Over the course of
many decades, cities have continuously grown, mostly physically, but also in
terms of population. Throughout the
multiple decades of such continuous growth, there has been an aspect of city life that has mostly remained the same,
however: public transport, particularly “below ground”, in subway and other
train tunnels. Two of the main examples
of cities “leveraging” subway/other forms of trains for their benefits, and for
the benefits of their citizens, have been cities that might very well look similar to
most people: New York City (mostly in the “borough” of Manhattan), and Tokyo,
Japan, which, like most of the rest of the country, grew from nothing after World War II to become its
current, almost “post-modern” self. The transit system in New York City might
have started first, as “Interborough Rapid Transit” in 1903, and “Brooklyn
(another “borough” in the city) Rapid Transit” in 1908, changing its name to
“Brooklyn-Manhattan (the “’main’ borough” in the city) Transit” in 1923, all before what is now the Ginza Line of the Tokyo Metro started, as the “Tokyo
Underground Railway” (Tōkyō Chika Tetsudō) in 1927, and, arguably, the MTA system, as it’s
now known, might have experienced lower “lows” than the Tokyo Metro,
particularly in the 1970s and 80s, but, even so, it does seem as if Tokyo,
and its “Metro”, took advantage of the struggles, at one point or another, of
various U.S. transit systems, in order to become, arguably, the most modern “subway”
system on the planet today, and has continued to outpace the MTA, even
as the MTA has slowly, but surely, inched closer to other
national/international transit systems, that already have more
“convenient” services for their passengers, and that the MTA has been studying
more and more over the decades.
What critics of Japan’s massive post-World
War II economic progress tend to forget is: the country basically grew
from almost nothing back around 1945, to become “itself” these
past few years. As such, it would basically require an ultra-modern
transit system running to all parts, especially Tokyo, its largest city.
A 2012 study between the Brookings Institute, a U.S.-based political “think
tank” and the financial firm J.P. Morgan Chase, in fact, found that Tokyo had
the fifth-highest number of air passengers worldwide that year, and air
passengers usually need another form of transport to get to their
eventual destination within Tokyo/some other nearby “suburb”, so where else would
they go but a train to do so? The Brookings/JPMC study goes on to state
on page 2 (of only 3): “The most recent phase in Tokyo’s global engagement reflects a
self-belief about its role as a leading world city. In 1995 a new metropolitan
regime ousted the World City policy doctrine and replaced it with a
“resident-friendly” focus. New planning policies placed greater emphasis on
local amenities and city image while also supporting the efficiencies of
agglomeration within localized hubs. A big push to cultivate local SMEs was
also made, with moderate success. The attraction of international business
traffic and tourism has become a priority as city leaders became more
self-consciously competitive. In 2011 the metropolitan government launched a Special
Zone for Asian Headquarters to attract foreign companies with preferential tax
treatment and generous packages of fiscal and financial support. This move
reflects a reversal of the historic efforts to decentralize the capital, and
instead endorses the capacity of an expanded central business district to fulfil
diversified global roles.” (Brookings/JPMC; multiple authors/reviewers; 2012,
2)
In his 1989 work Neighborhood Tokyo, Theodore Bestor, a
sociology professor at Stanford University, described the growth of various Tokyo “wards” throughout the post-WWII 20th
century, from more “rural” areas, to “suburban”, and, in some cases, to “urban” areas, all between about 1945 and (almost)
1990. According to his many interviews with everyday Japanese (specifically
“Tokyoites”), describing the various “wards” in the Japanese capital would be
similar to what “New Yorkers might have in mind when referring to Wall Street,
Williamsburg (Brooklyn), and the West Village (Manhattan); or San Franciscans
when talking of the Tenderloin (which, incidentally, was the name given to an even
larger “red light district” in Manhattan circa 1880 – 1910), Nob Hill, and
North Beach” (Bestor/Stanford University Press, 1989, pg. 1), although most of
the people in those cities would most
likely consider each “ward” in Tokyo
to be part of the city as a whole,
instead of all being individual, as the Japanese government,
and most Japanese citizens, have generally considered the “wards” to be. While
he acknowledges (N.T. pg. 4) that his visits to various said “wards” does not
represent the entirety of neither Tokyo nor Japan, he took his various years’ worth of residence in Tokyo as a sort of “guide” to his “fieldwork”,
something that not everybody,
regardless of whether or not they have lived
in a certain city/country, would probably be able and/or willing to do to
document “daily life” there. Back then, Bestor notes 70 rail/subway stations
throughout Tokyo, then part of the “Japan National
Railways” banner, being government-owned-and-operated, although, since 1990,
many different worldwide diplomatic/political events, and equally large sporting events, such as the 1998 Winter Olympics in
Nagano, and the 2002 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted with South Korea, practically required the construction and opening of
many more rail stations, to handle
the tourists on hand for the events. As such, what was probably already seen as a “major” problem by
residents, overcrowding, only grew in
stature, despite the increased amount
of subway stations, and increased amounts of departure/destination locations,
and increased service, in an era where most
worldwide transit operators have been cutting
back on such due to financial difficulties.
As the city inevitably grew from “nothing”
after WWII, obviously, more modern technologies would be needed to keep the
transit system, by then renamed the “Teito Rapid Transit Authority” (“Teito
Kōsokudo Kōtsū Eidan”), going
100%. Enter “BACnet”, a “state-of-the-art” (in 1970), a central
control/security system controlling all of the technology in the
then-new Tokyo World Trade Center Building. The current system as of 2004
contains the following features: “A fifth-generation central supervisory
and control system was installed to keep the facilities in the building in good
working order, to receive financial support from the New Energy and Industrial
Technology Development Organization (a research and development organization
funded by the Japanese government) for a building energy management system
(BEMS), and to reduce energy consumption. The new system included several
general purpose high-performance workstations connected to a TCP/IP network and
an autonomous decentralized open building supervisory and control system using
the BACnet protocol.” (American Society of Heating, Radiation, and Air
Conditioning Engineers, Inc.; Toyoda, Takeji; November 2006; page B33/4) Just
how does that pertain to trains, one might ask? “Equipment start and stop operations commanded by a B-OWS (building
“operations workstation”) are done and confirmed as follows. The operation is
initiated by changing the value of the Present Value property of a Binary
Output object in a B-BC (building “controller”), and the B-OWS receives the
confirmation that the operation occurred by means of a change-of-value message
or an event notification message from the B-BC. If the value of the Present
Value property is changed but this change is not reflected in the value of the
feedback property of the same object within the permitted time period, the B-BC
will notify the B-OWS of the command failure by means of the confirmed or
unconfirmed event notification message.” (ASHRAE, Inc.; Toyoda; 11/2006; B36)
The key phrase in there, obviously, being “start and stop operations”, since
trains everywhere are held by such
mechanisms, in case of natural disasters, as, in Japan’s case, earthquakes, or,
in N.Y.C.’s case, blizzards (in the winter), or heat wave-related track fires,
at all times of year, or, in a universal case, people thinking the
trains aren’t moving at dozens of
miles/kilometers per hour jumping
down from the platforms, onto the tracks, risking their lives the whole time,
in order to “test the system”.
Part of the
new “international reach” provided by the Tokyo/other Japanese systems is,
indeed, its commitment to multilingualism
in as many of its stations as possible, in as many languages as possible, whereas the MTA system barely makes an effort even in Spanish,
widely considered the “second language” throughout most of the “Big Apple”,
with over one-third of the City’s population being of Hispanic/Latino origin just around the “turn of the new
millennium”, according to page 7 of a 2004 report commissioned by N.Y. City
Hall. In fact, the Tokyo Metro, at the very least, offers signage, definitely, in
four languages: Japanese kanji first,
then hiragana, before English,
(simplified) Chinese, and han’gul Korean, in that order. In such areas where stations are generally smaller, and
thus less crowded, however, only the signage will be multilingual, and, even
then, only bilingual, between
Japanese and English, and, sometimes, announcements will be only in Japanese, although such a
phenomenon also occurs on the
occasional Tokyo Metro train, particularly
around midnight, when most of the “crowd” will be either “late shift” workers,
leaving sporting events, or other social “gatherings”, and, as such, fewer
people in general will be on the
trains, let alone foreigners/tourists
being on the later trains. In addition to the bilingual
announcements/multilingual signage around its stations, the Tokyo Metro, and
all of its “connections”, including some of
the “shinkansen” stations, have
bilingual ticket vending machines, which can be switched from Japanese to
English, and vice versa, with the exception of some train ticket/etc. purchases, and the stations themselves have
a unique color/(single) letter/(double, as in “0x”) number system, such that
people who are “monolingual” in any language,
with the exception, perhaps, of languages with different/unique alphabets,
can all navigate the stations with
the utmost ease. Where the Tokyo Metro falls short of the MTA, however, is in having actual humans, as, on the
Tokyo Metro, they are mostly either “maintenance” people, or “security” people;
in the MTA subways, the lack of multilingualism/disabled services is more than made up for by the abundance of police officers from the
NYPD/MTA itself/etc. Even on board the trains themselves, “live” announcers
count off each individual stop along the various trains, and even occasionally
announce holidays and other “special occasions”, as well as just general humor
that most might consider to be too “carefree” on public transport. Also around the “holiday season”
(Christmas) since 2003, the MTA has brought out its special fleet of
“’Holiday’/’Nostalgia’ Trains”, “dressed” completely
in holiday décor from various eras
of the system’s history, from the 1930s through to the 1970s.
Throughout fairly recent history, both the Tokyo
Metro, and various other rail systems
throughout city (Tokyo) and country (Japan) alike, as well as MTA New York City
Transit, have put the vast majority of
their efforts toward improving neighborhoods
throughout both cities/”metro areas”. The MTA got its start first, with about 20 years’ “head start” on the Tokyo
Metro, at least, but, since the late 1920s, when the “Tokyo Underground
Railway” started, and especially since
the privatization of “Japan Railways”
into “Central/East/West” in 1987, has far
outpaced its N.Y.C. counterpart in terms of technology, not including the 1970s and ‘80s, when
MTA equipment experienced almost daily break
downs, and when massive crime sprees
kept passengers from riding the trains that did
(more or less) work to a somewhat normal
extent, by those decades’ standards. On the “service” front, however, the
systems are somewhat more even than
in terms of technology, although, again, it’s “advantage: Tokyo Metro, et.
al.”, due to the stations making Japanese/English announcements, and having
displays in Japanese, English, (simplified) Chinese, and Korean, in that order,
whereas the MTA relies more on its “people” to make announcements, along with
keeping 20th-century-era “booths” in its stations to serve as many passengers as possible, on a daily, “24/7” basis.
REFERENCES/WORKS
CITED:
Bestor,
Theodore C. Neighborhood Tokyo. Palo
Alto, CA: Stanford UP, 1989. 1+. Print.
Kawanago,
Shinichi, and Andrew Stevens. "The
10 Traits of Globally Fluent Metro Areas: Tokyo" Rep. N.P.: Brookings
Institute/J.P. Morgan Chase, 2013. Web. 10 July 2015.
<http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Multimedia/Interactives/2013/tentraits/Tokyo.pdf>.
"The Newest New Yorkers 2000" Rep.
N.Y.C.: Department of City Planning, 2004. Web. 10 July 2015. <http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/census/newest_new_yorkers_2000.pdf>.
Toyoda,
Takeji. "BACnet in Tokyo"
Rep. N.P.: American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning
Engineers, 2006. Web. 10 July 2015.
<http://www.bacnet.org/Bibliography/BACnet-Today-06/28890-Toyoda.pdf>.
