Railway Passenger Transport

The amount of railway passenger transport by JR and private railway based on the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's survey on cargo and passenger flow. Passenger transport can be classified into
Number of departures: the number of passengers departing from a certain prefecture
Number of arrivals: the number of passengers arriving at a certain prefecture
Intraregional number: the number of passengers departing and arriving in within a certain prefecture

Here, the sum of the above three were compared. Estimated numbers are included in the original data as well as measured numbers.

Passenger transport per person is greatest in Tokyo, in which railway transport is used more than 800 times per person per year. Other prefectures in the metropolitan areas such as Kanagawa, Osaka, Chiba and Kyoto are ranked high. The data indicates that railway networks around metropolitan areas are extensive.

On the other hand, Miyazaki is ranked last, with railway transport used only 8 times per person per year. It is interesting to note that this number of use is lower than Okinawa, in which there are no railway systems except for the monorail that began operating in 2003. Miyazaki is the only prefecture in the mainland that has no railway besides JR and thus access to railways may be difficult.

In general, there is a clear distinction between metropolitan areas with railway transport use exceeding 200 times per year, and rural areas with railway tranport use of about 50 times per year. Students going to school by train seem to be inflating the number of railway transport use in rural areas, and because there are some adults that do not use the train even once a year, this result can be considered reasonable.