The busiest stations in UK's intercity network--excluding Eurostar and Heathrow Exp ridership, for some reason--are: Waterloo (99.4m/year) Victoria (75.9m/year) Liverpool Street (67.3m/year) London Bridge (47.9m/year) Euston (44.1m/year) (these figures also exclude Tube etc)
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The busiest station in Japan (and the world) is Shinjuku, with 1,225m/year, over 12 times the traffic at Waterloo--ridership stats here *do* include subway ridership, though...if I include subway ridership in UK, how much does it change?
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Here's London Underground ridership at those same top five stations, then the combined ridership for them: Waterloo - 100.4m/yr -> 199.8m Victoria - 83.5m/yr -> 159.4m Liverpool Street - 71.6m/yr -> 138.9m London Bridge - 70.7m/yr -> 118.6m Euston - 43.1m/yr -> 87.2m
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At these stops, Tube ridership accounts for over 50% of the total ridership! In Japan it is usually the reverse--intercity and suburban ridership accounts for about 82% of the traffic at Shinjuku, with subways making up the remaining 18%
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I would like to think that a big factor in this difference in shares is that subways and intercity/suburban railways in Japan are very similar in service standards, frequency, fare collection, rolling stock, etc...
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...and that with all else being about equal, the suburban and intercity railways have a much larger service area to draw from--something they can't take full advantage of if they are operated at lower standards (esp re: frequency and fare collection) than subways.
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But, even if there's some truth in this suspicion, I know it's not the whole story. I'm not sure how the Tube compares to intercity rail in terms of price for a ride, but I know that in Japan, subways almost always cost more per mile than intercity and suburban railways.
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Still--if you really want excellent ridership, you can't be relying on just the core urban population! So much of any "metropolitan area's" population is in its suburbs--the rail network has to work for them as well
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End of conversation
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But what if JR riders aren't exiting? What if they're remaining on the trains forever, building a bold new civilization on the rails?
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