Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger

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

by hudibras • 11 years ago

606 191 11 years ago

CydeWeys• 11 years ago

Well it's not that much different from a school bus that only picks up a single student at a particular bus stop, right?

jeswin• 11 years ago

a) The primary function of a school bus is to pick up children. The Railways have different priorities.

b) Of course, way more expensive (operationally and financially) to run a train and maintain a railway line.

Add: This story made my day.

tempestn• 11 years ago

Technically it just says the station is closing. It's possible the line will remain operational. (The train might be going by there anyway.) Although it did say the schedule was adjusted for the student, so maybe not.

Edit, ah, so I guess a bunch of trains go by, and adjusting the schedule basically means deciding which trains stop at that station, not changing when trains run.

hkmurakami12• 11 years ago

That's a really good analogy. No one's manning the station and the structure already exists so the marginal cost is pretty low.

canthonytucci5• 11 years ago

Monetary cost, sure. What about the cost on the environment to slow the train down and bring it back up to speed?

pcurve2• 11 years ago

considering the time it takes to decelerate, stop, accelerate, making this stop adds at least a full minute or minute and a half to one way journey.

Everybody who is taking the train during the same leg as her, is essentially chipping in 1 minute of their time to support her transportation.

And I think that's just beautiful.

TeMPOraL22• 11 years ago

Consider also the energy it takes to do those maneuvers. And that the station needs to be maintained; even though it doesn't seem to be staffed, the cost of keeping it in shape over many years was likely nonzero. I am not a train expert, but I suppose that stations require additional infrastructure - like lights and semaphores - which also needs to be maintained and regularly tested. Then you can start pricing in the opportunity cost of the land that could be sold or put to different use. And the organizational overhead of adjusting schedules to match the girl's lesson plan. It adds up to some considerable costs, of which the company management was surely aware...

...and yet they chose to ignore it. That is indeed just beautiful.

sandworm1014• 11 years ago

When I was little I lived in the country for a while. I was the only kid at my stop. But at least when I got on the bus it was full of other kids, most of whom were also the only kid at each of their stops. This girl is the only person on the train.

TeMPOraL22• 11 years ago

I don't think that the article implies anywhere that this girl is the only person on the train. She is just the only passenger on her station.

sandworm1014• 11 years ago

Only girl in the village? They are going to close the line when she graduates. Therefore we can surmise there aren't any other younger girls. So much for having a social life. There are parts of Japan where children just aren't around anymore. Towns are becoming extended retirement homes. That's the truly depressing side of this story.

At least this is happening today, when the few remaining kids in such situations can connect via technology.

gizmo686• 11 years ago

She she does travel to high school, so presumably she sees kids her age regularly. And presumably she also has access to the rest of the public transportation that does not go the the highschool (unless she is the only one in the town to use public transportation to go anywhere), so she can still socialize in other places.

Plus, she can socialize with people not her age.

hkmurakami12• 11 years ago

Generally speaking, the population of Japan is going down and the population of the Greater Tokyo area is going up.

Once youth hits college or working age, they disproportionately head for the capitol.

But then there's a small counter current where younger (say, 30's) are moving back to their original prefectures as they realize that they might be able to afford a better QoL making less money but also paying much less in expenditures.

sandworm1014• 11 years ago

I hope some move back. From what I've seen/heard, the countryside is suffering radical population shifts. The following article has some great graphs to illustrate the point. There is a giant dip in the 20s (school) and a terrifying peak in the 55-60 range. But the greatest disparity is that there are many many more old (70s) than teenagers in the countryside. Across the nation those two groups are roughly equal.

http://www.tofugu.com/2015/03/06/japanese-countryside-emptyi...

jobu• 11 years ago

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...

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few decades. Many European countries have similar problems with low fertility rates, but Japan has the additional disadvantage of being extremely xenophobic. While other countries may be able to bolster their populations with immigrants and refugees it seems unlikely Japan's culture will allow that.

digi_owl• 11 years ago

You see this to a lesser degree in other parts of the world to.

Around where i live, the only young people are boys/men that went straight into some low end industrial or service job after school.

most of the women moved on to higher educations that required moving to a city or other, and stayed there after graduating.

rtkwe3• 11 years ago

They're not closing the line. There's lots of other stops on that same rail line, trains just won't stop at that station any more. Also there's a station about 3 km down the tracks.

Also who's to stay she's staying in the area after graduation.

https://goo.gl/maps/cqZBrzvjJJk

oska• 11 years ago

That's the truly depressing side of this story.

There have always been children living in isolated rural communities. Always. Japan is in no way special in this regard, nor is it special in having a low birth rate nor in it having a declining population. South Korea, for example, has a lower total fertility rate than Japan. But people love to focus on Japan and project their own values and beliefs on it, values which are not necessarily shared by the Japanese people, many of whom feel that their nation's population grew too large.

jpatokal2• 11 years ago

No, Japan is unique in this regard. Yes, South Korea, China and much of Europe is following along the same trend lines, but Japan is good couple of decades ahead of everybody else and is thus the world's guinea pig for population decline:

http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Research/Region/Africa/images/1...

The lines are the country's % of working-age people. As you can see, Japan is already collapsing rapidly, while South Korea is just starting to plateau out and China is still climbing.

keithpeter• 11 years ago

In Alexander's A Pattern Language pattern 68 contains a brave attempt to estimate the minimum community size for children age 0 to 5 to be able to make friends face2face. He makes the critical number around 64 households that need access to a green space and suggests a linear layout of houses along a green corridor. When I was a kid we just used the road (less cars then, over half a century ago in the North in the UK).

Pattern 84 looks at the transition from child to teenager in a qualitative way and suggests that teenagers '...should be encouraged to form a miniature society, in which they are as differentiated, and as responsible mutually, as the adults in the full scale society'. He sees the teenagers ranging more widely across a town or city.

I'm wondering to what extent distributed network tech can support that for sparse populations...

andrelaszlo• 11 years ago

This reminds me of Nagoro, the remote Japanese village where the dwindling population is gradually being replaced by scarecrows. :)

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/2/5674448/nagoro-japanese-dol...

In Google Streetview: https://goo.gl/maps/ST3HuCEi1YS2

hudibras• 11 years ago

As mentioned elsewhere, they're not closing the line, just this station.

It's also important to point out that it's not uncommon for Japan high schoolers to travel far to attend the school of their choice. So it's very likely that there's a high school in or near the village that most of the other kids go to, but this girl is attending a different one.

ASC2235• 11 years ago

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empath75• 11 years ago

Japan should open the door to more immigration. I'd be happy to move out to rural Japan.

ue_• 11 years ago

Likewise. It's been a bit of a dream for me.

TeMPOraL22• 11 years ago

Lovely story. Hats off to Japan Railways. I'm also happy that The Atlantic/Citylab decided to publish this story. And thanks 'hudibras for submitting it here!

They say that it's the money that makes the world turn, and love only keeps it together. It would be easy for the Railways to ignore that girl. There's no economical reason to keep that station open. It's a waste of time and resources. And yet, someone decided to make that random act of kindness, for a single passenger.

It's a symbol. It represents the best side of our nature. That even in this big and complex world, full of heavy machines and complicated systems, we're still humans, and we care for one another. That we aren't slaves to the processes we brought into existence.

Random acts of kindness like that are happening every day around us. I think that as a society, we need to pay more attention to them. They bring hope and inspiration, which is infinitely better than yet another outrage.

And that girl, she will have one hell of a story to tell to her future friends.

The article links to a Facebook page with some more photos:

https://www.facebook.com/cctvnewschina/posts/110978428906239...

quintin• 11 years ago

You just made my day.

hkmurakami12• 11 years ago

The thing is, they (the headline) say "Japan", but this only happened because it's way out in the countryside where people have a "village mentality" of helping each other out (but the trade off is that everyone sticks their nose in your business). Japan railways itself split into several separate companies upon privatization.

This would never happen in Tokyo. As much as we think of the country as being monolithic (in many ways it is), there are great differences between different regions of the country (much like any country).

Tokyo is a place where a train being 2 minutes late causes ire (and a train conductor once killed himself for a mistake as trivial as this). It's a place where if a person jumps into the train to kill themselves, many will curse under their breaths about being late to work. It's a place where if you faint in the train concourse during the morning rush hour, no one will stop to help you. It's a place where young mothers with strollers are given stinkeye on public transit. If you ask someone (in fluent Japanese) to take a photo for you, you will often be completely ignored. Tokyo is cold.

I agree with you that this story represents the good in us all. But Japan is like a black box to those who don't live there. I would caution you against idolizing it on a national level as a result of stories like this.

msie2• 11 years ago

This comment is very odd to me. If I hear something positive about a country, I never hear: "Oh, but city X is not representative of the country." Until now.

kayone• 11 years ago

As someone living in canada and visiting Tokyo for a week few years ago I complelty agree with you on "Tokyo is cold" statement,

however I don't think the original post was trying to idolize japan, at least I didn't see it that way. To me it was more of an observation that small acts of kindness happen all around us.

umanwizard3• 11 years ago

First train I took in Tokyo was the Narita Express. It was 20 minutes late so I missed the connection for the last "JR Pass"-eligible bullet train to Kyoto of the night. I had to buy a ticket for 18,000 JPY (~$150)

As far as I know, no one killed themselves.

TeMPOraL22• 11 years ago

Ah, the gray reality strikes again :).

I understand what you're saying and I agree. I am definitely not going to define the entire country by this single act. And you're right - I think that keeping the station open for this girl was only possible because it was a rural area and not a large city. Villages generally tend to be more laid-back, there is a lot more of space to introduce little inefficiencies without causing a disproportionate economic loss. And the mentality probably takes a part too.

Since you and sandworm101 decided to ruin the sublime mood by calling attention to the ordinary reality, let me play along. I do believe there may be another layer to this story. As much as I want to believe in the most positive interpretation, the choice to keep that station open could be a result of e.g. her influential family using their connections to keep the train stopping there. Or something completely unrelated. Media reports tend not to be very accurate, and decisions in real life tend to be made slowly and with multiple inputs.

But we don't know for sure. I am not going to idolize a country for a single story, but I choose to assume the most charitable interpretation, that this is in fact an act of kindness to another human. And so I believe people involved should be praised for that. We need more of such kindness in this world. We already spend too much time getting angry at stuff. Let's be joyful for once instead.

For whatever reason this train stops for the girl, whether it's "village mentality", external influence or honest good will, the fact is that there is this huge metal machine, driven by even greater systems and processes of our economies, and that mighty machine stops for one girl, to let her continue her education undisturbed. She could have been ignored, but she wasn't - and that is heartwarming, if you let it to be.

greggman• 11 years ago

You have a vastly different experience and interpretation than me.

First off people will stop during rush hour in Tokyo to help people. Happens all the time. Tokyo is not cold. I've never seen anyone have trouble getting someone to take their picture, ever. I'm not denying your experience but I'm going to claim it's not common.

Second, while it's sad people feel the need to take their own lives it is arguably the height of selfishness to do it by jumping in front of a train and putting out 50k+ people. I see no problem with recognizing that and being annoyed by it. Especially in Japan where putting your problems on someone else is the height of rudeness.

And I'm sorry if you think mothers on strollers aren't a PITA on public transport in a city as busy as Tokyo. That sounds like a fully western (or maybe American POV). F everyone else, I have my needs and F you if they inconvenience hundreds or thousands of people.

evmar• 11 years ago

I was in Tokyo (Shibuya) meeting a friend and asked in Japanese a random kid (maybe 17) to help me find the Hachiko statue. He got really excited, ditched his friends, and escorted me all the way there. Similar story once when getting a train from Tokyo out to somewhere more remote -- the lady in the ticket booth said the train was coming soon, took me by the hand, and ran in her high heels to guide me to the proper track.

Whenever I spot tourists lost in my town I do these sorts of things for them, so that I can set their understanding of my entire city from just my one interaction.

Grue3• 11 years ago

I was riding an express from the airport to central Tokyo in the last train car. At some station, everyone left the car, except for me because I needed to go further. Then some lady came back into the car and hurriedly told me to leave it and when I did pointed to the next one. Apparently the last car was to be detached at the station and if it wasn't for the help of random stranger (I'm pretty sure she wasn't station staff because she wore civilian clothes) I would've been left out. While it's just an anecdote, in my experience I didn't find Tokyo "uncaring" at all. People were perfectly willing to help me all the time.

rangibaby3• 11 years ago

Tokyo is a place where a train being 2 minutes late causes ire (and a train conductor once killed himself for a mistake as trivial as this).

The driver going too fast from being late was the cause of a (100+ fatalities) train accident about 10 years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_rail_crash

It's a place where if a person jumps into the train to kill themselves, many will curse under their breaths about being late to work.

The rail operator will also send a large bill to the jumpers family.

aianus• 11 years ago

It's a place where young mothers with strollers are given stinkeye on public transit.

This happens everywhere. It's extremely rude (especially at rush hour) to take up 5x the space of everyone else just cause you have a kid. Either the kid is small enough to carry or big enough to stand.

veidr• 11 years ago

[Tokyo is] a place where if a person jumps into the train to kill themselves, many will curse under their breaths about being late to work.

That is true, but after having this happen to me upwards of 20 times over the years, I gradually became one of those people.

ohbleek• 11 years ago

Wow, Tokyo was nothing close to this for me. I only visited for two weeks but I was SURROUNDED by helpful people.

For example, on my second day there, right after getting off at my stop, I realized that I lost my phone on the bus. I waited at the stop and asked the bus driver on the next bus how I could retreive it. I speak zero japanese and he spoke no english. He asked over the speaker if anybody spoke english. A young girl came to the front and interpreted. He gave me a number to call. Then I gave the number to the woman at the front desk of our hotel. She said that the driver would DELIVER MY PHONE TO ME in the morning, and what time would I like to get it. I was flabberghasted. sure enough it was delivered the next morning.

That is only one example of the two weeks I spent in a city with the kindest and most helpful people I've ever met. I have so many examples of people going out of their way to help me in Tokyo.

I lived in Finland for years and your description sounds closer to their culture, but even then they were not as cold as you describe, but just very hesitant to help.

EliRivers• 11 years ago

It's a place where if a person jumps into the train to kill themselves, many will curse under their breaths about being late to work.

This is the UK, yes? And people won't be cursing under their breath. They'll be saying it loudly.

jmadsen3• 11 years ago

Equally, Tokyo is not "the rest of the country", and much of the behavior you described would never happen even here in Osaka (IMHO)

qrendel2• 11 years ago

I have trouble seeing it this way. The money spent running the train could save or improve many other lives instead. It's heartwarming and all, but consider the other people who are being left to die or suffer malnutrition or some other malady that could have been fixed with the resources used to get this girl to and from school.

It could be argued that the hope and inspiration and good feels justify it as a utilitarian decision, or that some portion of the world's energy should be diverted to these sorts of situations anyway - like some sort of lottery - or justified on non-utilitarian grounds. But I can't help but see it as an example of how major global problems continue because humans can't prioritize their caring towards those that need it the most.

droithomme2• 11 years ago

Hopefully with your great compassion for others you will be donating most of your income to stop this malnutrition and suffering in the third world that would otherwise be stopping this girl from getting to school.

mchaver• 11 years ago

I see it more as a neighbor helping a neighbor out in their area of expertise. Train companies are, presumably, good at running trains so the best sort of charity train companies can offer to its customers and potential customers are train services. It is a heartwarming act on top of being good PR. Similar to the way a restaurant or grocery store might donate food or a barber give free haircuts. Of course, they can also donate money, but offering ones skills and time often seem to have a more direct impact.

TeMPOraL22• 11 years ago

Yes, there are many ways this marginal money expenditure could be put to a better use. Most of those scenarios, however, would never happen, because human organizations are nowhere near that efficient. The most likely outcome of closing the station would be the money getting distributed between organizational overhead and bumping up someone's salary a little bit. Or maybe another company project would get finished little faster.

I agree that we should prioritize things and aim for maximum effectiveness of our help. But humans are complex beings - we react to examples and positive stories, which often encourage us to change our behaviors. If seeing positive stories like this can make some people even a little more kind, or inspire them to do some good, then those stories are of great value. And if we can encourage people to do good by praising even somewhat inefficient acts of kindness, maybe the next group will figure out a more cost-effective way. It definitely beats no one being inspired to do anything good at all.

Eliezer once wrote a very interesting article "Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately"[0]. His point was that out of the things we get from helping others - warm fuzzy feelings, status increase and the actual results - "all three of these things—warm fuzzies, status, and expected utilons—can be bought far more efficiently when you buy separately, optimizing for only one thing at a time". I kind of agree with this approach, and I think story is mostly about buying fuzzies, not utilons. Yet we are just humans - we need some fuzzies too.

[0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...

caf• 11 years ago

It's not actually money spent running the train - the train would run anyway, and will continue to run - it's just a matter of whether it stops at that platform or blows through. You wouldn't think the marginal cost would be much.

jmadsen3• 11 years ago

"The Japan Railways Group, more commonly known as JR Group (JRグループ Jeiāru Gurūpu?), consists of seven for-profit companies that took over most of the assets and operations of the government-owned Japanese National Railways on April 1, 1987. Most of the liability of the JNR was assumed by the JNR Settlement Corporation." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Railways_Group

In short, they just agreed to give up a small bit of their own profits.

verroq• 11 years ago

It is great irony that it is posted on CCTV's Facebook page. Given that 99% of their audience can't access Facebook.

United857• 11 years ago

Plus the fact that China and Japan have never had the best of relations to begin with.

dikdik• 11 years ago

Not only pay more attention to them, but learn from them and incorporate them into our everyday lives.

At some point (and I hope and pray that point is soon), efficiency as the end all be all of the world needs to die. It destroys humanity when efficiency is on the utmost pedestal.

seivan• 11 years ago

Japan is very homogenous so it's easy to see everyone as family. Not just racially, but also culturally. Though from what I heard, there are some issues with Osaka(?).

aaronchall2• 11 years ago

"And that girl, she will have one hell of a story to tell to her future friends." - No, she would be too embarrassed to mention it. "They ran a train twice a day just for me, I was the only rider, it was my personal limo-train."

"Random acts of kindness like that are happening every day around us." - It's not a random act of kindness, it's an example of the agency cost of bureaucracies who are more focused on image than the needs of all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, taxpayers, employees, and riders on other lines who are subsidizing the operation of the disused line.

It probably costs in the millions to keep that line running.

JoeAltmaier2• 11 years ago

Confused: wasn't it just keeping a stop on the schedule, and not actually running a line for one person? Total cost would then be in time spent stopping/restarting.

srean• 11 years ago

I applaud your measured, reasonable and well-read response. If only there were more like these.

c3534l2• 11 years ago

Wouldn't it be both cheaper, and friendlier to the environment to hire a person chauffeur for her? This is outrageously inefficient. Public transport only becomes worth it when it achieves relatively high ridership.

xyzzy4• 11 years ago

It would be even friendlier to the environment if she wasn't formally educated. Will educating her really provide that much for society to make it worthwhile?

shripadk• 11 years ago

Your statement reminds me of a quote from a wise man: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10867178

hkmurakami12• 11 years ago

This station is on an existing, operational line that would run trains on the tracks even if she weren't there (and this is what is going to happen once she graduates).

So the marginal cost of stopping at this station is actually not that large.

c3534l2• 11 years ago

I was under the impression that it was the line that was underused, not just a stop on the line. I suppose that makes things pretty different, especially since I think Japanese lines tend to go out farther to pick people up in general.

ayuvar• 11 years ago

The train is already going past the existing station, so I would imagine the additional cost of supporting the station for the two times a day the train stops there is relatively small - additional brake dust in the air, some extra energy burned.

It wouldn't surprise me if the accounting/management, HR and maintenance overhead for the station was higher than the cost of having the train make an extra stop twice a day.

It is a little surprising the station appears to be staffed based on the picture of the train schedule, but there is something to be said for producing that extra job. I am sure the station master who resides in that office is really happy it still exists.

shiro• 11 years ago

No, the station isn't staffed since 1983. I think the photo with a desk, books and timetable is a waiting room.

TeMPOraL22• 11 years ago

It could be. It depends on how the costs of that extra stop and related overhead (maintenance, management) compared to the costs of sending that chauffeur and related overhead. I suppose it is inefficient, but not outrageously so.

But you know what would be the most efficient option, from the point of view of the railroad company? Just ignoring the girl and closing down the station. That it didn't happen suggests that someone, at some point, decided that sometimes you have to sacrifice efficiency in order to be human.

(It's actually a general observation - in current highly optimized economy, being human and humane creates inefficiencies. Or in other words, we need to keep some things from being perfectly optimized, in order to avoid living in a misery. Compare to e.g. various laws protecting employees. They purposefully make businesses less efficient, in order to ensure that employees can work in safe and humane conditions.)

canthonytucci5• 11 years ago

I had a very similar thought.

I'm surprised how many people are calling this "beautiful" and getting all misty eyed, this feels like an inelegant solution.

I would love to be wrong and hear that someone did the math and found that stopping the train wasn't any more wasteful than just sending this girl a taxi or something, but I have some doubts.

I am unfamiliar with trains, but seeing how cars are tuning themselves off at stop lights now to conserve energy and avoid pollution it really sounds very wasteful stop a whole train for one person. I have to assume that it requires a lot of energy to slow and accelerate a train weighing in at least the tens and likely the hundreds of tons.

It's a sweet idea, but it really does feel misguided to me.

TeMPOraL22• 11 years ago

It is an inelegant solution. It's not something you want to scale up. It's not something "right" by Kant's categorical imperative. The lesson to take from this story isn't "keep every train running, no matter how little economical sense it makes it". Such an attitude, universalized, would indeed be a disaster for the world.

No, the lesson is that when running and optimizing systems, we should not forget why are we having them in the first place. They are there for us. Our willingness to make an occasional exception to cater for another human in need, at the cost of efficiency, is what makes us human.

Think of all those tourists who regularly get injured or lost in the mountains and have to be rescued by helicopter S&R teams. From purely economical perspective, this is burning money. We should leave them to die, because the costs of fueling a chopper and risking its destruction, not to mention lives of highly-trained personnel, are great and the money could be better spent elsewhere. And yet we train S&R teams and fly the choppers, because we chose to. Ruthless economic efficiency is not the end goal.

toomanybeersies• 11 years ago

There is a little used passenger train service here in NZ from Hamilton to Auckland, which is about ~150 km or so. It runs twice a day (Hamilton to Auckland in the morning, and back in the evening).

I remember reading a while ago that someone crunched the numbers, and they figured that it would've actually been cheaper to fly everyone up each day in a helicopter or two than it cost to run the train.

pmiller2• 11 years ago

There's a general term for these things: ghost stations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_station).

facetube• 11 years ago

BBC covered a similar situation in Britain. One of the arguments for keeping them running: inactive lines quickly fall in to disrepair (physically or legally/procedurally), which could actually end up costing more, assuming demand is projected to increase and the line would have to be reopened.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150723-why-britain-has-sec...

jamessb• 11 years ago

Also, the cost of actually closing a station is not negligible. From the same article:

Closing down a line is cumbersome. There must first be a transport appraisal analysing the effect of a closure on passengers, the environment and the economy. The proposal is submitted to the Department of Transport and at that point its details must be published in the press, six months ahead of the closure. Then comes a 12-week consultation period, during which time anyone is welcome to protest; public hearings are sometimes held, especially if the closure is controversial. Then, finally, the plans are submitted to the Office of Rail and Road, who decide if the line closes.

As a result it often costs less – in terms of time, paperwork and taxpayers’ money – to keep a line running at a bare minimum.

m-i-l• 11 years ago

Indeed. There was a discussion about these on HN last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9936028 .

hngiszmo• 11 years ago

Heart-warming story but too much praise for the government for my taste.

What are the opportunity costs of not shutting down this platform years ago? And of getting the train delayed by 40s twice a day for who knows how many passengers plus some minor costs like acceleration, meetings to change the schedule etc. Considering all this it would almost certainly be cheaper to provide her with a taxi at the train cost, maybe only to the next train stop. Maybe given the choice of getting a taxi twice a day or getting the compensation in cash, the girl would even have taken the money and moved closer to school.

TeMPOraL22• 11 years ago

Heart-warming story but too much praise for the government for my taste.

I found it weird too after I Googled some more and learned that the Japan Railways[0] is a group of companies that were the result of privatization of national railway system. But I've seen a similar phenomenon in Poland - even though our rail system has also been mostly privatized, people tend to think and talk about it like it's still a government service. I guess that it's because in some places, the concept of "infrastructure" generally pattern-matches to "government".

About your second paragraph - the most heartwarming thing I could imagine about this story would be learning that the company did in fact take into account everything you wrote and then decided to just ignore it. We are homo sapiens, not homo economicus. We have a capacity to care about other people, and caring is an economical inefficiency.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Railways_Group

mrob2• 11 years ago

Social equality has value. Other people might be resentful if she were given cash or a taxi. Keeping the station open is a strong signal of support for treating people equally. People who approve of this will have an improved opinion of Japan Railways, and that goodwill has value too.

canthonytucci5• 11 years ago

I'm not sure I follow. I understood it that they're keeping the station open solely for her and stopping the train to align with her schedule.

They're not (to my knowledge) doing this for anyone else, so it seems to me like she's being given extra special treatment that has a net negative (albeit small) effect on the other users of the system and the environment.

It made me smile though.

desdiv• 11 years ago

“Why should I not want to die for a country like this when the government is ready to go an extra mile just for me,” one commenter wrote on CCTV’s Facebook page. “This is the meaning of good governance penetrating right to the grassroot level. Every citizen matters. No Child left behind!”

Ironically, the railway is a private one, i.e. Japan Railways Hokkaido[0] is private corporation, not a government agency. And yet the company executives, and to a lesser extent, the shareholders, okayed this arrangement. I can't imagine this happening anywhere outside of Japan.

There's a similar phenomenon in the UK called "ghost trains"[1] that's only superficially similar. Basically there's a ton of bureaucracy in closing down a line, so instead of actually closing a line, we just run an unscheduled and unannounced "ghost train" through it once a week.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido_Railway_Company

[1] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150723-why-britain-has-sec...

Symbiote• 11 years ago

"Ghost trains" in the UK are scheduled and announced, they're just easy to miss, as almost all are at the beginning or end of service, often the first train of the day out of the depot.

jpatokal2• 11 years ago

Japan Railways Hokkaido[0] is private corporation, not a government agency

Notionally. In practice, their operations are fairly minutely controlled -- sorry, "guided" -- by various levels of government, which explains, among many other things, why the JRs continue to operate tons of lines that are loss-making.

pilsetnieks• 11 years ago

It's public transportation, it's heavily regulated by national and/or municipal governments in most countries.

79522• 11 years ago

In Britain there are also 150 odd request stops that you have to flag the train down.

WildUtah• 11 years ago

The last Amtrak flag stop in the USA that I knew of was Green River, Utah. Until a few years ago, you could flag down the California Zephyr and get aboard there any day of the year. Otherwise it would pass through town without pause.

droithomme2• 11 years ago

This is very nice and part of Japanese culture. People focus on asian cultures as being communal, but part of asian communal thinking is actually great respect for the striving of the lone individual.

The train stops here until she graduates and then the stop will be retired. It's a reasonable decision, even if not an economic one.

Animats• 11 years ago

Japan keeps the entire island of Hokkaido running for too few people.[1] The population is dropping rapidly. Most infrastructure is funded nationally, and the rest of the country pays for Hokkaido. Partly because it's only about 12 miles from Russia at the closest point, and Japan doesn't want Russia moving in.

[1] http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a03802/

dermotbrennan• 11 years ago

I'm Irish and out of interest I looked up the area of Hokkaido to see how it compares to the island of Ireland and they're actually pretty close - Hokkaido is 83,453KM2 with a population of 5.5M versus Ireland 84,421KM2 with 6.3M. So it is funny to me when you say "Japan keeps the entire island of Hokkaido running for too few people".

Of course, Irelands population is growing while Hokkaido's is dropping...

jzwinck• 11 years ago

The rest of Japan also really, really loves Hokkaido. From dairy products to lavender to summer vacation to alpine skiing. Maybe not that many people call Hokkaido home, but tons of Japanese call it paradise.

As for me, I called it the hardest of four islands on which to find a vacant hotel room.

baldajan• 11 years ago

This story, like many, brings warm feelings to me. I lived in Japan for 5 mo during a student exchange (Kyoto) and I can say, that even though there was at least 3-4 different train lines operated by different companies in Kyoto alone, it was still a joy to use (even though I did complain at why so many train cos on the region from time to time).

It's also a nice change of tone of the eminent doom of Japan written by so many. Like so many countries, Japan has its faults, but it also has a very bright side.

mback002• 11 years ago

Political connections - nufsed.

mback002• 11 years ago

Please use Occam's razor: student that can maintain her anonymity in the face of this report + bureacracy that maintains a service for /one/ person = Political connections

jtolmar• 11 years ago

That's not how Occam's razor works. Neither explanation - political connections vs kindness - is simpler than the other.

You're just using a more prestigious-sounding name for cynicism.

krapp• 11 years ago

Occam's Razor would imply someone with "political connections" would have the wherewithal for more convenient alternatives, such as moving closer to school.

elcapitan• 11 years ago

This is similar in some parts of the Eastern German countryside, where population is going down and the pragmatic solution for transport is to have buttons in regional trains (like in busses in cities) that you can use to stop at old stations where basically nobody lives anymore.

han_stimme• 11 years ago

That's such a warm story and especially this is from the largest Chinese TV press CCTV.

Being as a Chinese, years ago the news of Japan were always about politics, island disputes, refusing to apologize for WWII etc. It is good to have something positive and nice about the neighbor.

Wish the world would become less biased to any country.

rangibaby3• 11 years ago

Japan is exotic enough from a Western perspective that outsiders often have an exaggerated opinion of it, both positive and negative. The next time you see someone gushing about how wonderful Japan is or complaining about how the country never "paid" for WWII or how Japan is doomed because (old people, Fukushima, etc) please try to remember that it is a normal country with human beings living there that is pretty much like anywhere else in the world.

accpass09• 11 years ago

Japan need mass third world immigration, you can't stay so homogenus for this long. Not acceptable for a first world country to do. They must take responsibility like Sweden, there is war now and they must accept refugees from Syria and rest of the middle east.

k__• 11 years ago

On the other hand it's a good big scale experiment.

Lets wait 20-40 years and see who got it worse.

rms_returns• 11 years ago

Yeah, most developed countries are like that. I remember visiting England in 2010 for my company work and the city buses used to ply even with two passengers on board!

OTOH, in the country where I live (India), private vehicles won't ply unless they are compressed upto 70% of the capacity! That's the BEP where they could make even a meager profit!

ommunist• 11 years ago

Clever PR. However, there are many homeless children in Japan. Where are trains for them?

ekianjo2• 11 years ago

if they only want to serve her, it would be much cheaper to have a taxi or a shuttle bus drive for her morning and evening. To me this is another example of Japan's everlasting inefficiencies long after things stop making sense. Just like every company in Japan keeps fax machines at work just because, you know, they have to.

lazyant• 11 years ago

Nice.

Train stops 7am and 5pm, sure schoolchildren have long days in Japan.

irixusr• 11 years ago

This story is another example of how mismanaged the Japanese rail system has become. It would be cheaper, and more environmentally friendly, to pick this girl up in a Escalade limousine, provide a tutor to review her lesson plan, and then have the car idle in the parking lot all day.

We can have a conversation about how changing demographics have created this situation. Whether or not the urbanization of Japanese society is a good thing. On the future role of trains in Japan. Why Japanese are giving up on sex and baby making (kinda hard to maintain and justify an infrastructure built for 150 million people when your pop. is shrinking at 0.7% annually).

But this story should not be lauded, as it is a symptom of the sickness of their society today.

jmadsen3• 11 years ago

Just went to post this and see it has 564pts already - so glad others find this as important as I do.

linhchi• 11 years ago

There is an article saying this romanticized story is a bit too much:

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/remote-hokkaido-t...

Japan Keeps This Defunct Train Station Running for Just One Passenger

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