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Posted May 18, 2012, 11:22 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Toronto
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A New Yorker's (Sadly Lopsided) Scorecard of Tokyo Transportation
A New Yorker's (Sadly Lopsided) Scorecard of Tokyo Transportation
May 16, 2012
By Eric Jaffe
Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/com...ortation/2022/
Quote:
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No doubt a glass-half-emptyist such as myself could find fault with elements of Tokyo's transportation network given the proper time and linguistic capacity. But within my admittedly limited sample set I found the network — particularly the intra- and intercity rail system — difficult to overrate. The worst you can probably say about it is that it very efficiency creates a problem of crowding. Which, to keep the sports metaphor going, is a little like complaining about the jog after hitting a homerun.
Airport Transportation
- When you do arrive into Narita Airport, Tokyo's main international entry point, you're about an hour and a half from the downtown area — which itself is often half an hour from other parts of the rather expansive city. You can take a taxi into the city from Narita for a fare on the order of several hundred dollars. You can take public rail transit into the city for a fraction of the cost of a cab but a multiple of the hassle, at least if you have big bags. Or you can do the sensible thing and take what's called the Airport Limousine Bus service for about $40. That modest fee includes a comfortable ride, an orderly boarding process, great attendance to your baggage, and tip, which in Japan is always zero.
- The service is almost suspiciously well-staffed and as a result extremely efficient. Narita ground transportation is ringed with numbered signs and digital placards whose departure times and places appear in English. People stand in neat lines marked by chalk. Boarding assistants position your bags, after they're tagged by destination, at the precise spot where they'll be loaded onto the bus. When it arrives, luggage assistants run over and load all the bags even before the last person is on board. Announcements are in English too, including the one that tells you to silence your cell phones "as they annoy the neighbors." When your bus pulls away, the boarding assistant bows in its direction.
Public Transit
- Confusing as the system seems on paper, it's very simple in practice. That's especially true for English speakers. Automatic card vendors have an English button, and if you're still able to make a mistake a little bell goes off and an attendant pops out of a door in the wall you didn't know was there and fixes the problem. Video displays on board oscillate to English, and the final speaker announcement for each station is also given an English — a practice very welcome to this tourist but which must grate on city residents. In truth you don't even really need to speak any language to ride: just know how to count and recite the alphabet.
- The lines themselves are seamlessly integrated despite being owned by different companies: you can take the JR Yamanote line to the Mita line on the Toei system to the Namboku train on the Tokyo Metro system without ever leaving a station or buying a different fare card. The cars have cushioned seats and floors you could eat off and an abundance of hanging straps. I once counted 87 in a single car. The (numerous) ads not only grace the walls of the cars but also hang from the ceiling, and flap a bit in the breeze of the air ducts.
Intercity Rail System
- Now the ticketing process can be a bit confusing. Unlike Amtrak, which has a single fare ticket from station to station, the shinkansen requires you to purchase both a basic rail fare and then also a seat fare. The rail fare, for example, covers passage in the Tokyo-Hakata corridor, but an additional seat fare must be paid to reserve an assigned seat. You can also buy a non-reserved seat fare, for slightly less money, and duke it out in the non-reserved cars with other passengers.
- Shinkansen platforms, like those of the Limo Bus, are well-organized. Taped lines and hanging signs (again, which oscillate to English) show you where to stand based on which car you've been assigned and which train you're taking. (While Amtrak offers only regional or Acela trains, there are several types of shinkansen, ranging up to the Nozomi, or superexpress.) Platforms have vending machines, proper convenience stores, and smoking sections, where passengers huddle around air vents.
- The bowing continues on-board — it's done every single time a conductor or cart vendor enters or exits the car. There's no quiet car, but there doesn't have to be. Anyone who receives a call steps out to the space between the cars to talk. There's a small vending machine between many of the cars, and smoking rooms between others. In addition to bathroom stalls there is just a general sink area in case you simply want to freshen. Some trains offer both Western and Japanese toilets: to sit or to squat, that is the question.
Pedestrians-Bikers
- A lot of people ride bicycles in Tokyo. The popularity of cycling holds true despite the fact that there don't seem to be any bike lanes in Tokyo. That's impressive but also annoying, since it means a great many people ride on the already crowded sidewalks. No one wears a helmet. This is only halfway related to biking, but it seemed worth mentioning that food-delivery people ride scooters with heated compartments that hold the food.
- An American pedestrian in Tokyo also can't help but notice the corrugated yellow stripes that line pretty much every walkway. At first I thought this was to separate lanes of walkers, something I've always wanted in the United States, but I'm told these are actually guides for the blind. It seems like a lot of effort for a small part of the population — that's not to say it isn't admirable, of course — but it speaks, like the English announcements and cell-phone courtesies, to a general transportation culture of accommodating others.
Cars-Taxis
- The only element of Tokyo transportation I feel unable to evaluate with any authority is car travel. I know they drive on the left and don't honk much, but that's about it. I can remark only in brief on the taxi situation: it's expensive, with a starting fare up around $8-10, but you can pay with your subway pass — a remarkable feat of urban transport integration. (Side note: you can also use the pass to pay at most food vendors inside a station.) Also the taxi drivers wear suits and hats and some of them even white gloves. And they don't talk on their cell phone or headset. That might be annoying to the neighbors.
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