JR Hokkaido confronts the harsh realities of financing rail lines in depopulated areas | The Japan Times

Problems with JR Hokkaido are raising questions about the wisdom of railway privatisation in 1987. “JR Hokkaido has become the most embattled of the former JNR entities, and one can sense in media coverage of its existential problems a conflict over whether privatization is still a good thing for a service that was once taken for granted despite its chronic tendency to lose money.”