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People were trapped in commuter hell on Tokyo’s railway lines, which ferry hundreds of thousands of passengers a day, after an influence outage.
If London stations like Euston can feel busy at rush hour, it pales as compared to the scenes in Tokyo on Friday morning.
Hundreds of commuters were caught out after an influence outage ground trains to a halt on the East Japan Railway’s Yamanote and Keihin-Tohoku lines.
Large crowds were packed at stations after trains were cancelled for hours while passengers were stranded on trains between stations.
One passenger said on social media that each lines are ‘f***ed’ after the ability outage, making transferring to the Ueno line also ‘unattainable.’
Station staff needed to block access to some platforms, leading to large bottlenecks at a number of the city’s busiest stations.
Five people felt sick while waiting inside trains and were reportedly taken to hospital.
Taxi ranks were full of anxious commuters attempting to get to work, with some people opting to walk for an hour, Japan Times reports.
Footage shows firefighters and rail staff evacuating commuters after they were stranded between stations on the Keihin-Tohoku route.
The facility outages were brought on by two mysterious incidents, and authorities are investigating whether or not they are linked.
Railway staff first discovered the outage between Shimbashi and Shinagawa stations shortly before 4am local time, considered brought on by issues with electrical equipment.
Then a fireplace was spotted near Tamachi Station at about 8am (11pm GMT on Thursday), with flames coming from a substation, in response to the general public broadcaster NHK.
Greater Tokyo’s rail network, which carries as much as 40 million people a day, is understood to be generally reliable.
On the UK railways, a number of the worst days for disruption were in July last 12 months, when rail infrastructure struggled with the heatwave.
On July 12 alone, over 6% of trains were cancelled, the rail watchdog, Office ofRail and Road, said.
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