Railway company

A railway company or railroad company is an entity that operates a railroad track or trains. Such a company can either be private or public. Some railway companies operate both the trains and the track, while particularly in European Union ownership of track and train operation is separated in different companies.

Structure

Many countries have a national railway company that owns all track and operates all trains in the country, for instance the Russian Railways (the world's largest rail company by network size). Other countries have many different, sometimes competing, railway companies that operate each their own lines, particularly in the United States and Canada.

In Europe, the EU requires its members to split the railway companies into a number of different companies. Usually public owned companies own the track and other public companies (sometimes owned by regional governments) own the train cars. Public service obligations or franchising is then used to determine the right to operate the line for a limited time period, with multiple private companies bidding for the privilege to operate. Other companies offer trackside and rolling stock maintenance.

Japan Railways Group

  Hokkaido   East   Central   West
  Shikoku   Kyushu

The Japan Railways Group, more commonly known as JR Group (JRグループ, Jeiāru Gurūpu), consists of seven for-profit companies that took over most of the assets and operations of the government-owned Japanese National Railways on April 1, 1987. Most of the liability of the JNR was assumed by the JNR Settlement Corporation.

The JR Group lies at the heart of Japan's railway network, operating a large proportion of intercity rail service (including the Shinkansen high-speed rail lines) and commuter rail service. Despite JR East, JR Central and JR West now having full private ownership, Japanese people often talk about "private railways" as if none of JR Group (nor third sector former JR lines) is part of them, since they are successors of "national railways" i.e. JNR. Maps almost always denoted JR and private railways differently, as does JR itself.

Companies

The group consists of seven operating companies and two other companies that do not provide rail service. The operating companies are organized into six passenger operators and a nationwide freight operator. Unlike some other groups of companies, the JR Group is made up of independent companies, and it does not have group headquarters or a holding company to set the overall business policy.

West Japan Railway Company

West Japan Railway Company  (西日本旅客鉄道株式会社, Nishi-Nihon Ryokaku Tetsudō Kabushiki-gaisha), also referred to as JR West (JR西日本, Jeiāru Nishi-Nihon), is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka.

Lines

Shinkansen

JR West's highest-grossing line is the Sanyo Shinkansen high-speed rail line between Osaka and Fukuoka. The Sanyo Shinkansen alone accounts for about 40% of JR West's passenger revenues. The company also operates Hakata Minami Line, a short commuter line with Shinkansen trains in Fukuoka.

Urban Network

The "Urban Network" is JR West's name for its commuter rail lines in the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area. These lines together comprise 610 km of track, have 245 stations and account for about 40% of JR West's passenger revenues. Urban Network stations are equipped to handle ICOCA fare cards. Train control on these lines is highly automated, and during peak hours trains run as often as every two minutes.

Japan

Coordinates: 35°N 136°E / 35°N 136°E / 35; 136

Japan (ⁱ/dʒəˈpæn/; Japanese: 日本 Nippon [nip̚põ̞ɴ] or Nihon [nihõ̞ɴ]; formally 日本国  Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, "State of Japan") is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", and Japan is often called the "Land of the Rising Sun".

Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan's population of 126 million is the world's tenth largest. Approximately 9.1 million people live in Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, which is the sixth largest city proper in the OECD. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the world's largest metropolitan area with over 35 million residents and the world's largest urban agglomeration economy.

West

West is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. West is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of east and is perpendicular to north and south.

Etymology

The word "West" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance languages (ouest in French, oest in Catalan, ovest in Italian, oeste in Spanish and Portuguese). As is apparent in the Gothic term vasi (Visigoths), it stems from the same Indo-European root that gave the Sanskrit vas-ati (night) and vesper (evening) in Latin.

Navigation

To go west using a compass for navigation, one needs to set a bearing or azimuth of 270°.

West is the direction opposite that of the Earth's rotation on its axis, and is therefore the general direction towards which the Sun appears to constantly progress and eventually set.

Moving continuously west is following a circle of latitude.

Cultural

The phrase "the West" is often spoken in reference to the Western world, which includes Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, and the United States of America.