JR caught fiddling the meter?

[2pints-mate 0]

Interesting in the Times today about JR being naughty and scandalously LATE TRAINS maybe!

 

Quote:

Japan's bullet train operator is caught fiddling the meter

 

In Britain, it would pass unnoticed; to the Japanese, it is nothing short of the collapse of civil society. As of next week, the trains in Tokyo may be running a few minutes late.

 

East Japan Railway (JR East), the privatised company that until now has given Tokyo the world's most efficient and punctual public transport system, has been caught red-handed stealing water from a river many hundreds of miles from the Japanese capital and using it in its hydroelectric plants, the power behind the glory of a rail system that is the envy of the rest of the world.

 

As a consequence, it is in a desperate and wholly unfamiliar scramble to find the electricity it needs to run the service to the impeccable standards that everyone has come to expect. The prospects of securing that power appear bleak and, in terms that send a chill along station platforms across the capital, JR East said that it “cannot rule out the possibility that train operations will be affectedâ€. Moreover, it has done little to dispel the appearance of panic. “We are walking a tightrope securing the energy we need,†Satoshi Seino, the company's president, said last week.

 

The looming disaster (by Japanese standards, if not of those glumly trekking through London Waterloo each morning) may be an indignity too far for a country that has been buffeted by the most violent recessionary nosedive in living memory. Over the past six months, the Japanese have watched as stock markets have imploded, property prices crashed and GDP contracted at a pace that has startled even the most bearish of economists. And through it all, they have been able to cling to perhaps Japan's proudest achievement: a metropolitan rail network that seamlessly carried millions of blue and white-collar workers into and around the city every day.

[2pints-mate 0]

(Trains are never late here in the UK)

[Jynxx 4]

How late is considered Late ?

I was surprised that in Munich trains are often late by 15 min. Sometimes 40 min and that is not because of the snow.

When trains are late I always suspect suicide. Sometimes one hear announcements in Tokyo suggesting that way.

[RobBright 35]

In Japan, two minutes is considered late.

 

And suicides aren't called suicides in Japan- think its 人身事故 or something but comes up as "Human Accident".

[Jynxx 4]

Correct Rob. That's what they sometimes announce at platforms. Usually 15 min late due to JinShin-JiKo that's rather a quick clean up job I reckon.

[RobBright 35]

Well don't forget the knock-on effect. Actually saw a suicide/clean-up job at Totsuka station a few months back - pretty organised operation there really.

[Roger's head 0]

Human Accident?!

 

Hadn't heard about the main topic there. But the trains on time is such a great thing. It should be the normal thing, not just a great thing. If you see what I mean. Whats it like in other countries?

[JA2340 16]

Sydney Rail accepts that a train is "on time" if it arrives at any station within 15 minutes of the advertised time.

Often, services are cancelled because they are going to be so late, caused by some physical or signalling fault, that's so the "on time" statistics are not affected. A cancelled train does not qualify as "late" - no idea how that works in the mind of the managers.

[thursday 1]

no Idea about late. The trains here run every minute.

[shadowtec 0]

Originally Posted By: JA

Sydney Rail accepts that a train is "on time" if it arrives at any station within 15 minutes of the advertised time.

Assuming they run at all.

I was floored by the train system when I went to Tokyo in December.

[gareth_oau 2]

I'm actually reasonably impressed by the rail system here in Perth. I catch a train to the city every morning, and its regular, and very rarely is it delayed