The control centre of the Shinkansen, the world’s first high speed railway, is surprisingly low tech. The display of the line on the wall is distinctly 20th rather than 21st , with no colour and little detail while even the computer screens look as they are just one generation ahead of Amstrad. The controllers, with one exception all male, are standing about and poring over screens as in any other control centre, but there are surprisingly a lot of them and one is busily photocopying vast amounts of documents, something which nowadays is a rarity in the UK given the emphasis on paperless.
The way that the trains are being run from this small, crowded windowless office does, however, illustrate a fundamental aspect of the Shinkansen. It does not boast about being the fastest, or the best, or the most pioneering, but the emphasis is on efficiency, effectiveness and economy. The efficiency is legendary. Delays are counted in seconds, and the average over the year is just 1.6 minutes per train. It has, apparently, gone up by 0.1 minute per train since Covid because the rain storms have got heavier with climate change and there has been the odd, relatively minor, earthquake which as an undertandable precaution halts all the trains. I watched the despatch of a train. The guard, a very young man wearing white gloves and a uniform so spick and span one thought that a local dignitary was arriving to inspect the crew, got out and looked at his watch every few seconds before, at last, talking to the driver 16 carriages away at the front and giving the go ahead to depart. He got back in the train, but remained with his head out of the window to ensure that nothing untoward was happening on the platform. It never is.
With their huge platypus like elongated fronts and the little oval shaped windows in the carriages, the trains themselves do not appear as the height of modernity. Indeed, quite the opposite. There is something a bit retro about them and inside there is the same feel, rather like aeroplanes used to be with cloth covered seats and enough leg room for a six footer like me. The oval shaped windows would also not be out of place on an aircraft.
However, the service is very different from when the trains were first introduced 60 years ago. At the time there were dining cars, and bento boxes were sold on board for those not using the restaurant. But sadly today no bento boxes – the meal in a box with chopsticks and a large selection of tasty morsels with, of course, enough rice to ensure a full stomach – are available on the trains. That’s an example of the emphasis on economy. There is no catering aboard, apart from in the ‘Green’] premium carriages where at service I still available. Until last year the famous bento boxes were dispensed from trolleys by friendly waitresses on the trains but they now have to be bought on the station kiosks. I was told that a senior rail manager that one reason for the withdrawal was that they could not find the staff for catering onboard as it was not a popular job but I was not entirely convinced by that explanation. It seems that cost saving was really at the root, part of a worldwide trend of cutting onboard catering on trains.
The journey itself was relentless. Of course it is smooth, as the tracks are a billiard table and largely straight. But it is not exactly relaxing. The scenery goes past too quickly. It’s a Tik Tok experience. Tick, there’s a field but there’s no time to find out what’s growing. Tock, there’s a small town but the station whizzes by too fast to see its name. There are in fact 15 intermediate stations all on extra tracks which means that the fastest train, the Nozomi, can hurtle by without being slowed down by other services. After the two Tokyo stations, the Nozomi only stops at Yokohama, Nagoya and Kyoto before reaching Osaka. Then there is the Hikari which stops at other hub stations, and the Kodama which stops at all the intermediate stations. There were very few intermediate stops when the line first opened but its very existences has led to intense urban development alongside which in turn forced the railway to serve this growing population.
Indeed, most of the 300 mile journey between Tokyo and Osaka has become almost one continuous urban landscape, and often# sound barriers have been installed to mitigate the noise of the trains. That’s been a big issue in Japan and slowed down the building of further lines once the first had been completed in 1964 because of resistance from locals. But in the 60 years since the opening of the first line, the network has built up to just under 3,000kms, and is broadly complete, though as few estensions are being envisaged but mostly not until the 2030s or even 2040s. There is, too, the very expensive maglev project to provide an additional line between Tokyo and Nagoya, and eventually Osaka, though the scheme has been beset by major difficulties, not least the objection of a local mayor on the route which held it up for five years. No opening date has yet been given, but the project team are still saying it will run at 505 mph, giving a journey time of just 40 minutes for the 286 km run to Nagoya. The journey will not be much fun, though, as 90 per cent of it will be in tunnel! Nothing will persuade me that this is a viable technology, given the ballooning costs and the likely unpleasantness of the journey.
Essentially, while the Tokyo – Osaka Shinkansen line is highly profitable, and has grabbed virtually all the passenger traffic from the airlines, other routes, with longer distances, are either uneconomic or barely wash their face. The economics of Japanese Railways, which were privatised into one freight and six passenger companies in the 1980s, were boosted by the scrapping at the time of the sale of most of the massive debt which was 37 trillion yen, which at the exchange rate at the time was around a staggering £300 billion.
Interestingly, there is no dynamic pricing on the route. the cost of the journey between the Tokyo and Osaka is around £70 – a non reserved ticket is a few pounds cheaper – whatever time of the day you travel. This is determined by state regulation which sets the maximum fare and the Japanese Railway Managers I spoke with are a bit frustrated that they cannot vary the price more to address peak demands. But in truth, the trains seem to be busy pretty much all day long as I travelled on a 3 pm service back to Tokyo and it was 80 per cent full.
To end on a final statistic: just before Covid there were 373 trains daily running on the Tokyo Osaka route and though that has been reduced by about ten per cent at the moment, ridership is increasing and is expected to reach the peak of 477,000 daily travellers. There are, at peak times, 17 trains per hour which is just one fewer than HS2 was originally designed for but which was met by scepticism in some railway circles. Certainly, to achieve that, it would need Japanese level railway discipline, not something that seems achievable in a British context.
The shame of Gatwick
On my to and from Japan, I used three airport transfer services. In Shanghai, with a 7 hour stopover, I had time to jump on the Maglev train into town – though actually it only reaches the outside of the central area – which is an amazing experience. It reaches reaches 300 kph, but though that is pretty impressive, it has been slowed down from its maximum 431 kph to save electricity. Even then, it takes just 8 minutes to cover the 30 km journey and it is fun watching it hurtle past the traffic on the adjoining motorway. The one way cost was 40 Yuan or a fiver.
In Tokyo, from Narita airport, there is the Skyliner, a conventional train that takes you to Nippori, on the Tokyo equivalent of the Circle line, for £12 50, a premium price in Japan, though relatively cheap in an international context.
Interestingly, although both China and Japan have excellent ticket machines that are often the only way to pay your fare, at both Tokyo Narita and Shanghai’s Pudong airport, there were ticket offices, a recognition that incoming passengers would need the advice of staff. Contrast this with Gatwick where the ticket office has been closed, and replaced by a sea of not very good and complex machines with only one or two staff members to help the huge number of passengers. Moreover, there is the shocking rip off that is the Gatwick Express which costs more than twice the price of the normal trains, £22 90 as opposed to £10.10 but offers no benefit whatsoever, except perhaps a minute quicker journey time. This just adds complexity to what is already a completely confusing situation for incoming passengers who, even if they are lucky enough to find the cheaper fares, must be bewildered by the different companies offering a range of journeys into London. That is one that our new transport secretary, or passenger in chief, could sort out promptly.