Japan uses high-speed train for freight transport
Passenger transport in Japan is declining. The railway company JR East is looking for alternatives – and is sending freight on the high-speed line.
Shinkansen Series E3
(Image: Piti Sirisriro / Shutterstock.com)
Fast freight on the rails: The Japanese railway company East Japan Railway (JR East) is deploying high-speed freight trains. The first one ran on a regular schedule today, Monday. The freight Shinkansen traveled from Morioka, the capital of Iwate Prefecture in the north of the main island of Honshu, to Tokyo, reported the Japanese news agency Jiji. The train takes about 3 hours and 15 minutes for the approximately 540-kilometer route.
The freight Shinkansen is based on the conventional passenger train Series E3. It was built between 1995 and 2010 and reaches a top speed of 275 kilometers per hour. The freight variant can be loaded with a maximum of 1000 boxes and a payload of 17.4 tons.
The high-speed freight train, consisting of seven cars, is scheduled to operate on weekdays in the future. It will transport urgent and high-value goods. These include, for example, fresh produce such as mussels, fruits, or vegetables, as well as medical devices or machine parts. The goods are loaded and unloaded at marshalling yards. Driverless vehicles are used for transport within the stations.
Decline in passenger transport
For JR East, freight transport is a new business area with which the railway company is trying to offset declining revenues from passenger transport, said Kei Yazaki, a consultant at the economic research and consulting firm Nomura Research Institute, to the British business newspaper Financial Times. Relying solely on passenger transport is difficult given the population decline in Japan.
Videos by heise
The freight transport business is not entirely new: at the beginning of this year, JR East launched the courier service Hako-byun. This service transports perishable or urgent goods such as fish or machine parts in conventional Shinkansen trains to the airports of Tokyo and Narita, and from there they are transported further by air freight. Destinations include Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taipei, among others.
JR East emerged from the Japanese National Railways, which was privatized in 1987. The railway company is one of the largest in the world and operates the high-speed lines on Honshu north of Tokyo.
(wpl)
