Decline in ridership on the Tokyo Metro.

[Sascha]

I have compared the Wikipedia data from 2017 with the data from last year, and all lines have lost a lot of passengers.I guess it has to do with the people not making enough babies.

Here are the 10 busiest stations.

 

                             2017           2023

Ikebukuro            568,316     500,694

Otemachi            338,955     312,041

Kita-Senju           291,919      232,109

Ginza                   266,574     217,244

Shimbashi          252,793      202,030

Shinjuku              236,657     193,170

Shibuya               224,784     179,645

Toyosu                214,032     202,030

Ueno                   213,020     180,282

Tokyo Station     211,558     186,253

Source: https://www.tokyometro.jp/.../transpor.../ranking/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tokyo_Metro_stations

[bill937ca]

Work at home? 

[Kamome]

Ageing population may be a small percentage of the figures, but post pandemic, many businesses have not found it necessary for staff to always travel into the office. As commuting fee is paid by most Japanese companies this is a huge saving for them, not to mention how Japan is a country striving in technology to reduce the embarrassment of human interaction.  A friend in IT, her company got rid of their office entirely and just book rental conference rooms when face-to-face meetings are necessary. IT and marketing sectors have switched to remote working in many cases. Its only really sectors like manufacturing that needs feet on the ground and these don't tend to be in central Tokyo.

 

As for the birth rate, there is a growing concern of the falling fertility across Japan, not just people deciding not to have children. 

 

Another factor would be to look at whether other lines and services have increased/decreased as the stations listed are all well-served by other means.

[kuro68000]

Work from home sounds like it may well be a major cause. Since switching to that a little before the pandemic I barely use my car either, except at weekends. It's actually a bit of a problem because I need a new one, but also it's not really worth spending huge amounts of money on something I don't use that much. My company has an office but I've been there twice in four years of working for them. That's down from two locations they had a few years ago.

[RS18U]

I see it as a result of the work at home trend as well.  I am assigned to an office that is about 15 kms from my home, but since we shut down offices for COVID I only go in when doing in-person meetings or needing IT support.  However, my job takes me on the road to our field operations around 50% of the time so I at least get some interpersonal interactions rather than just family and the cat 😺.  I also find I am much more productive at home since our office is set up as open work space so very easy to be distracted.