My 2 cents on the previous article

I've been hearing about Japan's Youth shying away from cars so it was great to read this article that put anecdotes and statistics together. However, I think the article missed some things I've been noticing the last few months I've been back in Japan, so I'm going to expand it further.

Here are some factors that I think lead to the desertion of the automobile, listed in order of greatest impact:

Information Technology making Public Transit much easier for non-commuting use

This is a tool from Yahoo Japan that allows people to plan transit trips from station to station. Since trains run by the minute in Japan, it's possible to plan the right combination of transit to get from station A to station B. While the link is to the web version (which there are many of), there are numerous mobile apps available for people to look up the information on the go.

As you may know, Japan's cellular adoption leads the world, especially in data communication. Everyone owns a cellphone, almost everyone uses e-mail on the cellphone (instead of SMS), and many people browse the web (mobile version) on their cellphones. All new cellphones come with the transit planner and the basic features are free.

Public transit was great for commuting, where one repeatedly took the same route every day but it was difficult for other uses. Every house had a route map and a book of timetables for the local transit system, and when someone wanted to go somewhere they've never been before, they had to look it up through a thick book. These books were not very portable, so if you planned a weekend outing using the transit system, it was difficult to be flexible.

Mobile transit planners changed all that. Now, not only can people plan and change events on the go (cellphones), they can also look up transit routes on the go. People are no longer tied to stations and areas they know well. The tools add flexibility to public transit that makes it much more similar to private transportation.

For example, this weekend I was at an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Wakayama, about 2.5 hours away from Kyoto. I had to take five different trains to get there, but the planning was relatively easy with my cellphone (before I got my Japanese cellphone, I used to print out the Yahoo trip planner). On the way back, one of the teammates forgot his wallet which added 2 hours of waiting time on the trip back. Now instead of going back to Kyoto and eating dinner, I decided to stop in Osaka and grab dinner with my teammates. If I didn't have the mobile trip planner, it would be very difficult for me to go back from an unknown part of Osaka back to Kyoto.

For the last few months, I've been noticing how transportation changed commerce, retail, entertainment, etc. and wondering what changes transportation. This is clearly one way new technology and a completely different industry changed transportation. While there are still clear differences between the automobile and public transit, with mobile trip planners, using transit is much more flexible.

(It would be interesting to see if there are any data on how public transit uses have changed over the ages, but it would be impossible to deduce what caused the change in the data as it is impossible to tell why Japanese youth is shying away from automobiles)

Young people are poorer today

The article talks a lot about people in the 20s but fails to mention that most people in their 20s (especially the older half), hit the job market in Japan's worst post-war recession. Many of these people couldn't get jobs and ended up working for temp agencies and the emergent low paying service industry. While I haven't seen hard data on this, it's generally accepted that more young people now are not getting full-time employment and working at the numerous fast food restaurants and combini stores.

Diversification of entertainment

When I was a child, going on a drive was a common weekend activity for many families. There were magazines that introduced popular driving routes and points of interest. I don't hear about that anymore. Instead, there are much more options for entertainment from the internet to the new sports centers. The car used to be a destination for many people, not just a tool for transportation. Nissan is definitely trying to address that issue with their Round Box prototype, but I'm not sure if what they are offering will resonate with the young people.

(Apparently, another industry that's hurting from the diversification of entertainment is the restaurant industry, not because people aren't going to restaurants but because young people in Japan are drinking less, which is the highest margin products at most restaurants)

Crack down on drunk driving

Several drunk driving tragedies few years ago caused a massive crackdown on drunk driving in Japan. The fine for drunk driving in Japan is now $3000 per person in the vehicle. In the countryside where public transportation is sparse, there are courier services that will drive you and your car home for you at prices comparable to taxis (I can't imagine this happening in the US, a much more litigious country).

But in the end, there is less need for the automobile.

There is still construction for new metro lines in Tokyo, the bullet trains keep getting faster, and more and more people are moving to the largest cities (Tokyo is one of the few cities in Japan that's actually growing). Unless you live in the country side, there isn't a glaring need for the automobile. Most retail stores will ship your bought goods for you (and shipping is cheap in Japan) so the need for an automobile for shopping is even less. With the automobile ubiquitous and affordable, it's no longer a status symbol (same thing happened with the cellphone except in a much shorter timespan). With the aging population and low birthrate, Japan looks like a bleak market for automakers in the near and far future.

(On a side note, I was discussing this article with several Japanese people and none of us could really figure out what the status symbols were now. My general inkling is that there is a shift in status symbol from what you own to what you can do. Do you agree?)