[tecleandor]

But it made certain sense, as it's remarked:

"...it was targeted for the axe at the privatization of Japanese National Railways in 1987, just 15 years after completion, but escaped because the road that runs more or less parallel with it and is the only route into Iwaizumi from the south is not wide enough in many places for two cars to pass and is treacherous in winter."

Also, per that article, the number of passengers is quite higher than that, and "per kilometer". Not that is huge, but...

"...the least trafficked line in the whole nation, with average daily ridership per kilometer of 46 people in fiscal 2009"

Anyway, I'm with @rob74 on this, profit shouldn't be the only concern in public transport.

[cinntaile]

I'm not sure I agree with not demanding public, national train transport to be profitable. One issue I see is that the entire country pays for these feeder lines, I don't think that is the right call. Maybe a better approach would be that these local cities pay JR for the cost of providing this service. If the local cities see the advantage, it'll get funded and if not then the whole country doesn't have to pay for something that the locals don't really want anyway.

[tecleandor]

I mean, the target shouldn't be profit but providing a service. But throwing money down the drain should be kind of avoided, in general. Probably some cost share would be great.

In said case, they might have calculated the cost of upgrading the road through this mountains versus maintaining the train. I guess..

[helen___keller]

it kind of depends right?

when you think about funding structures, there's a myriad of approaches based on risk and potential outcome.

You can try to estimate ridership, but usually only in the near future as there are major macro affects at play.

every party has a different stake. transit infrastructure can lower housing costs by connecting low cost exurbs to the urban region, which in the us makes locals less interested (probably not so for japan). it can also grow national tax base by providing a competitive central business district and attract international investment, which is something that should appeal to the national government. so it is not as simple as "if locals want it, locals should pay for it", ideally there should be aligned incentives across the board

like any business, investment in transit requires leadership and vision. blindly funding every station proposed is clearly a bad idea. so too is an overly conservative investment regime that takes 0 risk

[cinntaile]

The cost of providing regular train stops can be quite high though, the more stops the less attractive trains become because it takes longer to get from A->B and it costs money to maintain the train station infrastructure. Why would motivated people not move to the competitive center? It seems unlikely they want to take the train and commute for a considerable amount of time?

Overall I agree that it depends on the particular situation, but if it costs several millions for 50 ish travellers from a specific station (an example from in this thread somewhere) that doesn't sound like money well spent.

[helen___keller]

It definitely depends, and you need to keep in mind network effects. But yes, a station getting little ridership was probably a bad investment and in hindsight would have been better served as a bus. (Alternatively: more investment is needed to better enable that particular station.)

As far as overdoing it on stations, you’re not entirely wrong but for this reason the Japanese train system has tiers of express service. I’ve heard sometimes it’s worth taking the local train 1 stop so you can then hop on the express train to the city.

Finally, it’s worth noting there are user stories besides commuting to/from downtown business district. Hub and spoke systems like Boston are good for the commute story but fail miserably at displacing the need for car ownership