That's a lovely story, but it's also why JR is bleeding red ink. Here's a typical story about one line that was serving an average of 19 (nineteen) passengers per day and made a loss of about US$3m/year for decades until it was finally axed in 2014 thanks to a providential landslide.
There is a tendency to undervalue the importance of feeder lines to the main arteries. Individually yes they might be unprofitable - but they provide value to a railway system. This process has happens in Germany over the last 30 years following privatization attempts. Only slowly are people realizing the detriments.
Almost like in a circulatory system - cutting of the tiny vessels isn’t a recipe for success even if the main system can function for a while without them.
It's also a lesson from Beeching axe, that you can't expect to replace feeder lines with individual cars, and that without feeder lines, the profitable mainline stops being profitable.
"...it was targeted for the axe at the privatization of Japanese National Railways in 1987, just 15 years after completion, but escaped because the road that runs more or less parallel with it and is the only route into Iwaizumi from the south is not wide enough in many places for two cars to pass and is treacherous in winter."
Also, per that article, the number of passengers is quite higher than that, and "per kilometer". Not that is huge, but...
"...the least trafficked line in the whole nation, with average daily ridership per kilometer of 46 people in fiscal 2009"
Anyway, I'm with @rob74 on this, profit shouldn't be the only concern in public transport.
I'm not sure I agree with not demanding public, national train transport to be profitable. One issue I see is that the entire country pays for these feeder lines, I don't think that is the right call. Maybe a better approach would be that these local cities pay JR for the cost of providing this service. If the local cities see the advantage, it'll get funded and if not then the whole country doesn't have to pay for something that the locals don't really want anyway.
I dunno, I think it’s fine for some train lines to be unprofitable when there are so many that are massively so.
In fact, I think there are many things like that in Japan (mailing things comes to mind), where the cost is so low it’s reasonable for anyone. Or where I can go to an out of the way town serviced by one gasoline powered train a day.
You can say that it’s all loss making, and you would be right. Japans public debt increases every year, seemingly without limit. But this has zero effect on people’s lives, whereas closing the only train line that services their home…
The tax base in the Japanese countryside is rapidly collapsing and the public money used to prop up railways at the end of the day comes out of the same pot of taxpayer money that's used to fund schools, hospitals, etc. Personally, I'm a huge railfan, but it's still absurd to spend $3m/year to serve commuters that would easily fit in a single minibus.
Surely you agree that public service should deliver good service to as many people as possible ? Burning resources on a service from which very few benefit (that's what low ridership means) is not conducive to that. Those resources should be deployed elsewhere.
Such extreme examples aside, but generally the expectation that rail transport has to be profitable is harmful. On one hand, people expect roads to be well-built and well-maintained so they can run their cars on them for free (with some exceptions), but when rail transport is subsidised with tax money to offer an environmentally friendly and competitive alternative to cars, they complain about it.
Expecting public infrastructure to be profitable is like expecting your bathroom to be profitable.
It's there to provide an essential service. Which you have to pay for.
Not only is it not a business - and not there to make money for shareholders - running it as if it were a business is ruinously expensive and distracting and hampers the service it's supposed to provide.
If rail isn't profitable due to lack of demand, it likely also isn't environmentally friendly.
The rail efficiency sold to the public is based on projections that (generally) also made them profitable.
Rail efficiency decreases drastically as usage declines, as so much of the embedded energy and emissions is in the fixed cost of building out ROW and track, and ongoing MOW.
You need to operate at a high percentage of capacity in passengers per train, and high percentage of capacity in trains per track.
Efficient rail systems are relatively a highly constrained problem, due to said fixed cost of track, but also due to lack of flexibility to adapt to changes, both in routes (need to move/add track) and capacity (track at full capacity doesn't meet demand, but two tracks exceeds demand at cost of being inefficient). (Operating one track that doesn't fully meet demand increases prices and becomes an expensive but profitable point of stability.)
Which is why eg high-speed rail proposals in the US typically rely primarily on improving existing slow routes, and are limited to midrange distances. Too short and too long both push it to being more costly at reduced efficiency.
lobochrome|4 years ago
Almost like in a circulatory system - cutting of the tiny vessels isn’t a recipe for success even if the main system can function for a while without them.
p_l|4 years ago
tecleandor|4 years ago
"...it was targeted for the axe at the privatization of Japanese National Railways in 1987, just 15 years after completion, but escaped because the road that runs more or less parallel with it and is the only route into Iwaizumi from the south is not wide enough in many places for two cars to pass and is treacherous in winter."
Also, per that article, the number of passengers is quite higher than that, and "per kilometer". Not that is huge, but...
"...the least trafficked line in the whole nation, with average daily ridership per kilometer of 46 people in fiscal 2009"
Anyway, I'm with @rob74 on this, profit shouldn't be the only concern in public transport.
cinntaile|4 years ago
Aeolun|4 years ago
In fact, I think there are many things like that in Japan (mailing things comes to mind), where the cost is so low it’s reasonable for anyone. Or where I can go to an out of the way town serviced by one gasoline powered train a day.
You can say that it’s all loss making, and you would be right. Japans public debt increases every year, seemingly without limit. But this has zero effect on people’s lives, whereas closing the only train line that services their home…
user-the-name|4 years ago
dustintrex|4 years ago
ovi256|4 years ago
renewiltord|4 years ago
refurb|4 years ago
rob74|4 years ago
TheOtherHobbes|4 years ago
It's there to provide an essential service. Which you have to pay for.
Not only is it not a business - and not there to make money for shareholders - running it as if it were a business is ruinously expensive and distracting and hampers the service it's supposed to provide.
beerandt|4 years ago
The rail efficiency sold to the public is based on projections that (generally) also made them profitable.
Rail efficiency decreases drastically as usage declines, as so much of the embedded energy and emissions is in the fixed cost of building out ROW and track, and ongoing MOW.
You need to operate at a high percentage of capacity in passengers per train, and high percentage of capacity in trains per track.
Efficient rail systems are relatively a highly constrained problem, due to said fixed cost of track, but also due to lack of flexibility to adapt to changes, both in routes (need to move/add track) and capacity (track at full capacity doesn't meet demand, but two tracks exceeds demand at cost of being inefficient). (Operating one track that doesn't fully meet demand increases prices and becomes an expensive but profitable point of stability.)
Which is why eg high-speed rail proposals in the US typically rely primarily on improving existing slow routes, and are limited to midrange distances. Too short and too long both push it to being more costly at reduced efficiency.