Japan's Modern Transport System: Punctuality and Reliability in a Rugged Terrain - Essay Sample

Introduction

Unlike the majority of the developed countries, Japan has a rugged terrain. However, this has not prevented it from having a highly modernized and expanded transport system, especially within the metropolitan areas and between large cities. The transport system of Japan is marked by punctuality, the superb services offered, and a large population that uses the transport network. In the country, the transport system is the lifeblood of the country since it is used to ease the movement of people, goods, and services, and information, which in turn supports the optimal achievement of allocation or economic resources.

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According to the researches that have been carried out concerning the transport system of Japan, it shows that the system is secure, modern, comfortable, punctual, well-organized, and has outstanding service, to the extent that people prefer using public transport as compared to private. Just like the majority of the countries, Japan has land and air transport in addition to the sea. On land, the regular trains and subway trains are predominant connecting between islands. There are also ferries and airlines.

Transportation System Courses

Japan needed to develop an intelligent transport system for it to resolve the traffic congestion another transport problem that was being experienced in the country. The issues were a result of the high population density, which is even more than ten times higher than that of the United States. Intelligence Transport System is aimed at providing solutions to transport problems within the country such as traffic, accidents, and congestions through the connection of people in a network by the use of cutting-edge data and communication technology (An et al., 2011).

The primary objective of the development of the system is the construction of a transport network that will enable the users to reach their destinations on time, safely, efficiently, and comfortably. The transportation system course takes into consideration the elimination of unnecessary acceleration and deceleration to minimize fuel consumption, thus bringing a proper distribution of costs down. The course also delivers a reduction of environmental pollution through a decline in the exhaust fumes, thus alleviating the burden of ecological conservation.

Modes of Transport

Water Transport

Water transport in Japan has been marked by the many waterways that are many approximately over seventeen hundred where sea crafts ply all the coastal and inland seas. In the process of connecting harbor cities in the country with smaller islands with others, the population uses ferries and vessels. The country has over twenty principal harbors with closer to six hundred ships. There are also many ports with overlapping classifications where some are multipurpose carrying out functions such a cargo, passengers, naval, and fishery (Wagawa et al., 2020). The five designated container ports include Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama, and Yokkaichi. Twenty-three of the ports have been reserved as designated major or international ports, a hundred and twenty-five have been branded as necessary, while the remaining are purely fisherman ports.

The main ferries connect Hokkaido to Honshu the Okinawa Island to Kyushu and Honshu. The ferries also connect the smaller islands to the mainland. The water transport has a scheduled international passenger route whose destinations are China, Russia, Taiwan, and South Korea. There was the development of bridges and expressways that led to the coastal and cross-channel ferries on the mainlands to decrease their frequency in specific routes. Additionally, Japan is well known for its commercial fleet. It has world-class vessels that facilitate transport between nations. The country is conformed to have the world's second-largest commercial fleet after Liberia with a shipping capacity of over three hundred tons which incorporates, he ocean linear and coaster.

Air Transport

Japan is also entitled to the provision of airport services, particularly for international flights, which is dominated by two major airlines in the country. These are Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways. Besides the two, another operator-based foreign airline plies all over the world. The country has ninety-eight airports that are fully functional, with the leading international gates being the Kansai International Airport in Osaka and Chubu Central International Airport that is based in Nagoya. For domestic flights, the primary server is the International Airport of Tokyo that makes the busiest international airport in Asia and the forth most active in the world (Liu et al., 2019).

Japan has a large number of customers going in and out of the country using international airlines. Narita international airport, Kansai International Airport, and Chubu Central International Airport are the ones the one responsible for the growth of global air traffic passengers. The domestic flights in the country have always been highly regulated by the government, where they are allocated to specific routes. Some share trunk routes while some share local feeder routes. Previously, the airfares were set by the government. However, the carriers had some limited freedom of adjusting the standard fares in such things as allowing discounts. Today, Carriers can place their tickets and adapt the same to suit their demands, but the national government still has the veto powers to adjust any fares that are too high.

Land Transport

There are various types of land transport in Japan. He most predominant form of transportation among the many is the use of trains, particularly with the existence of the fastest bullet train, which is called Shinkansen. The above is backed up by a subway, bus, and taxi. The country has more than three thousand express highways and increases in the development of more routes. The use of railways is an essential means of transport, especially for mass and high-speed transportation between major cities and for commuter transport in the metropolitan areas in the country (Wetwitoo & Kato, 2017). Japan has seven regional railway companies that cover towns and villages in the country. However, the companies are backed up by other private companies, government companies, and joint ventures of individual and local governments. The railways are equipped with electricity current. The development of the railways is attributed to the fact that road construction is complicated due to the high population density and the limited availability of usable land for railway construction.

Land transport is also made up of taxi and bus travel. Taxi transport is the most expensive form of transportation in the available mode of transport. However, the taxis are more used because they take the user to the actual destination. However, all city taxis are non-smoking. There is also bus transport where buses pass through major urban centers hence mostly used by the tourists who want to view the excellent scenery of the country and the daily lives of the Japanese people (Yudhistira et al., 2015). Their fares are also cheaper than those of the train. The buses are also modernized and equipped with modern technologies such as television sets, telephones, drinks, and even toilets; thus, becoming the most admired form of land transport. There is also the use of cars and other vehicles such as motorcycles that are private. However, they are less. They are cheaper, but the parking fee is high, rendering people to go on foot or adopt other means of public transport.

References

An, S. H., Lee, B. H., & Shin, D. R. (2011, July). A survey of intelligent transportation systems. In 2011 Third International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Communication Systems and Networks (pp. 332-337).

Liu, S., Wan, Y., Ha, H. K., Yoshida, Y., & Zhang, A. (2019). Impact of high-speed rail network development on airport traffic and traffic distribution: Evidence from China and Japan. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 127, 115-135.

Wagawa, T., Kawaguchi, Y., Igeta, Y., Honda, N., Okunishi, T., & Yabe, I. (2020). Observations of oceanic fronts and water-mass properties in the central Japan Sea: Repeated surveys from an underwater glider. Journal of Marine Systems, 201, 103242.

Wetwitoo, J., & Kato, H. (2017). High-speed rail and regional economic productivity through agglomeration and network externality: A case study of inter-regional transportation in Japan. Case Studies on Transport Policy, 5(4), 549-559.

Yudhistira, G., Firdaus, M. I., & Agushinta, L. (2015). Transportation System in Japan: A Literature Study. Jurnal Manajemen Transportasi & Logistik, 2(3), 333-352.