Ever been to NY or Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia? Same thing.
Hmmm. Maybe I should start wearing white gloves when I’m conductor…
It’s funny. In just about every Japanese cartoon I watch, they depict the railways and subways with such accuracy. I don’t know if it is because the animators are just into realistic detail, or they are all railfans.
Making a living as an animator must to tough…most are probably just getting by and areall too familair with public transportation because they can’t afford cars, hence the level of detail of trains in their animations. Ask one to animate a Cadillac and you probably won’t get much accuracy in detail.
You’d be surprised. Cars, trains, cities - it’s amazing how accurate it is all portrayed. I think it’s more cultural than economic.
People in Japan ride public transportation by and large and don’t own cars, including Americans who grew up relying on one because of our generally substandard rail passenger transportation. One of my closest friends, an American English as a Foreign Language teacher, is the head of a department at a university in Osaka. She has lived there 15 years and neither she nor her husband nor any of the other ex-pats she knows have ever owned a car. Interestingly, the worst rail accident in Japan in the past few decades happened in 2005 on the commuter train she rides to work every day.
I liked the ‘parallel’ pass from about 1:00 to the end at 2:11 - the whole sequence reminded me of some large model railroad operations during displays. Thanks for sharing !
But - they’ve got it backwards ! Left-hand running ! (unless you’re from the C&NW . . . ) [:-^] [swg]
- Paul North.
Japanese rail practices in the early days were strongly influenced by the Brits (Who would have guessed…)
If you want to see ACTION, just get to a place where you can get a good view of the stretch of track around Shinjuku - JREast Yamate-sen and Chu-o-sen heavy commuter, Odakyu and mainline action! Four trains in motion at once is normal. During rush hour, `people pushers’ pack passengers into commuter cars like stuffing a sausage…
Chuck
That´s a myth.
Yes, people in Japan use public transport much more than in any other country in the world, but they also use cars.
In 2008, there were 490 automobiles registered for traffic per 1,000 inhabitants in Japan. For Germany, this figure reads 499 and for the US a surprisingly “low” 458.
These figures are based on a study done by Deloitte in 2009.
Your numbers differ greatly from those I have seen, Wikipedia has the US second (after Lichtenstein) at 808 per 1k people, Nationmaster has us at #1 with 765 per 1k persons. Japan is #17 and #11, respectively. Now, those number include all vehicles, including commercial vehicles, but that should skew the numbers further toward Japan and Germany due to the relatively heavier use of trucks for freight transportation. I believe the numbers you are using are from the World Bank. But I am actually relying on the word of someone who has lived there for 17 years, I personally have never been there.
One would think that would be an easy statistic to calculate accurately, since cars/all vehicles are registered and we have census data. Perhaps the key phrase is “automobiles registered for traffic.” We don’t register for traffic. Maybe other countries do? Or maybe that is based on an estimated use figure?
Statistics - always a myth!
Wikipedia shows the following figures for 2010:
No. of cars (w/o trucks and buses):
US - 118.946.744
Japan - 58.347.387
Germany - 42.301.563
If we take the corresponding population figures (also from Wikipedia) as
US - 313,973,000
Japan . 127,530,000
Germany - 81,859,000,
we get the following figures for cars per 1 k people:
US - 379
Japan - 458
Germany - 517
I have my doubts about these figures, as trucks are excluded. How many of you folks own a pick-up?
Whichever way we look at it, Japanese and Germans own cars and ride trains.
It matters a great deal whether light trucks (pickups and SUVs) are included. Seven of the top 20 sellers in the US are pickups and SUVs. Three are full-sized pickups. The Ford and Chevy pickups are number one and number three on the list, respectively. Not many of these are “work trucks”.