Comment by socalgal2
20 hours ago
JR is big, but 62% of passenger volume is not JR and that remaining 38% is split by 7 companies
Further, in the big metro areas, the private trains do just fine.
JR East is #1, Tokyo Metro is #2, JR West is #3, Tokyu is #4, ... the next JR, JR Central is down at #9 with #5 #6 #7 #8 all private. Tokyo Metro is private, Toei (is the city run subway, it has 4 lines as is far down the list).
At least where i live, subways and railways aren't really considered to be the same thing
Japan operates a kind of hybrid system where the subway (at least in Tokyo) mostly consists of tracks that connect to private operators on either end, and a train will just run through from the private parts of the track to the subway parts with no interruption whatsoever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_through_trains_in_Japa...
In the United States, probably the best comparison would be BART in San Francisco Bay Area and WMATA in Washingon, D.C. area. They act like a subway in city center, and like a (commuter) railway outside. As a stretch, also look at SF Muni Metro which acts like a tramway/streetcar outside the dense areas, else like a "light subway" in the dense areas.
The line gets really blurry in some places in Tokyo.
Asakusa (one of "my" lines!) line, is definitely a subway inside central Tokyo, but you can stay on the same physical train going all the way from Narita to Haneda (think RER in Paris?) — I think it would be qualified as "light rail" anywhere else in the world.