Evolutions in Japanese On-time Service Another "Just in Time"

There are so many strange creatures in the world that one can hardly believe their existence as real world without thinking of God playing a joke. From a deep-sea fish wearing headlamp to an insectivorous plant catching and eating insects, or to a long necked giraffe, they all live in our real world, not coming from fairy tales. Was it really God's joke? Perhaps he did a bit. But there is another side to the story that each creature chose to be so of their own evolutional stages. They faced very severe environment, so that they had to find out their unique behavior with their own form adaptive to the environments as survival strategy.

Like these living things, Japanese railway system as an artificial life has its own evolutional stages for realizing on-time service. It was since the end of 1910s Japanese trains began to run precisely on time. Before that time, 10 to 20 minutes' delay were not unusual. Did anything special happen to Japan in these years? What was the environment that drove then trains run so punctual? The simplest answer I can present you is the Japanese railway sector faced the environment in which they had to generate big traffic flow with few rolling stocks and tracks.

Japanese trains began to run punctually during World War I. Although Japan was out of the battlefield, the war changed the history of the country and also its transportation system. The traffic volume of the national railway almost doubled from 1916 to 1919, enormous enough to change the traffic system. But the trade restriction during wartime hindered from importing locomotive, cars, and other components necessary to rebuild the whole.

Up to 1910s, domestic manufacturing system in railway sector for mass production has not yet established. The foreign market had total dominance over products with advanced technologies such as electrical devices. So, they had to double the transportation capacity without purchasing new trains. At the same time, they had to deal with the geographical restriction that Japanese railway companies have suffered even now: the difficulties to get new land to lay a new line or an extra waiting track. Japan is a mountainous country with some small patches of flat land near the seashore. Most of the population concentrates on that flat land, which forced the trains to run through the territories of the residents, and stop in the midst of them.

In Japan, it usually takes 10 to 20 years to build a new track at a station. Since the foundation days of railway in the early 1870s it has always been a dream for Japanese planners to have, say tens of tracks per station, as you can find in cities like New York or Paris. Even in Shinkansen lines, some stations still do not have waiting tracks.

What if you were a planner and have to generate big traffic flow under the small rolling stock and lines? The answer Japanese planner thought out and chose to present was the ultimate shuttle service. If a train makes a circle-line service in a day more than now, the capacity can be increased without the increase of rolling stock and lines. (Figure 1.)

The aim of introducing this kind of ultimate shuttle service is to improve the operational efficiency. If a set of trains turns back immediately at the last stop, the set becomes ready to work as a down train. No need to let the train set wait for departure as a down train. The efficiency of the rolling stock would be increased as the round trips become quicker.

The crucial point of realizing the ultimate shuttle service is to shorten the total traveling time on the way. Thus, as a next step, it is necessary to shorten the running time by speeding up the trains. But of course, it is far from reality to plan to double the running speed to get twice the transportation capacity. Thus, additional tactics must be sought. The answer is to shorten the stopping time at stations. It can be a solution because the distance between stations is very short in Japan. In fact, trains in Japan soon reach the next stop after the passengers enjoy only 1 or 2 miles of travel. If the dwell time could be shortened from 2 minutes to 20 seconds, you can even get the total traveling time on the way halved and the transportation capacity doubled. (Figure 2.)

Here is an example: Let's say that there is a system which has 100 km in length with 30 stops. The total traveling time on the way is 2 hours. The stopping time per station is 2 minutes. In this case, the total dwell time on the way becomes 60 (2'30)minutes. Then, what happens if the stopping time per station is reduced to 20 seconds? The total dwell time on the way becomes only 10 minutes, so that the traveling time is reduced by 50 minutes. In addition to the 10-minute reduction due to accelerated speed, you can get 1-hour (50+10 minutes) reduction on the total traveling time, half the time from the previous schedule.

With the total traveling time halved, the efficiency of rolling stock per set of composition becomes doubled, and so is the transportation capacity.

No need to add new cars to the composition, add new trains to the system, nor build new returning tracks, if the trains turn back at the very place of platform by using EMUs (Electric Multiple Units). What you have to do is just to"train" the passengers, meaning that the passengers should be accustomed to ride the trains in ten seconds and let them get off the trains in ten seconds.

This was the idea that Japanese railway planner found out in the end of 1910s to the early 1920s. Under the strategy of the ultimate shuttle service with these tactics, the Japanese achieved the target, twice the transportation capacity in three years without big increase of rolling stock and lines.

By the way, is it possible for a train running in the quick stream to arrive at a station with 10 to 20 minutes’ delay? Even in the case with one train involved in a trouble such as breakdown, the whole system would stop working because the following trains would soon be caught in congestion.

Of course, the train set and the followings start to move after some recovering process, but still, our system lacks abundant stock. Some stations do not have waiting tracks, so that the following trains could not pass the train in gridlock. The limited number of returning tracks results in congestion the trains running near the last stop. Narrow concourse and platforms at the stations soon become crowded with passengers. In our system, delays easily expand and spread. Thus, the recovering process in Japan becomes so complicated, sometime time-consuming, and imposing workers and passengers quick actions. (Figure 3.)

The difficulty of the recovering process in Japan is like winning a chess game with a series of brilliant moves after a defeat seems certain. Workers and passengers work as chess pieces. If you have a chance to visit Japan, I recommend you to visit one of the terminal stations in Tokyo metropolitan area, especially in typhoon season when trains delay, to investigate how Japanese railway companies manage the natural hazard. The Japanese management does understand that the railway system becomes the simplest, the safest, and the cheapest when trains run precisely on schedule. This is the strategy the Japanese management deeply kept in mind for more than 80 years. The recovering process costs terribly high for railway companies, for the passengers, and for the nation's whole economy, making every stakeholder a loser.

All the members of the Japanese society have taken it for granted that the trains run on schedule in these ways. The significance is to drive the things run on schedule. It seems as if it is an important rule the citizens have to keep. It is a part of Japanese culture, the Japanese significance now going on.

In the last 20 years, the values of Japanese society have changed dramatically. The Japanese hope to be free from systemic pressure, hoping to be free form acting and living along the stories someone planned, and wrote. Rather than to be a drop of the quick stream, the passengers would like to control the whole stream, as it is convenient for them.

Now, the pressure is on the side of railway sector. The Japanese railway planners have to rebuild the whole system, letting the passengers and workers free from the numbers of restrictions. They have to find out new technologies adaptive to the new environment they have never experienced through their history for more than 130 years.