The news that Tokyo Metro, the state owned company that runs part of the city’s underground network is to help run the Elizabeth Line has led to wry smiles among some commentators . They have been quick to trot out the old stories of people being squeezed into trains like sardines onto cronky old trains by white gloved attendants shouting incomprehensible instructions.
They could not be more wrong. Tokyo has adapted to the growth in numbers by providing an astonishing service and the days of pushing people forcibly onto trains is long gone. I am currently in Tokyo and have spent much of the past weeks hopping on and off the Yamanote Line and other parts of this huge network, there are undoubtedly things we can learn from its operation – but there are other aspects that are so ingrained in the prevailing culture that it would take a revolution and an a 1984 type dictator to change them.
The sheer scale of the system is really beyond imagining. Broadly there are around 40 million journeys daily on the wider rail network in and around Tokyo, around ten times the daily number of Underground users. The top ten busiest stations in the world are in Japan. Fortunately, while there is a morning peak, for the most part these journeys are spread throughout the day – it is a constant rush hour, though without the rush. No one runs for a train, everyone moves quietly and steadily, they queue on either side of the doors waiting for passengers to get off, they speed through the and barriers which only shut when the ticket is not valid, a far faster and more reliable than those in the UK – cannily the barriers are quite long and therefore not even Usain Bolt could outpace the sensors that close the little gates if you don’t put in the right sort of ticket. Many stations in central Tokyo now have platform doors but these are far cheaper versions than those on the Jubilee, waist high barriers that open simultaneously with the carriage doors and clearly the drivers are adept at stopping at precisely the right place to ensure that the train aligns on the correct part of the platform. More are being installed, but it is a basic simple technology that balances cost and effect in a way that we are so poor at, as the mad bat tunnel demonstrated.
It is all wonderfully smooth. Even though I knew as I travelled to Tokyo for the first time in my life a couple of weeks ago that I would be discovering a very alternative way of running railways, I had no idea it would be such a contrast. Trains are trains, after all, wherever they are, running on tracks and invariably powered by electricity in urban areas. But the operation of the trains in a very complex environment involving both private and public sectors with technology that is chosen for its reliability rather than modernity is beyond impressive. Railways are best seen as a boring process that needs to be repeated every day that is best undertaken with as few changes and surprises as possible. And once the winning formula has been found, leave well alone.
Let’s just provide a small example to show how things are different. There is a line which starts in the western suburbs of this vast megapolis which, when it reaches Shinjuku on the edge of the central area, the driver changes. That’s because the train is no longer on tracks controlled by the private railway which operates it but by the Tokyo Metro and it crosses the central area as, effectively, an underground line. Then, as if just to emphasise that anything is possible inn this culture where things are done by custom and practice rather than through lawyers, at the eastern edge of the central district, the situation is reversed and a third driver, operating for yet another company takes over.
This is just an illustration of the complexity of the rail system in and around Japan’s capital. In addition to Japan Railways East which runs many of the underground lines, and the two metro companies – one private, one state owned – there are a further seven railways providing services for the capital’s residents. And gosh, are they heavily used. Just JR East and the two metro companies, have around 24 million passenger journeys every day, having almost recovered to pre covid levels as working from home is a far rarer phenomenon in a country where there is a strong office culture and people tend to live in cramped accommodation.
Aside from imagining how, for example, Thameslink could operate in that way with three different companies cooperating to ensure smooth running, there are other major cultural difference. The revenue from these services is divided between the various operators – electronically now of course – in a system that was first divided in the 1920s, as akin to the Railway Clearing House established by the Railway King, George Hudson, in the 1840s. But, of course, it is a much more complex world than a hundred years ago and the rail network in Tokyo has expanded almost exponentially with new suburban and underground lines, and added complexities such as airport links. So I asked a key directors of one of the private companies contributing to this system whether the system had necessitated lengthy negotiations, dozens of lawyers and enough documents to destroy the odd forest or two as happened when decisions over the paths on the East Coast Main Line were being allocated.
Not a hint of that. No lawyers were involved in setting up arrangements which were set up along traditional lines – but just expanded.
Moreover, and I particularly liked this, I also asked if there were compensation arrangements when one operator’s trains got in the way of another, and caused delays. I explained how we have hundreds of people to deal the attribution of delay minutes – surely there was something similar? Of course not.
But the very chaotic nature of the arrangement means that there are downsides. When I went for a jog around the imperial palace moat and got lost – don’t ask how one gets lost running around a royal estate but I did – I found myself at an unfamiliar underground station, actually part of the subway which means the deep tune lines. When I tried to use the ticket which I had bought daily for £3 80 to use the sub surface lines, the barrier refused to open as it is run by the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation, which, because it has been loss making until recently, is owned by the Japanese Government and separate from both the Tokyo Metro and Japan Rail East (JR East) which runs several underground lines. I had to then purchase a separate ticket for £1 to enable me to connect back with the JR system.
Remarkably, there are very few personnel at the gates. The system relies on trust and that is partly imposed by the people around you. No one ‘jaywalks’ when the lights are red against the pedestrians, even when there are no cars in sight. And foreigners like me follow the discipline, because it would be rude not to.
Therefore it is difficult to imagine transposing much of this into London. Our society is far less cohesive, much less disciplined, and indeed noisier – few people chat loudly on the Tokyo tube. That air of respect becomes a norm that visitors soon recognise.
The extraordinary numbers are reflected in the Shinkansen, the high speed trains that sprout out in all directions from Tokyo. In particular, nearly half a million daily use the line towards the West which heads to Osaka 300 miles away and then Hiroshima and beyond. That, too, is an extraordinary story from which we have much to learn, though sadly it may be too late, and I will write about it in the next issue.
Will Heidi Alexander be a Prescott or a Darling
2024 was a bad year for former Labour transport secretaries, with the death of both Alastair Darling and John Prescott. And not a good one for current transport secretaries as we will now be on our third of the year. Louise Haigh’s sudden and untimely departure – more on her legacy in future columns – means that her successor Heidi Alexander has a long list of immediate issues to face, from fulfilling promises about improving the performance of both buses and trains as part of a just launched integrated transport strategy to coping with the megashambles of HS2 and a transport infrastructure programme that needs shifting away from road investment.
Alexander should be able to hit the road (and rails) running given her past experience at Transport for London and she would do well to look at the achievements (or otherwise) of those two late predecessors.
Prescott was a blustery visionary who wanted to get things done and bring about change while Darling was at root a money man, a treasury apparatchik long before he became Chancellor, who was only really content when stopping people spending money. I remember bumping into him at Edinburgh Waverley station early one morning as we were both getting off the night sleeper and in that brief encounter he managed to complain about the money being spent on the tram line in Edinburgh where he was MP. Indeed he had it in for tram schemes particularly, chopping out proposals in Leeds, Liverpool and the south coast when he was transport secretary.
These schemes had, in fact, been put forward by Prescott in his remarkably radical Transport 2010 document published in 2000 which envisaged 25 new trams within a decade around the country. In the event, only one, Nottingham, was built although another of his schemes, Crossrail, has become a reality. So I wonder, in their last days, did Prescott think proudly of his achievements, even though they had been sadly reduced, and Darling ponder over how well he had done by ensuring things were not built and the Treasury coffers were a bit fuller. Just a thought for Heidi.