Tend and implications of the railway technology R & D in Japan

일본의 철도기술개발 동향과 시사점

Railway in Japan has been changed every apr. 20 years as follows, since the war ended in 1945. Shinkansen which was the first high speed train in the world began to revenue service in 1964, and a national railway authority was privatized segmentally in 1987, and after 20 years later from then, the ticketing service using IC card was accomplished. In this research, we review these changes in Japan in the administrative aspects on railway technology, and R & D aspects of the Railway Technical Research Institute, JR East and JR West which are railway corporations. Also we introduce the present status and future of railway technologies in Japan which railway experts diagnosed. In the twenty-first century, the needs of the times for railway have been enormously changed due to a low birth-rate, an aging society, environmental pollution and energy problems and etc. Because we have very similar problems to them like Japan, we could get lessons from Japanese cases in setting the direction for the development of railway technologies.