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The article doesn’t mention the reason. Does anybody know more?
by tqkxzugoaupvwqr 5y ago
The article doesn’t mention the reason. Does anybody know more?
- johncoltrane 5y agoThey simply reached their end of life and are progressively replaced with newer models.
- wayoutthere 5y agoYou can forgive an American not understanding this as most of our public transit vehicles are older than us because they never replace them.
- johncoltrane 5y agoThere are still very old trains in circulation on all sorts of lines in Japan, but I heard that 20-25 years is the baseline life expectancy for rolling stock. It is very good for business and for trainspotters.
- Tijdreiziger 5y agoWow, that's way shorter than here in the Netherlands. AFAIK, rolling stock over here is revised after ~20 years, after which it goes back in service for another ~20 years before being retired.
- kps 5y agoCanada has cars over 70 years old in regular service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Via_Rail_rolling_stock#Stainless_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Via_Rail_rolling_stock...
- sandworm101 5y agoCanada's passenger rail system is not exactly a market leader. It is ossified, as it seems are most of its customers. And given the distances and terrain between major Canadian cities, trains will just never win out against air travel.
- SECProto 5y ago> And given the distances and terrain between major Canadian cities, trains will just never win out against air travel. With a pretty major possible exception on the Windsor-Quebec City corridor. Large fraction of Canada's population in a span of ~1200km. Particularly the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal span with (metro area) population totally ~11 million over 600km, a Shinkansen-speed rail would be very competitive against air travel. They're working on high frequency rail (which will also increase speeds to ~160km/hr), which should be closer to competitive, but still not great.
- johncoltrane 5y agoThis is more or less how it works almost everywhere. As an example, the model identifiers in use by the Paris Metro have the year of the _order_ in them and we still have MP59 trains running on line 11. They have been modernised and refurbished a few times, of course, but that's 63 years of service. Talk about a ROI.
- touisteur 5y agoProbably waiting for automated metro to come over to replace those cars, stretching them last service years as much as possible.
- johncoltrane 5y agoModern trains, yes, but with drivers, in 22-23.
- coobird 5y agoShinkansen rolling stock tend to be phased out much faster than commuter and local trains, to take advantage of the newest technologies that enable cost reductions and improved amenities. Tokaido Shinkansen, the busiest and most profitable of the network, replaces its rolling stock around the 14 year mark, since the useful life of electric rolling stock for depreciation is 13 years in Japan. Commuter trains in urban areas tend to be used upwards of 40 years with one or two rehabilitation cycles. That said, the busiest lines generally get new shiny trains every 15-20 years with older ones being sent to less busy lines. The recent trend (since the 90s) have been to build cheaper, lighter and less long lasting trains, so that trains around that 20-25 year mark can be replaced with ones using the latest technology. That said, I've seen those trains being fitted with the latest traction units (not cheap!) around the 15 year mark, so we'll see how long they intend to use them.
- johncoltrane 5y agoThank you for those details.
- johncoltrane 5y agoFWIW, this seems to be quite the big deal for Japanese trainspotters right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBDbekns92A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBDbekns92A (no affiliation but channel highly recommended).
- Animats 5y agoIt's slower, which slows down trains behind it capable of higher speeds.
- kunagi7 5y agoThe Joetsu Shinkansen (where most of the E4's operated) has a lower speed limit of 240km/h so these trains fitted perfectly. But this will change soon since JR East is adapting the line to go faster.
- bobthepanda 5y agoYes, and the Shinkansen faces stiff competition from budget airlines, so speed has become a competitive advantage JR wants to push. There's also a couple more reasons, namely that a double deck train takes longer to board/deboard, and that they're not very accessibility friendly. Plus Shinkansen have drink and food carts and those don't go up or down stairs.
- Ekaros 5y agoFood carts are no problem if the company wants to. Finnish IC2 trains have elevators for food carts in 2-decker railcars. Nothing inherently prevents same in Shinkansen.
- Freak_NL 5y agoThe VIRM double deckers in the Netherlands used to have those food cart elevators. Interesting to hear those are still in use in some parts of the world. The food cart service on our intercity expresses was removed, so in the course of the years those mini-elevators were taken out as well during scheduled revisions of those EMU's. Now some third party is allowed to provide a mediocre rail catering service, which amounts to students doing a side-job wearing backpacks with hot water and cups and a tray filled with instant coffee and tea and a few cans and packets of crisps and cookies strapped to their bodies making the rounds at seemingly random times and places on the journey. Not quite the same… Add to that the lack of the frankly brilliant concept of can-coffee (缶コーヒー) from vending machines on the platforms and eki-ben (駅弁) and I suddenly really miss the Japanese train experience.
- Ericson2314 5y agoAccording to pedestrianobservations.com/ double decker is bad because the much increased loading/unloading times make station idle time the limitting factor reducing throughput of the whole system. But that might apply to metro and regional rail more than long distance, so it might not be relevant here.
- innocenat 5y ago> But that might apply to metro and regional rail more than long distance, so it might not be relevant here. Shinkansen at peak time runs more frequently than even some subways line in Japan. The Tokyo-Omiya section (shared between Tohoku/Joetsu/Hokuriki Shinkansen, which E4 also ran on) runs at peak of 15 trains per hour per direction, or 4 minute heading. (The Tokaido Shinkansen is even more impressive at peak of 16 trains per hour per direction.) The loading time is very, very relevant, and it's why E4 has been phrasing out for a long time already.
- Ericson2314 5y agoGlad to hear it, thanks!
- ant6n 5y agoIn many instances, long distance lines have more than one platform track per line track. So dwell could happen in parallel. It's still an issue, but could be mitigated. My guess is that outside of the peak, these kind of trains are not necessary. And the peak can apparently be accommodated without them. So there may be some times where they would be economically advantageous, but not always - meaning it could make sense to have some double deckers. But for train services, it makes sense to have uniform fleets, both to reduce maintenance costs and increase dispatching flexibility. Trains should also have the same performance profiles and dwell times (as mentioned before). So any small peak time advantage is undone by the bad economics of having a non uniform fleet.
- Ericson2314 5y agoNice idea on double platforms! It would be neat to see a world where that was done uniformly But I agree, that world is not ours.
- caseyross 5y agoNot an expert, but I would guess it's a combination of: 1. Shinkansen trains are run on an extremely tight timetable (often 5 minutes or less between trains). It takes twice as long to load or unload a double-decker car, so this presents a significant risk for schedulers. 2. One of the key benefits of double-decker cars is that they save space by cramming two cars worth of passengers into a one-car footprint. This allows significant passenger service in and out of small stations with short platforms. But Shinkansen platforms are not hurting for space (nearly all of their usage is single-decker trains, sometimes quite long ones), so this benefit isn't worth much in practice.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fomine3 5y agoShinkansen are also replaced earlier because it wear faster than normal trains due to its speed, and failure causes catastrophic result.