Delay on Tokyo Ring Line makes headlines Coach crashes more than 100 meters in Colombia

The fact that there are delays in train traffic no longer surprises anyone in Switzerland, but it is in Japan. Delays are so rare there that sometimes it makes top news when it happens. This happened on Monday in Tokyo on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line, one of the busiest and most important railway lines in the metropolitan region: on this day, the first scheduled trains were canceled in the morning due to a signal failure. This was immediately the most important news for the Japanese media. About 110,000 people were affected by the outage.

The ring line, which connects major commuter hubs and business districts in Tokyo, was able to return to operation around 9 a.m. local time. However, the timetable is “significantly affected and commuters are badly affected”, reported local media. “I actually wanted to get to the office early, but now I can’t come to a meeting,” said a 29-year-old man. It is not surprising that such an incident makes such headlines, since trains in Japan are 99 percent on time. Other countries can only dream of that.

Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train, the pride of the nation, is also known for its punctuality. Except for natural disasters, there are hardly any delays here either. However, if there are delays of less than a minute, it leads to repeated excuses. In 2017, a train company had to apologize because a train in the suburbs of Tokyo had not left too late, but too early: by 20 seconds. No one had complained at all. (saw/sda/dpa)