East Japan Railway Co., better known as JR East, said Wednesday it will replace the existing E231 series trains with the newly developed E235 series on the Yamanote Line in Tokyo by spring 2020.
Currently, JR East operates one 11-car E235 train on the loop line in the capital.
For the replacement, estimated to cost around 65 billion yen, 539 E235 cars for 49 trains will be produced, the company said. Equipped with a new train control system that provides real-time operational data to ground officials, the first E235 train was introduced on the Yamanote Line, one of the most tightly scheduled line in Japan, in November last year.
Real time information for the controllers is a huge improvement. Perhaps it will work its way east to the United States where it is desperately needed for both passenger and freight railways. On some rail lines the controllers are as much as five minutes behind what is actually happening on a given train. That means a train could crash and the controllers wouldn't know it for five minutes at the very least and very likely ten to fifteen minutes after disaster happened. Good work, Japan!
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