Comparing ridership statistics between UK and Japanese stations...JR only lists boarding/entering passengers, while other Japanese private railways list combined entries and exists, like UK does. So to compare them, I'll just double JR numbers...
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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