frequency beats speed

A train at three hundred kilometers per hour once an hour is worse than a train at two hundred every ten minutes. Total trip time includes waiting.

The Tokaido Shinkansen runs ten trains per hour each direction during peak. Nozomi expresses make Tokyo to Osaka in two hours and twenty-two minutes. Hikari trains take a few minutes longer. Kodama trains stop everywhere. The mix works because frequency is high enough that you do not plan around the schedule. You show up. The next train is leaving.

This is the metric that matters. Not top speed. Not maximum capacity. Door to door elapsed time including waiting, averaged over the day. A system running constantly at moderate speed beats one running rarely at high speed. The Shinkansen does both.

Urban transit in Tokyo operates on the same principle. The Yamanote Line runs every two minutes during rush hour. Express services skip stations while local trains stop at all of them, on parallel tracks. Fast trains pass slow trains. Different services share infrastructure without degrading each other. This requires coordination and investment in passing tracks and signaling. It requires operators who think about the system rather than the individual line.