Imagine a city – or country – where bus and train delays are so rare that it makes headlines when it happens. This happened in Tokyo on the Yamanote Line, one of the busiest and most important rail lines in the metropolitan area. Unfortunately no headliner in Vienna for a long time, let alone often worth reporting at all…
According to public transport in Japan, you can actually set the clock, more than 99 percent of the means of transport run on time – every day, all year round. However, a signal failure on Monday morning caused the first scheduled trains to be canceled early in the morning, which immediately became news to the Japanese media. About 110,000 people were affected by this operational failure.
While the ring line, which connects Tokyo’s major commuter hubs and business districts, was able to resume operations around 9 a.m. local time, local media reported that the schedule was “significantly impacted and commuters were badly affected”.
A 29-year-old man was quoted as saying, “I was planning to go to the office early, but now I can’t get to a meeting on time.” It’s not surprising that such an event makes so many headlines, given that Japan’s trains run 99 percent on time – a metric other countries can only dream of.
Apologies because the train left 20 seconds early
Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train, the pride of the nation, is also known for its punctuality. Except for natural disasters, there are hardly any delays here either. However, if there are delays of less than a minute, it leads to repeated excuses. In 2017, a train company had to apologize because a train in the suburbs of Tokyo had not left too late, but too early: by 20 seconds. No one had complained at all.
Source: Krone
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