JR keeps station open

[tossedman]

This is heart warming. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/01/japan-keeps-this-defunct-train-station-running-for-just-one-passenger/423273/

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

[Alemino]

i'm almost tempted to plan that station as "journey goal"..

should be fun to reach it !

 

great story! kudos to JR!

[kvp]

Found another article:

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/remote-hokkaido-train-station-stays-open-for-one-high-school-girl-perhaps-not

(maybe someone who can actually read the original sources clear this up...)

[Kabutoni]

Friends on Facebook have been pushing this on me (so apparently it has gone viral), and urge me to visit this station... I don't mind, as long as they're willing to finance me! xD

[railsquid]

Be sure to take a good book while waiting for the return train.

 

Here's the station on Google Street View, slap bang in the pulsating centre of downtown Kami-Shirataki: https://goo.gl/maps/ghib8KBNmdC2

 

I suppose you could wander a couple of km down the road to Shirataki itself, which has a slightly more frequent service.

[kvp]

I just don't really understand why don't they just convert these stations to flagstop ones? That costs nothing and they don't even have to do anything with the buildings or the platforms. The line is kept open, so there are no actual cost savings in closing a stop down and timetables can be calculated with average stop counts for each local service based on measured data. (this no maintenance strategy can be called rust in place)

 

One example from Hungary:

http://kep.index.hu/1/0/899/8991/89913/8991303_7d20bc99790dc7247d69649fd12c51fe_wm.jpg

(the stop is little used as it's too far from the village but anyone wishing to get off or on can do so for every local service using the line)

[Terangeree]

From what I can see in a brief look, the line gets a fair bit of daily use (six express trains each day run the entire length of the road from Ashikawa to Abashiri), plus unit freight trains, so the fate of the line is not in question.

As for the stations that are slated for closure, I guess it is a sign of the Japan's aging population and the demographic shift from country to city.

[katoftw]

I just don't really understand why don't they just convert these stations to flagstop ones? That costs nothing and they don't even have to do anything with the buildings or the platforms. The line is kept open, so there are no actual cost savings in closing a stop down and timetables can be calculated with average stop counts for each local service based on measured data. (this no maintenance strategy can be called rust in place)

Unfortunately you are incorrect.  Any conversion, demolition, maintainence still costs something.  Even flagstop stations cost money in upkeep.  After they have spent money on removing the old station building, and then building a new smaller shelter.  They still maintain the building, platform and surrounds.  Not worth it for a station of zero ridership.  

 

It would be a different story if the station did actually have a larger ridership amount.

[JR 500系]

Now this is heart warming and something our silly government should learn. It's not just about making money all the time. Kudos to JRH for doing this!

[kvp]

Even flagstop stations cost money in upkeep. After they have spent money on removing the old station building, and then building a new smaller shelter.  They still maintain the building, platform and surrounds.  Not worth it for a station of zero ridership.

Then they could just stop maintaing the building and only maintain the tracks. The building would eventually collapse but the stop would still be theoretically there and usable even if noone has used it for years and it's completly overgrown except the small strip of platform reachable from the tracks with the weedkiller train.

 

I know of stops that look exactly like that with a bench built by hikers from the brick pile of the old building. It's still serviced though as the line is a higher traffic one, just not too many people live in the area of the stop.

 

A few examples:

http://kep.index.hu/1/0/899/8991/89915/8991577_6afae8c7ea3f11f9c4591d5fcc643dbb_wm.jpg

http://kep.cdn.index.hu/1/0/899/8991/89913/8991319_58615a6c568553d9ce27cf13f9420fe9_wm.jpg

http://kep.index.hu/1/0/899/8991/89912/8991257_f7fb7bcd37946e117afe943f7c14091d_wm.jpg

 

Btw: the article i linked says that she is in highschool 3rd grade and there are 10 children total from 3 soon to be closed stations (a school bus would actually work well here though)

[Sacto1985]

I wouldn't be surprised they not only close the station, but take out the station building and the platform along with it. The JR Hokkaido Sekihoku Main LIne has very little traffic on the line even now except for the Kitami and Okhotsk limited express trains.

[katoftw]

Then they could just stop maintaing the building and only maintain the tracks. The building would eventually collapse but the stop would still be theoretically there and usable even if noone has used it for years and it's completly overgrown except the small strip of platform reachable from the tracks with the weedkiller train.

Like I said, you have to maintain the surrounds.  If you are happy to risk a lawsuit, then you'd have a job in the railways.  Paths, platforms, structures all are high risk for injury if ill maintained over a period of time.  Especially in such a weather diverse area that this station is in, even more checks and maintainence is required compared to elsewhere.  Maintainence costs money.  Zero ridership equals no money.

Edited January 10, 2016 by katoftw

[katoftw]

I wouldn't be surprised they not only close the station, but take out the station building and the platform along with it. The JR Hokkaido Sekihoku Main LIne has very little traffic on the line even now except for the Kitami and Okhotsk limited express trains.

If would be the cheapest and safest option.  Although just fencing off the platform area against access might be cheaper than getting in machinery to rip up the platform.  The building would still go in option 2.

Edited January 10, 2016 by katoftw

[SuRoNeFu 25-501]

Well, Straits Times finally opened our eyes to the fact that this rumour was completely a HOAX (yes, a hoax). This would explains us about the real fact...

Edited January 11, 2016 by SuRoNeFu 25-501

[Robert46]

Interesting news.. so amazed this is a true story.. perhaps if local government found something promising for tourism industry near the station area, maybe it can be modernized and remain in service for longer time.. Well, at least the station has a very special story now and will be remembered...  :) 

[westfalen]

Aside from the cost I don't think Japanese railways do 'flagstops', I can't say I've ever seen one.  The timetable either says a train stops at a station or it doesn't.

[Fasubkhanali (Ali)]

So, is that true story? JR Hokkaido don't close their station because a girl?

[railsquid]

Aside from the cost I don't think Japanese railways do 'flagstops', I can't say I've ever seen one.  The timetable either says a train stops at a station or it doesn't.

 

Yeah, I can't think of ever encountering such a thing, and can't even find what the Japanese term might be.

[miyakoji]

Were teishajou 停車場 regularly scheduled stops for all local services?

[JR 500系]

Hhmmm.ended up it isn't exactly as JRH claimed it is, right? I thought it would be timely for them to turn the tables around for the public to love JRH especially since they have recently caught yet another train fire on December 28...

[korat]

I'd wait for information from a reliable (and likely Japanese-language) source before deciding either way on the truth of this story. The "debunking" that I've seen paraded around proudly elsewhere isn't. What it is is one report, contradictory to and just as unverifiable as the original story, from a Singaporean newspaper reporting what an HK/Taiwanese garbage tabloid says about a railway station in rural Hokkaido, and it should be treated as such. I'm sure such a popular story will soon lead to some proper journalistic digging that doesn't involve sources like CCTV or The Sun of Taiwan, at which point we may all have a better idea of what's really going on.

[velotrain]

> "With the country’s record-low birthrate, aging population, and the threat of losing a third of its population by 2060, Japan faces a number of crises including a surplus of vacant housing and a shrinking workforce."

 

Why doesn't Japan take some of the million middle-eastern refugees currently in Europe?  Or maybe some from Latin America?

That should help with all of the above issues.

[katoftw]

Cos Japan are watching other nations go poor trying to provide for them.  Very little of the refugees assimilate within the nation that provide them shelter.  And very little have the want or ability to find paid work.

Edited January 12, 2016 by katoftw

[kvp]

Why doesn't Japan take some of the million middle-eastern refugees currently in Europe?  Or maybe some from Latin America?

That should help with all of the above issues.

I'm going to assume, you are joking here. If not, the answer is pretty simple: Japan has its own culture and by replacing japanese people and culture with a different one, you won't save it. Unused houses and not enough workers are no reason to destroy your own civilisation and culture.

 

On the other hand, there is a reason the middle east turned into what it is now and it's cultural. If economic problems could be solved by replacing a nation with another, the unfortunate secterian violence that turned the middle east upside down would only be imported into the newly established state and it's very uneconomical to spread war and anarchy in areas you want to produce things. So in short, it's not even worth if from a strictly capitalist standpoint.

 

Most of the refugees who entered Europe in the last few years have a very different culture from what we know as western and actually have completly opposite values from it. Combine this with very low educational level (many of them are illiterate) and a cultural habit of non comformance to foreign laws, you get a mass of people who are unwilling to change and those few who would be willing are mostly unable to learn enough to function in a modern western society. Those middle eastern people, who were educated enough didn't have to migrate illegally as they could use a passport to enter legally and most of them did so, way before these wars in the middle and far east turned everything upside down.

 

Japan is one nation who choose to downsize instead of replacing themselves with a different culture. On the other hand, the british isles have a tendency to accept new cultures and replace the previous one with the new (celtics, romans, saxons, normanns and now muslims). The only question is if the population will stabilise after a point or not. The latter could also mean eventual replacement by whoever happens to get to the area first.

Edited January 12, 2016 by kvp

[Kabutoni]

Wow. This thread went down the generalisation-drain quickly.