EDITORIAL: Shinkansen disruption

A power outage Friday stopped Shinkansen services between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka for up to three and a half hours, forcing thousands to wait in frustration inside trains and at stations.

Four missing bolts caused the halt in operations of the high-speed train system.

In fact, an error in train maintenance was behind the incident, which affected nearly 150,000 people.

Two days before the suspension of services, mechanics of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) replaced the contact units of bullet train pantographs, which draw electricity from an overhead contact wire, at a train yard in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. But they forgot to insert bolts to fix the contact unit of one of the pantographs.

The contact unit fell off while the train was running from Tokyo to Nagoya, causing the spring-loaded frame of the pantograph to pop up and sever a weight-carrying wire called a catenary, from which a contact wire is suspended.

The bullet train that caused the stoppage ran more than 1,000 kilometers with the contact unit--which weighs more than 10 kilograms--of one of its pantographs not fixed.

The incident could have been disastrous if the contact unit had fallen off while the train was passing an oncoming train or while traveling through an urban area.

Two JR Tokai employees--one of middle-rank and the other one young--were assigned to replace the worn contact units. Their supervisor, an experienced engineer, failed to notice that the bolts were missing.

Anybody can commit errors. The problem is that the company didn't have a fail-safe system in place to check for errors and prevent such problems.

According to JR Tokai, the employees involved didn't use a maintenance log to record the work done nor checked the number of remaining bolts.

Such procedures are the norm among workers responsible for the safety of many people, including mechanics at aircraft and nuclear power facilities.

JR Tokai should take what happened as a serious warning and make a sweeping review of its maintenance system. It should also analyze whether there were structural factors behind the safety lapse.

Japan's Shinkansen service marks its 46th anniversary this year.

Shuichiro Yamanouchi, who was an engineer at the Japanese National Railways and later served as chairman of East Japan Railway Co., once wrote that the Shinkansen system represented the realization of safety technology dreams among train engineers.

Engineers involved in the development of the Shinkansen system undertook the ultimate railway technology challenge of operating high-speed train services safely.

Despite various troubles and earthquakes, the Shinkansen service has not suffered a single accident involving a passenger fatality. But the Shinkansen timetable is now far tighter than it was when the service started. And bridges and rails are aging.

Friday's stoppage should prompt all JR companies to go back to basics and enhance their safety systems.

JR Tokai has been making efforts to sell its Shinkansen and magnetic-levitation technologies to tap the U.S. market.

Japan's high-speed railway technology, which boasts an outstanding safety record, is seen as one of the key components of the nation's international competitiveness.

Toyota Motor Corp., once a symbol of Japan's manufacturing power, has been hit by a series of massive recalls in the United States and other markets.

Are Japanese high-tech companies becoming complacent?

It is time for all Japanese workplaces responsible for the safety of people to check and tighten discipline and regulations.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 4