According to JR West, 60% of passengers between Kansai and Kumamoto on April ,March ,and June used Shinkansen, while 30% of them used Shinkansen last year on the same term. It means that there are more passengers using Shinkansen than passengers using airplanes.
Proportion of passengers between Kansai and Kagoshima also increased from 10% to 40%. JR West regards that as the effects of direct service between Sanyo Shinkansen and Kyusyu Shinkansen, which started this March. Therefore, JR West plans to increase the frequency of trains by the next revision of diagram.
According to JR West's calculation, the number of passengers between Kansai and Kumamoto(including those of airplanes) increased by 37%. And, the number of passengers between Kansai and Kagoshima increased by 27%. The best contributer for such increasing demand is the increase of JR users.
From JR West to JR Kyusyu on from April to July, the number of reserved seats sold as tour packagings increased by 94%, compared to the last year's data. Especially, the number of reserved seats of trains bound for Kumamoto and Kagoshima, which was directly connected with Kansai, increased by 5 times and 15 times respectively.
Takayuki Sasaki, commented "Full opening of Kyusyu Shinkansen affected earlier than expected. Our campaign must have pushed the effects."
On the other hand, airline career(Air Nippon Airway) commented "We've already estimated that more passengers would begin to use Shinkansen. We would like to increase the total demand by competing each other."
Cited from http://www.asahi.com/travel/rail/news/OSK201109150003.html(asahi.com)
Though PR of Kyusyu Shinkansen was hidden by news of Tohoku Earthquake, the popularity of Kyusyu Shinkansen seems to be nice.
