I'm trying to figure out what a good alternative is, though. I absolutely agree with you, and have been on planes before where I've been very uncomfortable due to a nearby dog triggering my allergies. (I've been doing allergy immunotherapy for the past couple years, so my allergies are in much better control now, but I still have off days.)
But people do need to travel with their pets sometimes; consider moving to a new house far enough away such that it requires air travel. I would not consent to putting my cats in the cargo hold; I've heard enough horror stories about the conditions they experience (not to mention incidence of death, injury, or loss) there to allow that. I read that there used to be a "pet airline" in the US, but they had very limited routes and destinations, and haven't flown in many years at this point.
>>At the end of the day you have to sometimes make sacrifices for your choices. This is one of those times
You're right - and that sacrifice should be to put your dog in the cargo hold, or don't travel with them. Or if you really need to sit next to your pet for the entire journey, rent a car and just drop it off at your new location - it's very straightforward.
Or just don't get such an impractical pet to begin with. Bringing small 10kg or less dogs (or cats) in carriers is not a problem; the problem is people thinking they have some kind of right to bring gigantic dogs with them everywhere.
I wish the airlines would do differentiated flights (maybe adult-only or 12+ only for one flight a day on otherwise high volume route, and maybe an explicitly pet-friendly flight on a route, etc.). I live on an island, and especially now that most airlines (covid scheduling issues) have eliminated animals as checked baggage, anyone with an animal which doesn't conform to normal cabin transport is kind of screwed -- they have to use a specialty transport company, which either flies on dedicated cargo flights or something else, or they charter a plane ($5k minimum for San Juan to Miami).
My personal preference would be zero children, zero dogs, only well behaved cats, but I realize that's a niche flight preference, but on a route with hundreds of flights a week, one flight a week (or even one a month) should be easy to fill.
For me the problem is dogs’ unpredictability. I have a small dog, and although I believe 100% that she would never hurt a person or another animal, I still have her on a taut lead ready to yank her away when a stranger’s child wants to say hello on our walks, just in case.
I would want everyone bringing a dog on a train to be in that same level of control, and judging by the people and dogs I see out walking that’s an unreasonable wish.
99% of the time the problem is the owner in my experience. I don't like dogs near me, but I've rarely felt like the dog was the problem, it's selfish people who don't keep their dog properly leashed, close to them, and away from other people. Dogs shouldn't be on public transportation primarily because enough dog owners have shown they are unable to respect other people.
The bigger problem: people being allergic to dogs is quite common (above 10% of the population, I believe). I’m a dog lover and have 2 pooches that are my life, yet I am always baffled by people that feel they need to make everyone else deal with the pet they love.
I appreciate you saying this. I love dogs but am quite allergic and dog hair sets me off pretty badly.
It would suck if public transport became a no-go or much less pleasant option for me and many others because our comfort is prioritised as less important than a dogs.
I live in Japan now, and for the dogs I see in the city, the vast majority would easily pass this test.
However, from what I saw in America during the pandemic and before, the vast majority of American dogs would not.
That said, the bigger problems I see here are 1) how to deal with the bathroom problems (train trips last hours, and dogs don't hold it in very well), and 2) how to deal with peoples' allergies, and 3) how to deal with people just not wanting to ride near other peoples' animals. I think it's an insurmountable problem really, unless there's SO much demand that they can dedicate a whole train car to being pet-friendly (not likely). We already have ways of moving pets around: taxis and cars. Inside a city, just use a taxi. If you need to travel between cities, just rent a car. Yes, it's a lot of money, but if you can't afford that, then you can't afford a dog. Or just leave the dog at home.
(If it's a cat, the cat doesn't want to take a trip with you anywhere.)
(edit) Finally, I just did a little research, and this isn't really a problem at all. You can already bring dogs and cats on trains here, both the intercity Shinkansen and the local trains. The catch is that it needs to be a small dog (or cat), and inside a carrier, weighing a total of 10kg or less. It looks like there's a small fee (less than $5) for the Shinkansen. So I don't see why any of this is necessary; it's a solved problem.
No, re-read my last paragraph. As long as their dog is small, they can take the train no problem.
If they have a large dog, they should already own a car. Apartments in Tokyo do NOT allow large dogs, and anyone living outside the city should already have a car anyway. If you can't afford a car, you can't afford a large dog.
I live in Tokyo; there's almost no large dogs here. Having a large dog is a luxury.
I was thinking mostly about outside of Japan, where the same discourse of "why do you need a car for?" has beginning to show up more and more. I need a car because otherwise having some outside activities with my dog is close to impossible, but I would love to have the possibility of not having to have a car while still giving my (medium-sized) dog a decent outdoor life.
> I live in Tokyo; there's almost no large dogs here. Having a large dog is a luxury.
Which I find sad that we've basically internalised and made it a normalcy. The same and even more so goes to having kids. Having a dog (or a pet, more generally) shouldn't be a luxury, because it gives one a better life (having kids even more so, but as I don't have any I can't comment on that).
>but I would love to have the possibility of not having to have a car while still giving my (medium-sized) dog a decent outdoor life.
You can have one or the other. Owning a dog is a ridiculous luxury for ultra-wealthy people; go back 150 years and this was exactly the case, but now somehow people have come to expect it.
>Having a dog (or a pet, more generally) shouldn't be a luxury, because it gives one a better life (having kids even more so, but as I don't have any I can't comment on that).
No, it really doesn't. It's horrible for the environment, and it's bad for society and is a disruption and inconvenience to people around you. The idea that dogs should be commonplace is utterly ridiculous and downright offensive, and similar to the idea that carrying guns should be commonplace and normal. And then you compare it to having kids. Do you realize how many children are maimed, disfigured, and killed every year by pet dogs?
Making it easier to take bicycles should be a priority IMO (and would carry less risk of disturbing other passengers). For a country that has good public transport and is often quite environmentally-conscious, it's disappointing that taking a bicycle on a train is harder than almost anywhere else in the world.
I have thought about this. I think it's a two part issue. One is a timing concern. The timing is critical on the shinkansen and waiting for people to go find and organize their bikes from another carriage would add time to boarding and departure.
The other is application in general. It would help travellers I think, but the Shinkansen is a intercity service more akin to an intercity flight. I am not sure how common it would be to have a bicycle move between cities, rather than say rolling luggage. Also thinking of the reduced capacity and increased chaos of the trains should you add bicycles to the general carriages.
Lastly, affordances for bikes are pretty good in most other ways, you could probably keep a cheap bike either side of your common stops. I would love to hear if people actually do this.
People do bring bikes on trains in Japan. The catch is that the bike must be in a bag. Many times, people use folding bicycles for journeys like this, because those bikes can be folded down into very small dimensions, no bigger than a small suitcase. For full-size bikes, those are allowed too, but must be in a bag and disassembled. People don't do this so often because it's a PITA (and is still cumbersome even when disassembled), but it is an option.
I think this limits the impact of a loose bicycle on a train to the point where it is just luggage again.
Where I live we can take bicycles on trains, and you can really only get two or three cyclists into a carriage before it becomes messy chaos. For our trains, cyclists can use the spot reserved for wheelchairs if there isn't one on board. If you need to get off and your bike is underneath other peoples it is a mess. Most people just stand with their bikes, and again if you got on in the wrong order it's a real pain to get a bike through the crowd. Bikes fall over all the time, and we take up a large amount of room.
The shinkansen lines are different in that you book a seat, so I suppose they could have dedicated cycle storeage near the exit of the shinkansen, that you have to book with your ticket.
"Messy chaos" won't work on the shinkansen: the train only stops very briefly at the station for boarding and disembarking. What you're describing in your country would never be tolerated.
My understanding is that you can bring a bike (in a bag, disassembled) on board, and stow it near the end of the car behind the seats, but I've never tried it, nor have I seen it (but I've only ridden a handful of times so I'm no expert).
> My understanding is that you can bring a bike (in a bag, disassembled) on board, and stow it near the end of the car behind the seats, but I've never tried it, nor have I seen it (but I've only ridden a handful of times so I'm no expert).
You can; on the busier lines you have to book the specific seats at the end of the carriages near the luggage space. It's better than nothing but it's a lot of faff.
That's an interesting point. Timing isn't as important here in Sweden, but I can take my bike on the train. I've taken my bike on trains in Denmark, Germany and Sweden. And yeah sure it's off by a few minutes usually, sometimes by more than that. But I enjoy the freedom and laid back attitude more than extreme punctuality. I just realized this.
Does Sweden have over-utilized railway capacity though?
The punctuality matters in systems which are close to their critical operation limit. One delay here will slowly propagate across everywhere in the network. You need slack in the system for lateness to work with it.
Oh it propagates here too, I'm in the south west. I just find that I'd rather be able to take my bike on the train than to have it be punctual. If that's the trade off here. I understand it's not that simple due to the load on the system and all but I'm just saying, this made me realize that I'd rather have a late train with freedom than a punctual train with no freedom.
I'm not just a bicyclist, I'm also a pet owner. Swedish trains are very generous regarding pets. Especially Öresundståg, the commuter trains of the south and south west.
While in Denmark they are very strict suddenly, requiring even the smallest dog to be crated in the bicycle area.
You can take your dog on trains in Denmark, but if you don't have a bag/cage you need to buy the dog a ticket: https://www.dsb.dk/rejsende/hunde/
(A Swedish friend who lives here in Copenhagen says in practise, Danish train/bus staff are much less likely to actually enforce the rule than Swedish staff, so it's better here.)
Maybe you're trying to find a firm technical requirement for such tight timing, but they don't need one. In a sense the above comment is right, they (JR) just want it.
One of their goals is to strive for such efficiency and punctuality so that the service is better overall, and so in your original comment I guess the answer is both that things would fall apart if the timing got messed up, and also that it's part of the reputation and one of the goals of their service.
It's worth noting that JR is a series of privatized companies, which is notable because they're profitable as well. I imagine efficiency plays a pretty big role in that too.
> Maybe you're trying to find a firm technical requirement for such tight timing, but they don't need one. In a sense the above comment is right, they (JR) just want it.
What happens if someone in a wheelchair wants to travel?
> One of their goals is to strive for such efficiency and punctuality so that the service is better overall [..]
Well, unless you happen to want to travel with a bicycle, that is.
Punctuality is great, but punctuality above all else can't help but have consequences, and some of those might be quite significant negatives for some travellers.
> It's worth noting that JR is a series of privatized companies, which is notable because they're profitable as well
No snark intended, and I know very little about Japan or its railways, but as with so many things, if you can persuade someone else to pay for the construction of your infrastructure then profitability is significantly easier:
"The costs for construction of new high-speed railway (except Chuo Shinkansen which is mainly paid by JR Central) are shared by national government and local governments along the line. National government pays 2/3 of construction costs, local governments bear the rest of it."
( https://www.mlit.go.jp/kokusai/itf/policy_001.html )
If you’re in a wheelchair, staff will assist you with a ramp when boarding, and they will arrange for someone to be waiting with a ramp at your destination station.
And you can take a bike, it’s just has to be in a bag. Inside the bag, you’re supposed to have the front wheel and pedals removed (in practice people don’t remove pedals), and the handlebars turned 90 degrees. It works fine so what you’re really arguing is for tolerating delays, reducing capacity and inconveniencing everyone else just to make it extra convenient to bring a bike on board. It’s like arguing that you should be able to bring your bike on as a carry-on in a flight.
I don't know the specifics of japan railways, but generally due to the high amount of trains that run on a single line, being late or early even by a few seconds can cause other trains to be delayed even more. Timing in this case isn't "time between stopping stations", but "time between checkpoints, which may or may not be stations".
> generally due to the high amount of trains that run on a single line, being late or early even by a few seconds can cause other trains to be delayed even more
How many trains per hour run on a single line?
EDIT: "At peak times, the line carries up to 16 trains per hour in each direction with 16 cars each (1,323-seat capacity and occasionally additional standing passengers) with a minimum headway of three minutes between trains"
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen )
EDIT2: apparently the busiest line in Europe is the Paris-Lyon TGV line, which currently handles 13 trains per hour and is being progressively upgraded to handle 14 trains per hour from 2025, then 16 trains per hour by 2030.
( https://railway-news.com/paris-lyon-high-speed-line-to-get-a... )
Again, this still doesn't feel like the Shinkansen needs to time departures to the second any more than other busy railway lines do. Apart from that their reputation is that they do?
>Again, this still doesn't feel like the Shinkansen needs to time departures to the second any more than other busy railway lines do. Apart from that their reputation is that they do?
I'm sure reputation and culture plays a huge part in this, but as I said I don't know the specifics of their operation so I can only speculate. When you have multiple lines with many trains serving the same station, the number of platforms you have available at a given time becomes a problem. Also, a train being a few seconds early might cause another train to wait at a switch.
There is also the problem with transfers. In Europe, when taking international trains, they take no responsibility if you miss your train because of a delay, unlike airlines. This makes it a huge pain to go to another non-neighboring country by train. I'm aware that this is not an issue of "seconds" but rather minutes or sometimes hours, but imagine missing an appointment by just a few seconds. If your transit is punctual, all the responsibility is yours.
> In Europe, when taking international trains, they take no responsibility if you miss your train because of a delay, unlike airlines
Source?
If you are ticketed across one or more European borders I believe the train operating companies will take some responsibility, at least in terms of allowing alternative trains without a new ticket.
This summer I travelled with my daughter from Paris to Austria, changing in both Mannheim and Munich, and we misconnected in Mannheim and had to take an alternative to our booked train to Munich, and an alternative train from Munich to Kufstein.
We were on a "booked trains only" (completely inflexible) ticket, but in both cases a quick conversation with the train staff and having the DB app showing the hugely delayed (booked) train was all that was required.
There's an association of train operators that guarantee that they'll honour your ticket if you miss a connection because of a delay on another one of them, but it's all voluntary rather than having a legal guarantee like you do with flights, and not every European operator is signed up.
Right, but those are a lot more practically available. Most rail routes are only available on a single national operator, and there's rarely any "code sharing".
I think we would need to know how TGV plans to achieve the throughput to make the comparison. It's fair to say tight timing increases throughput, which is one of the strategies JR use to achieve throughput.
Why add a logistical nightmare and delays when you don’t have to? I just moved from Japan to Europe and the difference in reliability of the schedule is night and day.
And aside from timing of one train leaving, there are express Shinkansen trains that overtake local shinkansen trains at minor stops, I would think it’s not trivial to propagate delays to these timings.
> Why add a logistical nightmare and delays when you don’t have to? I just moved from Japan to Europe and the difference in reliability of the schedule is night and day.
I'm still struggling to understand why accepting bicycles for travel would necessarily introduce "[a] logistical nightmare and delays".
I would love for you to experience the boarding process so you can get a feel for it, and the social stigmas around it too which is where I think you could get an answer to that question. Maybe watch an FPV youtube video of a traveller using the service and take note of the line to board and disembark, take note of the entry way and the luggage area and think about how it would all work with a bike.
I think I would bore you writing it all out but my point is just that there is no room for the bike within the train or the social process of participating in the train service. More than one bike and it wouldn't work, so no bikes.
> I would love for you to experience the boarding process so you can get a feel for it, and the social stigmas around it too which is where I think you could get an answer to that question. Maybe watch an FPV youtube video of a traveller using the service and take note of the line to board and disembark, take note of the entry way and the luggage area and think about how it would all work with a bike.
Q: How does it work for passengers in wheelchairs?
(That is a genuine question, I was recently travelling by tram in Basel, Switzerland, and along with another random stranger pitched in to assist an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was struggling to board, partner wasn't strong enough to manage on his own. The tram doors were nice and wide, but given the height difference between the tram and the platform, a ramp sure would have helped...)
Yep, good question. Not amazing, there are one or two seats available per train. It can be difficult to board, and not all wheelchairs sizes are able to be accommodated.
Japan in general has a lot of challenges for wheelchairs, there are places that you just couldn't go, or live in, and infrastructure you can't use.
A lot of Japan's infrastructure was built in the 80s and 90s, before there as many regulations about accessiblity. Especially things like walkway bridges and pathways. Lots of stairs. Houses are very often split level townhouses with staircases. I am sure it's getting better.
I’m struggling to understand how one can suggest delays should be tolerated in order to carry not-in-bag bikes and the burden of argument is on others to prove that JR should just allow delays.
This is such a weird hill to die on. As another commenter said, watching the boarding process would make it obvious that it’s not easy to allow bikes beyond the current method of letting them on in a bike bag as luggage (works fine by the way, I’ve personally done it).
I was just taking a train in Europe yesterday thinking about this comment thread. The train left a few minutes late from the starting station and each stop was 3-4 minutes. That simply doesn’t work with a headway of 5-10 minutes. The Shinkansen stops for like one minute, and on a busy train it takes a few more minutes to actually get everyone seated. If you have large luggage, the social norm is to stand with it between cars until everyone else boards, so you don’t block them. This works with a bike in a bag, but I can’t imagine a fully assembled bike being there.
Scheduling, at peak time trains can arrive once every three minutes (across a handful of platforms, but they need to leave via the same lines). So you can imagine someone faffing about with their bicycle for 5 minutes causing a national network delay would be somewhat of an embarrassing situation.
It's hard to explain how excellent the punctuality is, it essentially wastes none of your time. You don't sit at junctions, you don't have to wait for a platform to free up, you never miss your train because it left early.
Everyone is already lined up by their respective cars, ready to board the moment the train is available to board. So within 5-10 minutes, your train has arrived, people have disembarked, you have boarded, and your train has left. Remembering this is an intercity train network, so it'd be like being able to arrive at the airport with your ticket, board the plane, and take off, within 10 minutes.
> So within 5-10 minutes, your train has arrived, people have disembarked, you have boarded, and your train has left
Isn't this pretty standard SOP for how long-distance trains stop at intermediate stations around the world?
I've recently travelled in Germany and Austria and their ICE and Railjet trains, respectively, have stops of only 2-3 minutes at a majority of intermediate stations.
GP seems to be from Australia, where a random timetable I found shows a Sydney-Canberra train has 10-25 minute stops at various stations -- I assume the larger ones. I've experienced the same on trains in the USA.
It's called "dwell time" if you want to Google, but in Europe I'd guess
- at many stations it's around 1 minute
- at large towns it can be 2-3 minutes, especially if it's likely many people will board/alight
- at the very largest through stations it can be 5-10 minutes. That would be somewhere you might expect half the passengers (or more) to change, like Berlin or Madrid.
Metro and commuter trains have more doors to make boarding/alighting faster. Long-distance trains have fewer doors to make the interior quieter and more comfortable.
> That would be somewhere you might expect half the passengers (or more) to change, like Berlin or Madrid
(From experience) I would suspect it's more about train crew changes, restocking the restaurant car, and/or allowing extra time to recover from any delays.
They also still get delayed, even with such large dwell times. So simply increasing dwell time isn't enough to cater for the different requirements. Such low dwell times work for the Shinkansen because of the organisation of the passengers and the limited ways in which boarding can go wrong. There is an element of ruthlessness to that, the margin of error for you the passenger is small.
Trains just aren’t well-suited to carrying bikes. A bike takes up as much space as like 4 people, if not many moor on a crowded train (although perhaps only 3 in a seating-room only train like the Shinkansen). When you consider that, taking a bike on a train is decidedly environmentally unfriendly.
A well run train system isn't full. It has to run at a convenient frequency, which is much higher than just taking the number of passengers and dividing by the capacity of a train.
> A bike takes up as much space as like 4 people, if not many moor on a crowded train (although perhaps only 3 in a seating-room only train like the Shinkansen)
A single bike in isolation, maybe, but a proper bike rack (as seen on many European trains) can fit several bikes in that same space; furthermore you might be able to use space that isn't suitable for carrying passengers (e.g. the UK HSTs carry bicycles in the crumple zones where it wouldn't be safe for passengers to be).
> When you consider that, taking a bike on a train is decidedly environmentally unfriendly.
That's going a bit far; even if we assume it really is displacing three or four other people, three or four people's worth of train emissions on an electric train like this is still comfortably less than one car making the same journey.
Shinkansen is a bit weird, it’s like an enlarged business jet or a Concorde body on a metro train chassis. No dedicated locomotives, and almost instantaneous stops at stations. What I’m trying to say is, they will have to start by doubling the size of door opening to do that…
[1] is used in Britain, but it's a Japanese (Hitachi) design. The very front of the train (see the bottom section "Liveries") shows the front half of the first unit has blanked-out windows. That's where there's room for a couple of bicycles, a drinks trolley, etc. Obviously including this space has reduced the total number of seats.
If you want to take a bicycle you must reserve the space, and you're expected to be waiting at the correct end of the train so you can board quickly.
> When you consider that, taking a bike on a train is decidedly environmentally unfriendly.
Framing it like that, taking a suitcase on the train is environmentally unfriendly. Or taking your own body on it.
The alternative to taking your bike on the train may be that you hail a taxi on the other end of the ride rather than ride to your destination. Or that you choose to drive to your destination so you can put the bike in a bike-rack on your car, rather than take public transit.
It's not as clear-cut as "decidedly environmentally unfriendly" to me at least.
If you can't view the image, visualize a train compartment with rows of seats with a shared table in between them. If there isn't a table, then the back of the seats are facing each other, and it's a perfect spot to fit a folding bike.
Unfortunately, the bike has to be engineered for it. The more expensive Brompton fits, but my cheap one doesn't.
As the population ages even further and the number of people who never marry increases, pet-friendly accommodations will become way more important than bicycle friendly accommodations.
70 comments
[ 473 ms ] story [ 578 ms ] threadBut people do need to travel with their pets sometimes; consider moving to a new house far enough away such that it requires air travel. I would not consent to putting my cats in the cargo hold; I've heard enough horror stories about the conditions they experience (not to mention incidence of death, injury, or loss) there to allow that. I read that there used to be a "pet airline" in the US, but they had very limited routes and destinations, and haven't flown in many years at this point.
At the end of the day you have to sometimes make sacrifices for your choices. This is one of those times.
You're right - and that sacrifice should be to put your dog in the cargo hold, or don't travel with them. Or if you really need to sit next to your pet for the entire journey, rent a car and just drop it off at your new location - it's very straightforward.
My personal preference would be zero children, zero dogs, only well behaved cats, but I realize that's a niche flight preference, but on a route with hundreds of flights a week, one flight a week (or even one a month) should be easy to fill.
I would want everyone bringing a dog on a train to be in that same level of control, and judging by the people and dogs I see out walking that’s an unreasonable wish.
People shouldn't be on public transportation primarily because enough people have shown they are unable to respect other people.
It would suck if public transport became a no-go or much less pleasant option for me and many others because our comfort is prioritised as less important than a dogs.
However, from what I saw in America during the pandemic and before, the vast majority of American dogs would not.
That said, the bigger problems I see here are 1) how to deal with the bathroom problems (train trips last hours, and dogs don't hold it in very well), and 2) how to deal with peoples' allergies, and 3) how to deal with people just not wanting to ride near other peoples' animals. I think it's an insurmountable problem really, unless there's SO much demand that they can dedicate a whole train car to being pet-friendly (not likely). We already have ways of moving pets around: taxis and cars. Inside a city, just use a taxi. If you need to travel between cities, just rent a car. Yes, it's a lot of money, but if you can't afford that, then you can't afford a dog. Or just leave the dog at home. (If it's a cat, the cat doesn't want to take a trip with you anywhere.)
(edit) Finally, I just did a little research, and this isn't really a problem at all. You can already bring dogs and cats on trains here, both the intercity Shinkansen and the local trains. The catch is that it needs to be a small dog (or cat), and inside a carrier, weighing a total of 10kg or less. It looks like there's a small fee (less than $5) for the Shinkansen. So I don't see why any of this is necessary; it's a solved problem.
If they have a large dog, they should already own a car. Apartments in Tokyo do NOT allow large dogs, and anyone living outside the city should already have a car anyway. If you can't afford a car, you can't afford a large dog.
I live in Tokyo; there's almost no large dogs here. Having a large dog is a luxury.
> I live in Tokyo; there's almost no large dogs here. Having a large dog is a luxury.
Which I find sad that we've basically internalised and made it a normalcy. The same and even more so goes to having kids. Having a dog (or a pet, more generally) shouldn't be a luxury, because it gives one a better life (having kids even more so, but as I don't have any I can't comment on that).
You can have one or the other. Owning a dog is a ridiculous luxury for ultra-wealthy people; go back 150 years and this was exactly the case, but now somehow people have come to expect it.
>Having a dog (or a pet, more generally) shouldn't be a luxury, because it gives one a better life (having kids even more so, but as I don't have any I can't comment on that).
No, it really doesn't. It's horrible for the environment, and it's bad for society and is a disruption and inconvenience to people around you. The idea that dogs should be commonplace is utterly ridiculous and downright offensive, and similar to the idea that carrying guns should be commonplace and normal. And then you compare it to having kids. Do you realize how many children are maimed, disfigured, and killed every year by pet dogs?
The other is application in general. It would help travellers I think, but the Shinkansen is a intercity service more akin to an intercity flight. I am not sure how common it would be to have a bicycle move between cities, rather than say rolling luggage. Also thinking of the reduced capacity and increased chaos of the trains should you add bicycles to the general carriages.
Lastly, affordances for bikes are pretty good in most other ways, you could probably keep a cheap bike either side of your common stops. I would love to hear if people actually do this.
Where I live we can take bicycles on trains, and you can really only get two or three cyclists into a carriage before it becomes messy chaos. For our trains, cyclists can use the spot reserved for wheelchairs if there isn't one on board. If you need to get off and your bike is underneath other peoples it is a mess. Most people just stand with their bikes, and again if you got on in the wrong order it's a real pain to get a bike through the crowd. Bikes fall over all the time, and we take up a large amount of room.
The shinkansen lines are different in that you book a seat, so I suppose they could have dedicated cycle storeage near the exit of the shinkansen, that you have to book with your ticket.
My understanding is that you can bring a bike (in a bag, disassembled) on board, and stow it near the end of the car behind the seats, but I've never tried it, nor have I seen it (but I've only ridden a handful of times so I'm no expert).
You can; on the busier lines you have to book the specific seats at the end of the carriages near the luggage space. It's better than nothing but it's a lot of faff.
The punctuality matters in systems which are close to their critical operation limit. One delay here will slowly propagate across everywhere in the network. You need slack in the system for lateness to work with it.
I'm not just a bicyclist, I'm also a pet owner. Swedish trains are very generous regarding pets. Especially Öresundståg, the commuter trains of the south and south west.
While in Denmark they are very strict suddenly, requiring even the smallest dog to be crated in the bicycle area.
(A Swedish friend who lives here in Copenhagen says in practise, Danish train/bus staff are much less likely to actually enforce the rule than Swedish staff, so it's better here.)
Why?
Is this about needing to be on time primarily because there's a reputation to maintain, or would bad things happen if one runs late?
I don't believe this requirement is specific to the shinkansen, to Japan, or even to travelling by train.
One of their goals is to strive for such efficiency and punctuality so that the service is better overall, and so in your original comment I guess the answer is both that things would fall apart if the timing got messed up, and also that it's part of the reputation and one of the goals of their service.
It's worth noting that JR is a series of privatized companies, which is notable because they're profitable as well. I imagine efficiency plays a pretty big role in that too.
What happens if someone in a wheelchair wants to travel?
> One of their goals is to strive for such efficiency and punctuality so that the service is better overall [..]
Well, unless you happen to want to travel with a bicycle, that is.
Punctuality is great, but punctuality above all else can't help but have consequences, and some of those might be quite significant negatives for some travellers.
> It's worth noting that JR is a series of privatized companies, which is notable because they're profitable as well
No snark intended, and I know very little about Japan or its railways, but as with so many things, if you can persuade someone else to pay for the construction of your infrastructure then profitability is significantly easier:
"The costs for construction of new high-speed railway (except Chuo Shinkansen which is mainly paid by JR Central) are shared by national government and local governments along the line. National government pays 2/3 of construction costs, local governments bear the rest of it." ( https://www.mlit.go.jp/kokusai/itf/policy_001.html )
And you can take a bike, it’s just has to be in a bag. Inside the bag, you’re supposed to have the front wheel and pedals removed (in practice people don’t remove pedals), and the handlebars turned 90 degrees. It works fine so what you’re really arguing is for tolerating delays, reducing capacity and inconveniencing everyone else just to make it extra convenient to bring a bike on board. It’s like arguing that you should be able to bring your bike on as a carry-on in a flight.
How many trains per hour run on a single line?
EDIT: "At peak times, the line carries up to 16 trains per hour in each direction with 16 cars each (1,323-seat capacity and occasionally additional standing passengers) with a minimum headway of three minutes between trains" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen )
EDIT2: apparently the busiest line in Europe is the Paris-Lyon TGV line, which currently handles 13 trains per hour and is being progressively upgraded to handle 14 trains per hour from 2025, then 16 trains per hour by 2030. ( https://railway-news.com/paris-lyon-high-speed-line-to-get-a... )
Again, this still doesn't feel like the Shinkansen needs to time departures to the second any more than other busy railway lines do. Apart from that their reputation is that they do?
I'm sure reputation and culture plays a huge part in this, but as I said I don't know the specifics of their operation so I can only speculate. When you have multiple lines with many trains serving the same station, the number of platforms you have available at a given time becomes a problem. Also, a train being a few seconds early might cause another train to wait at a switch.
There is also the problem with transfers. In Europe, when taking international trains, they take no responsibility if you miss your train because of a delay, unlike airlines. This makes it a huge pain to go to another non-neighboring country by train. I'm aware that this is not an issue of "seconds" but rather minutes or sometimes hours, but imagine missing an appointment by just a few seconds. If your transit is punctual, all the responsibility is yours.
Source?
If you are ticketed across one or more European borders I believe the train operating companies will take some responsibility, at least in terms of allowing alternative trains without a new ticket.
This summer I travelled with my daughter from Paris to Austria, changing in both Mannheim and Munich, and we misconnected in Mannheim and had to take an alternative to our booked train to Munich, and an alternative train from Munich to Kufstein.
We were on a "booked trains only" (completely inflexible) ticket, but in both cases a quick conversation with the train staff and having the DB app showing the hugely delayed (booked) train was all that was required.
https://help.raileurope.co.uk/article/41665-understanding-ci...
If you don't purchase single through ticket for air travel, you aren't protected if you misconnect either!
And aside from timing of one train leaving, there are express Shinkansen trains that overtake local shinkansen trains at minor stops, I would think it’s not trivial to propagate delays to these timings.
I'm still struggling to understand why accepting bicycles for travel would necessarily introduce "[a] logistical nightmare and delays".
I think I would bore you writing it all out but my point is just that there is no room for the bike within the train or the social process of participating in the train service. More than one bike and it wouldn't work, so no bikes.
Q: How does it work for passengers in wheelchairs?
(That is a genuine question, I was recently travelling by tram in Basel, Switzerland, and along with another random stranger pitched in to assist an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was struggling to board, partner wasn't strong enough to manage on his own. The tram doors were nice and wide, but given the height difference between the tram and the platform, a ramp sure would have helped...)
Japan in general has a lot of challenges for wheelchairs, there are places that you just couldn't go, or live in, and infrastructure you can't use.
A lot of Japan's infrastructure was built in the 80s and 90s, before there as many regulations about accessiblity. Especially things like walkway bridges and pathways. Lots of stairs. Houses are very often split level townhouses with staircases. I am sure it's getting better.
This is such a weird hill to die on. As another commenter said, watching the boarding process would make it obvious that it’s not easy to allow bikes beyond the current method of letting them on in a bike bag as luggage (works fine by the way, I’ve personally done it).
I was just taking a train in Europe yesterday thinking about this comment thread. The train left a few minutes late from the starting station and each stop was 3-4 minutes. That simply doesn’t work with a headway of 5-10 minutes. The Shinkansen stops for like one minute, and on a busy train it takes a few more minutes to actually get everyone seated. If you have large luggage, the social norm is to stand with it between cars until everyone else boards, so you don’t block them. This works with a bike in a bag, but I can’t imagine a fully assembled bike being there.
It's hard to explain how excellent the punctuality is, it essentially wastes none of your time. You don't sit at junctions, you don't have to wait for a platform to free up, you never miss your train because it left early.
Everyone is already lined up by their respective cars, ready to board the moment the train is available to board. So within 5-10 minutes, your train has arrived, people have disembarked, you have boarded, and your train has left. Remembering this is an intercity train network, so it'd be like being able to arrive at the airport with your ticket, board the plane, and take off, within 10 minutes.
Isn't this pretty standard SOP for how long-distance trains stop at intermediate stations around the world?
I've recently travelled in Germany and Austria and their ICE and Railjet trains, respectively, have stops of only 2-3 minutes at a majority of intermediate stations.
It's called "dwell time" if you want to Google, but in Europe I'd guess
- at many stations it's around 1 minute
- at large towns it can be 2-3 minutes, especially if it's likely many people will board/alight
- at the very largest through stations it can be 5-10 minutes. That would be somewhere you might expect half the passengers (or more) to change, like Berlin or Madrid.
Metro and commuter trains have more doors to make boarding/alighting faster. Long-distance trains have fewer doors to make the interior quieter and more comfortable.
(From experience) I would suspect it's more about train crew changes, restocking the restaurant car, and/or allowing extra time to recover from any delays.
A single bike in isolation, maybe, but a proper bike rack (as seen on many European trains) can fit several bikes in that same space; furthermore you might be able to use space that isn't suitable for carrying passengers (e.g. the UK HSTs carry bicycles in the crumple zones where it wouldn't be safe for passengers to be).
> When you consider that, taking a bike on a train is decidedly environmentally unfriendly.
That's going a bit far; even if we assume it really is displacing three or four other people, three or four people's worth of train emissions on an electric train like this is still comfortably less than one car making the same journey.
[1] is used in Britain, but it's a Japanese (Hitachi) design. The very front of the train (see the bottom section "Liveries") shows the front half of the first unit has blanked-out windows. That's where there's room for a couple of bicycles, a drinks trolley, etc. Obviously including this space has reduced the total number of seats.
If you want to take a bicycle you must reserve the space, and you're expected to be waiting at the correct end of the train so you can board quickly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_800
[2] https://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/hitachi-rail-global/images/cla...
Framing it like that, taking a suitcase on the train is environmentally unfriendly. Or taking your own body on it.
The alternative to taking your bike on the train may be that you hail a taxi on the other end of the ride rather than ride to your destination. Or that you choose to drive to your destination so you can put the bike in a bike-rack on your car, rather than take public transit.
It's not as clear-cut as "decidedly environmentally unfriendly" to me at least.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Fe7LjTABOkA/UlebTVDjtTI/AAAAAAAAc...
If you can't view the image, visualize a train compartment with rows of seats with a shared table in between them. If there isn't a table, then the back of the seats are facing each other, and it's a perfect spot to fit a folding bike.
Unfortunately, the bike has to be engineered for it. The more expensive Brompton fits, but my cheap one doesn't.