supposed to on the platforms.”
Part of the success of the Shinkansen from a business point of view is determined by culture, explains director of InsideJapan Tours, Alastair Donnelly.
“The Japanese place a lot more emphasis on face-to-face meetings,” he says. “I have often travelled to Tokyo and back from Nagoya for just a 30-minute meeting with a supplier, when in the UK a phone call or teleconference would often be seen as adequate.
“The shinkansen has allowed many more of these meetings to happen and has meant businessmen can travel Tokyo to Osaka in a day and not have to stay overnight – a significant factor in increasing efficiency and lowering costs.”
It has also transformed the face of business in Japan. As well as the obvious development of new hotels, golf courses and other recreational facilities surrounding the major shinkansen stations, Kakegawa City, in its midway position between the two cities, has developed into a site for national conferences and meetings.
The shinkansen has not been without its problems, however. While it has an incredible safety record (in more than 40 years and an excess of six billion passengers, there have been no passenger fatalities due to derailments or collisions), the bullet train system is extremely expensive to build and run and has amounted enormous debts. In 1987, the network was privatized, but Central Japan Railway is still subjected to high repayments many years later.
The future
Concerns about noise pollution have meant that increasing the speed of the bullet trains is difficult. It is currently unable to operate at its maximum potential as there are many houses situated very close to much of the railway lines, and the faster the train travels, the louder it sounds, particularly as a train enters a tunnel. As a result, strict noise pollution regulations have been imposed.
While various network extensions for the shinkansen have been planned for the next few years, the world’s rail companies are turning their attentions to the use of magnetic levitation (maglev) technology, which uses electric-powered magnets to propel trains at speeds of up to 260mph, eliminating friction and vibration by literally floating the carriages a few centimetres above specially-built tracks.
It is a method that is still very much in the development stages the world over. The UK originally led the way, operating a maglev train between Birmingham International Airport and the nearby railway station. However, it was scrapped after eleven years in 1995 following operational difficulties, and was replaced by a conventional railtrack. The only maglev train currently in operation is at China’s Shanghai International Airport, completing its 19-mile journey to the city centre in just eight minutes, although Germany and Japan are both looking into developing their own lines in the future.
Japan’s proposed maglev line, the Chuo Shinkansen, would link Tokyo and Osaka and could cut the journey time to one hour. However, the expense would be extraordinary – some sources are estimating the cost to be in the region of £42bn. The line would have about 62 miles of tunnels, at a depth of up to 40 metres, and could take between seven and 10 years to build.
However, the development, while it may not be started until 2030, is seen by many to be crucial to Japan’s disaster recovery plans.
Alastair Donnelly explains: “They are so economically dependent on the Shinkansen that if a major earthquake was to destroy a large part of the line then the effect would be very serious indeed.
“The maglev is going to follow a more direct route and it is hoped will provide a second artery for this crucial business route.”
It is not a system that the UK is in any hurry to adopt. As maglev systems require entirely new tracks featuring a complex system of magnets (conventional trains are unable to run on them, and vice versa) they are approximately five times as expensive as a standard railway line, so for now, Network Rail has dismissed the idea.
200mph bullet trains on dedicated tracks were considered in a six-month study by First Great Western in 2002 as a link between the south west and London, with a potential to cut journey times from Plymouth to London from four hours to two hours and 20 minutes. However, the Strategic Rail Authority advised the company to concentrate on the service it already provided, so the project was shelved.
For now, it looks like British travellers will still have to venture abroad to avoid long journeys with the Sardine Man.
Seven-day rail passes for unlimited, countrywide travel for foreign visitors to Japan are available from InsideJapan’s online Japan Rail Pass shop at www.insidejapantours.com, or by calling 0870 120 5600.
Facts
Shinkansen means “new trunk line” in Japanese, although it is commonly used to also describe the trains themselves.
The trains do not run between midnight and 6am, a time reserved for daily track and overhead line maintenance.
When the Kyushu shinkansen is completed in 2013, it will reduce the journey time between Hakata and Kagoshima from four hours and 30 minutes to just over one hour.
One double decker train on the Tohoku shinkansen has a capacity of 1,634, the largest of any train in the world.
A shinkansen train has been derailed only once, during the Chūetsu earthquake of October 2004. Despite there being 154 people on board, there were no casualties.
