You don't need express tracks

[bikkuri bahn]

More eye-opening, however, are two private railways, Hankyu and Keihan, that link the cities, barely 30 miles apart. Each railroad travels from downtown Osaka to central Kyoto, but by a different route. Each can be used for trips between the two, for commutes from suburbs to downtowns or for short hops within the individual cities. And each runs both expresses and locals on the same tracks. In fact, Hankyu and Keihan operate nine different varieties of trains, making as many as 42 (Keihan) or few as six stops (Hankyu) per run.

In the vicinity of the railroads' main Osaka stations, Keihan expands to four tracks and Hankyu to six, in part to serve other routes. But for most of both's Osaka-Kyoto lines, there are only two tracks between stations. The trick is that some of the local stations have passing tracks; while slower trains are collecting or disbursing passengers, faster ones are hurtling by.

 

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/11/kyoto-can-teach-the-dc-metro-a-lesson-about-express-tracks/382286/

 

I don't know why Kyoto is used as an example, as this practice is widespread in Japan, maybe it's because Kyoto is trendy nowadays, especially among the waspy liberals that likely read urbanist and transport blogs.

 

*The caption for the Eizan picture is a little misleading though, implying some kind of seamless transfer to Keihan, like a cross platform deal, when in fact the Eizan terminal is at ground level, which requires you to exit the ticket gate, walk and go down an escalator to the Keihan terminus underground.

Edited November 6, 2014 by bikkuri bahn

[railsquid]

Maybe they should come and visit Tokyo, where adding express tracks is all the rage. Though I think they've run out of lines where it's still worth doing.

[Densha]

This almost only works in Japan with their minimum delays. In other countries it mostly doesn't work because the trains aren't that punctual. And getting a punctuality as trains have in Japan is something cultural: in Japan you are supposed to give your utmost best for your job and so the drivers and other personnel of Japanese railway companies as well are giving their best together to realise as less delays as possible. Even if they want to, you need Japanese culture for this to work in other countries. Unfortunately they don't seem to realise this everywhere.

[Mudkip Orange]

In other countries it mostly doesn't work because the trains aren't that punctual. 

 

Right. For instance, the first comment on that article is "hey, Japan does good with singletrack lines too!" But everywhere we've put singletrack, the end result is a long period of bus substitution later while it's upgraded to double track. See: Baltimore-Towson, Portland-Gresham, Denver, etc. And we keep making the same mistake... Salt Lake City's S-Line for example.

[railsquid]

The oth

 

This almost only works in Japan with their minimum delays. In other countries it mostly doesn't work because the trains aren't that punctual. And getting a punctuality as trains have in Japan is something cultural: in Japan you are supposed to give your utmost best for your job and so the drivers and other personnel of Japanese railway companies as well are giving their best together to realise as less delays as possible. Even if they want to, you need Japanese culture for this to work in other countries. Unfortunately they don't seem to realise this everywhere.

 

I don't think it's entirely a "cultural" thing either - in contrast to certain vast, sparsely populated countries of North America, trains are the only viable transport option for vast swathes of the urban population. Driving a car to work or wherever is pretty much not an option; ergo the trains *have* to work or everyone is screwed. Which is in contrast to many countries where the trains not working mainly inconveniences those not blessed enough to have access to an automobile. The other factor is competition - the Kyoto-Osaka route mentioned in the article has 3 competing companies (4 if you count JR Tokai) which ensures they stay reliable.

[Densha]

True, but don't forget that the reason those Japanese dense metropolis cities are actually so dense now, is because of the good railway system. If trains didn't exist, Tokyo could have never have such an enormous density of people and buildings because they simply couldn't move around in that case.

[bikkuri bahn]

I'm looking at youtube videos of Swiss s bahn lines, but so far I haven't seen any instances of timed overtakes or cross-platform transfers.  Single line working, yes, with loop stations, but not the double track operation.  If any culture other than the Japanese can pull it off, it has to be the Swiss.  I think it's done in Taiwan too (which owes much to the colonial Japanese railway legacy).  Anyway, I look forward to examining in person in January when I go to Zurich.

[bikkuri bahn]

railsquid makes a good point about necessity.  Of course cultural characteristics such as earnestness and punctuality have an effect, but I think even more important is societal expectations- in countries with very good public transport, and specifically rail transport, the societal expectation is that it should work, and do it well as a matter of course (in Japanese, atarimae)  Failure is not tolerated, or at least if it does break down, it gets remedied quickly to return to the normal state. Otherwise, the daily activities of many grind to a halt.

[kvp]

 

True, but don't forget that the reason those Japanese dense metropolis cities are actually so dense now, is because of the good railway system. If trains didn't exist, Tokyo could have never have such an enormous density of people and buildings because they simply couldn't move around in that case.

Yes, Tokyo was literally designed around the train lines, so it has an advantage over conventional cities where the trains were invented after they were around for a few hundred years. On the other hand, i always wonder about Tokyo, where you see some high rises, but most of the buildings (even inside the Yamanote loop) are relatively low or even single family homes. Imho the population of Tokyo could be gathered into a much smaller footprint with residential and mixed use high rises. There were some attempt at them after the war, but lately i don't see much change, except the tendency to create more suburban areas. This means people have so little living space in the city because buildings aren't large and high enough to economically provide large flats for everyone.

[railsquid]

In contrast to Europe, where high-density multi-storey brick-built apartments arose in the 18th/19th centuries, Japan had mainly low-rise wood-built housing well into the 20th century. The 1923 Kanto earthquake prompted the construction of the first concrete mid-rise danchi, which are now largely gone (e.g. the former Dojunkai apartments on Omotesando). The trend was still very much to small-plot one and two-storey wooden dwellings, which spread out rapidly westwards along the existing railway routes (which at the time were not really much more than tramways and / or freight lines for gravel / material transport) after the earthquake; there were high-flying plans to restructure Tokyo into a more rational layout, but not much came of them. So by the end of the war, Tokyo still mainly consisted of a sea of small houses on small, privately-owned plots with not much in the way of a rational street system, which is still very evident today. Modern construction techniques made it practical to build ever higher apartment buildings (like the 50 or 60 storey monsters going up today) but the very fragmented land ownership structure combined with planning restrictions on building heights made and make it still comparatively difficult to construct apartment buildings to a density you'd see in European cities. Also, there's still a considerable cultural resistance to apartment living (which is understandable; I'd never buy an apartment here because it's an investment in a piece of concrete with limited lifespan which may or may not fall down in the next big earthquake, or worse become damaged enough to require expensive repair which will not be covered by any affordable insurance).

 

Which makes for an incredibly badly-planned conurbation with very inefficient use of space where the primary locational marker for any property, be it rental or privately owned, is the time it takes to walk to the nearest station(s) (in real estate walking minutes, which are approximately 1.3 times faster than normal walking minutes). On the other hand the trains are pretty damn reliable (except when someone causes a person-body incident, probably because they're depressed about the whole insane system).

 

Anyway I could go on for pages about the Japanese planning system (or lack thereof) and construction techniques in general (crazy squid that I am, I actually own a house here, with actual double-glazing [hint: this is not a standard feature]), so I'll leave it at that for now.

[Jcarlton]

I think one problem Tokyo has it that the lots are generally too small for a typical six story walk up style apartment that you see in cities in Europe and in NYC or the other eastern cities in the US. So you have all those tiny houses and huge apartments with nothing in between.

[katoftw]

I dont see a probelm with it.  It's called developement.  Japan also has many earthquakes compared to other locations.  And the strong ability to rebuild quickly.  Most of the time you've found a 3-5 floor apartments is because the earthquake effected the 2 story wooden house it replaced.

 

That and the fact the Japanese have breed like rabbits for the past 50 years, and town planning was only just able to keep up as best as it possibly could.

[cteno4]

That and the fact the Japanese have breed like rabbits for the past 50 years

Hugh? Japanese population was slowing during that time only increasing by about 50% over the last 50 years (all due to aging population with steadily increasing lifespan), and fertility rates at replacement level in 1960 and have dropped steadily over the last 50 years. I would not call that breeding like rabbits... Australian fertility rates are much higher over the last 50 years.

 

Jeff

[railsquid]

I dont see a probelm with it.  It's called developement.  Japan also has many earthquakes compared to other locations.  And the strong ability to rebuild quickly.  Most of the time you've found a 3-5 floor apartments is because the earthquake effected the 2 story wooden house it replaced.

 

 

Nope, contrary to the popular image, very few buildings in Japan ever get destroyed by earthquakes. Most are replaced because they've reach the end of their useful lifespan (as long as 25 or 30 years...), or someone has decided it would be more profitable to build something else in their place.

 

You tend to see following patterns in central areas and along main roads where planning regulations allow construction of taller buildings:

 

- old two-storey building on small plot replaced by tall, thin concrete building ("pencil building")

- an area of smaller plot is bought up by a developer (often over a period of years) to consolidate into a larger plot (Roppongi Hills and some of the new developments in the Toranomon area are examples of this)

- a large area of land becomes available following the closure of a factory, school, government facility etc. and is redeveloped (Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi is an example of this)

 

In residential areas, where height regulations are stricter, perversely there's the opposite trend: larger plots are subdivided into smaller ones so the maximum number of units can be built; this has happened at least three times in my immediate neighbourhood over the last year.

 

Something else you also see a lot as a consequence of historical lack of planning is the carving out of new roads (or the widening of existing roads) which can only be done by acquiring individual plots lining the road, which takes decades. Example: Inokashira-dori in Tokyo west of Yoyogi Park - when I lived close to it in the middle of the 90s the widening process from two to four lanes was underway - but still has not been completed.

 

Anyway what I'm getting at here is that planning in Japan has historically been reactive rather than proscriptive, which has led to a situation when in most urban areas, railways are the only viable form of mass transit, meaning they have to function efficiently, and historical development has also led to competition between lines, which also provides pressure to run the best service possible. On the other hand, it's not true that railways have been particularly efficiently planned - if you're say in the west of Tokyo and want to head directly southwards, unless someone happened to build a railway for gravel transportation a century ago which happens to go where you want, most of the time you're forced to take the long way round via the Yamanote Line.

Edited November 9, 2014 by railsquid

[katoftw]

Nothing you described there is different from the rest of the world regard planning.  Well at least Australia anyway.

 

In oz, you buy multiple lots to build a large multi story complex. you buy up lots to bulldoze and widen roads.  if you travel the railway network, you have to travel through the central section of the network to get anywhere.

 

So I see nothing special with the way Japan plans.  I think it is very similar to other countries.  All planning is reactive nowadays when it comes to councils and governments.

Edited November 9, 2014 by katoftw

[railsquid]

I no nothing about Australia, but compared to Europe Japan is very loose with things like planning and zoning. And more to the point, the historical lack of planning combined with high-density, small plots has left urban Japan in a situation where the trains have to be good. Whereas (and I'm going out on a limb here) I imagine Australia has a teensy bit more space and enough roads to make driving practical, or essential, leaving public transport a poor second (like most other countries).

 

> if you travel the railway network, you have to travel through the central section of the network to get anywhere.

 

Just sayin' that the Japanese network is not as well-planned as sometimes imagined.

[kvp]

As far as i can see the last time the cape gauge network was planned was during the first days of railways in Japan, when the Yamanote loop and Tokyo station was built. Back then, they did demolish a lot of houses on government order to clear things up. This is how the street network around Tokyo station became so clean looking. Since that, they just try to patch things together. This is done rather successfully, but it's still not a pre planned system, which is clearly visible once you start following the tracks of various companies on google map. The Kanto earthquake gave planners a clean slate in some parts of Tokyo and some areas built or rebuilt after it looks more planned than the rest of the city. Sadly it also destroyed most of the european style buildings built before it. WWII didn't help either, since post war reconstruction seems to be entirely without plans on an ad hoc basis, so it just made things worse. (the same could be said about the whole war tough)

 

Now compare this to an european city, where you have to dodge narrow medieval streets with old houses on both sides and more than 2000 years old buildings left by the Roman empire, all protected by preservation laws. (in Budapest we have both and most of them are still in use, the 100 years old restaurant was already called this way 100 years ago and it's still a restaurant at the exact location where it started) Even the train network is old, one of the main railway terminals is at the same location since 1846 and the royal waiting hall was part of the first building and still stands today. The current, 'modern' building complex was built by Eiffel and opened in 1877. Some european cities, like Paris and London have been tearing down historic buildings and whole historic districts to modernise though.

[Mudkip Orange]

No 6-story walkups... good riddance!

 

I for one like the Japanese house-house-highrise-house-gardenapt-house pattern. It's basically what we have here in Houston only they took out the parking lots and 100-foot thoroughfares and just mashed it all together.

[Nick_Burman]

I'm looking at youtube videos of Swiss s bahn lines, but so far I haven't seen any instances of timed overtakes or cross-platform transfers.  Single line working, yes, with loop stations, but not the double track operation.  If any culture other than the Japanese can pull it off, it has to be the Swiss.  I think it's done in Taiwan too (which owes much to the colonial Japanese railway legacy).  Anyway, I look forward to examining in person in January when I go to Zurich.

 

BB,

 

I've watched on YouTube a cab ride aboard a CD Pendolino from Ostrava to Prague in the Czech Republic. After Kolín (about 30 min out of Prague) the train makes several timed overtakes of local trains. So one can say timed overtakes are a feature of European ops.

 

 

Cheers NB

[Densha]

It does exist in the Netherlands as well, but then you have to think about 10 minute stops that local trains make at every station to let expresses pass by. The Japanese do that in a LOT less time.

[Mudkip Orange]

Every time I see this thread title I think of this video: