Re:Illustrations of ‘Unseen’ Japanese Maintenance Trains Tha...
by ryanjshaw on Friday April 07, 2023 @12:43AM
(#35478112)
Surely you should be looking at derailments per passenger mile or <goods> mile, not absolute numbers?
Re:Illustrations of ‘Unseen’ Japanese Maintenance Trains Tha...
by insane_dreamer on Friday April 07, 2023 @11:41AM
(#35482828)
Fair point. But while US trains travel longer distances, you can be sure there are many more trains running in Japan than in the US (especially passenger trains. So my guess is that the numbers might be somewhat comparable.
No time for indepth research, but quick search shows Japan with 289 billion passenger/km (https://www.statista.com/statistics/627883/japan-railway-pas...) vs US 10 billion passenger/km (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transportation_in_the_Uni...). But that's not fair comparison since in the US train is mostly used for freight.
Re:Illustrations of ‘Unseen’ Japanese Maintenance Trains Tha...
by gc9 on Friday April 07, 2023 @07:04AM
(#35480341)
Freight trains have been getting longer to save labor. Tight schedules encourage skipping the effort to rebalance the train in a safer car ordering. When braking, a long line of heavy cars at the back can push empty cars at the front off the tracks.
https://www.propublica.org/article/train-derailment-long-tra...
> In 2018 there were just 2 derailments across the entire country. The average over the past 20 years is a bit higher (roughly 10 per year) but have been in a downward trend. And while it’s not a fair comparison, just for reference the U.S. (according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics) had 1376 derailments in 2018. While also in a downward trend, the U.S. has over 1000 derailments each year.