How the punctuality of the Shinkansen has been achieved

摘要

The high speed railway line in Japan began operation in 1964. The high speed railway is called the Shinkansen and is known for its safety and reliability. In addition, the Shinkansen is well known for punctuality. As a matter of fact, the average delay of trains is less than one minutes every year. The Shinkansen runs along dedicated lines, which seem to be advantageous in keeping punctuality. However, there are lots of disadvantages as well. For example, although traffic is very dense, resources are not abundant. In some Shinkansen lines, trains go directly through conventional railway lines and the Shinkansen is easily influenced by the disruption of those lines. Punctuality of the Shinkansen is supported by hardware, software and humanware. In this paper, we first introduce a brief history of the Shinkansen and then focus on humanware, which makes the punctuality possible.