Station numbering


Station Numbering is a sign system used by some railway companies in Japan, which assigns station codes consisting of a couple of letters and numbers to train stations. It aims to facilitate navigation for foreigner travelers not familiar with the local language by using globally spread characters. The same system is also adopted by some railway companies in other countries/regions such as Mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, and Thailand.

Structure

The station number is often composed of a symbol part and a number part. However, it may only have the numerical part in some cases where a rail company operates only one route or the route does not have any transfer stations

Symbol part

Line symbols usually consist of one or two letters which are often abbreviations of the Romaji notation of the line name, many of them being the initials. However, when there are more than two lines with the same initials in the same region, either of them is often changed in order to avoid duplicated line symbols, even across different company lines. Another method to avoid duplicated symbols is to assign them in alphabetical order in the first place instead of using abbreviations.
In Mainland China and South Korea, the use of numbers is more common since most lines are named with numbers. In that case, the station number for the first station of line 2 would be "201".

Number part

The number part is usually a series of numbers starting with 00 or 01 and is often written in two digits.
If there is a branch line branching off from the main line, skipped numbers or branch numbers such as "211-1" are assigned.
If a new station is added between stations of, for example, number 08 and 09, branch numbers such as "08-1" are assigned in order not to change the existing station numbers, especially in western Japan. The same method is used by city buses and highway interchanges in Japan. As an exception, JR West takes the approach to assign decimal numbers like "08.5". Meanwhile, there are cases where the station numbers are shifted and renumbered.

Companies using Station Numbering

Japan