Britain is building one of the world’s most expensive railways

Thats a normal Shinkansen fregvency on busier stations - saw departures every 3 minutes in Hiroshima station. :)

I did not know that they have such a high frequency. Thats amazing.

I think I heard somewhere that the rail operator(s?) in Japan (like Hong Kong) own a lot of real-estate close to the stations. Therefore they have a high incentive to provide an effective service, because it props up property prices. In the same time the property prices can be used to fund public infrastructure.

This is something else that the UK could learn from other countries. Because by just operating trains it is hard to make back the money needed to build and maintain the infrastructure. Its almost like the inverse of the tragedy of the commons, where instead of externalising costs, the UK is externalising the profits of these works.

> I think I heard somewhere that the rail operator(s?) in Japan (like Hong Kong) own a lot of real-estate close to the stations.

NJB mentioned it during their recent japan video (https://youtu.be/6dKiEY0UOtA?t=964) but I'm sure they're far from the only one.

> This is something else that the UK could learn from other countries. Because by just operating trains it is hard to make back the money needed to build and maintain the infrastructure. Its almost like the inverse of the tragedy of the commons, where instead of externalising costs, the UK is externalising the profits of these works.

Yeah, the other way is the "classic" european way of the train being a state monopoly operated as a benefit to society, in which case it doesn't really need to "make back the money", because the economic value it builds for the country is the "profit margin". Sadly the deregulation sprees of the late 90s have mostly consisted of selling off the crown jewels or setting up weirdo groups engaging in growth for the sake of growth with no regard to socioeconomic benefits for the people.

100% this - there are massive developments around major stations & you can see it even in rural areas. A local operator just so appears to have a hotel next to their railway station or run the gift shop in the museum where their buses go.

Or they might run a famous all-female theater troupe & generate extra demand on their line: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takarazuka_Revue

"The Takarazuka Revue Company is a division of the Hankyu Railway company; all members of the troupe are employed by Hankyu."

I like this essentially symbiotic relationship as it seems to motivate the companies to do things right.

Sort of a nit, but the parent says 18 trains/hour in each direction, which is actually 36 trains/hour total, vs 20 trains/hour if departures are every 3 minutes.

Additionally, it looks like Hiroshima station serves a few distinct lines (I see at least 3 separate branches about a mile east of the station ). So even 20 trains/hour may not be 20 trains/hour on one line.

Oh, that was just one of the 4 Shinkansen platforms - together woth the normal lines the station has 14 platforms:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Station

In remember they even managed to somehow fit a small ramen restaurant on the island between platforms, complete with some seats at the counter. :)

I'm pretty sure the UK government knew all of this.

Rail privatization wasn't done with honest intentions. I'm sure the investors who got a stellar deal on the land around the stations when they cut up British rail and sold the pieces off were very well connected. It wasn't a mistake, it was corruption.

That kind of frequency is not unusual in the Netherlands for normal trains during rush hour. Unfortunately trains need a minimum distance from eachother and building new tracks is impossible because they go straight through some of the most expensive real estate in the country.

The Shinkansen runs the fastest Nozomi service about every ten minutes throughout the day at around 5 trains per hour on the most popular routes like Tokyo to Osaka, then during peak hours there's another 5 added in on top of that as well. Plus there are some other slower, cheaper services that run as well and some trains will be express an others stop at more stops or go to further destinations and so on.

I think altogether they probably come to one train every 3 minutes during peak times, but they are not all the same trains and don't all go to the same place and stop at the same stops. There is generally about one train every 10 minutes per platform at a station in my experience, but of course there are usually well over 20 platforms per big station, it's not like there is one platform with a train stopping every three minutes.

> The Shinkansen runs the fastest Nozomi service about every ten minutes throughout the day at around 5 trains per hour on the most popular routes like Tokyo to Osaka, then during peak hours there's another 5 added in on top of that as well.

Your numbers are out of date. The current timetable is 16 trains per hour per direction (12 Nozomi and 4 slower services that stop at more stations) on a single line - some go further than others but they're all going to the same places at least as far as Nagoya (and all but one go to Osaka).

> There is generally about one train every 10 minutes per platform at a station in my experience, but of course there are usually well over 20 platforms per big station, it's not like there is one platform with a train stopping every three minutes.

The stations have multiple platform faces connected to the same line, even intermediate ones, but in general it's a two-track line, one up, one down.