Private railway corporations in Japan are profitable and less expensive per passenger-kilometer than JR trains and run dense routes supplementing their other businesses that depend on the traffic unlike private railways in the United States which do not provide public transportation.
They are often profitable and tend to be less expensive per passenger-kilometer than JR trains that also run less dense regional routes, and assumed a heavy burden of the former JNR debt. In Japan, private sector railway ( or , Shitetsu or Mintetsu), commonly simply private railway, refers to a public transit railway owned and operated by private sector, almost always organized as a joint-stock company, or in Japanese: kabushiki gaisha (lit. Private railways corporations in Japan also run and generate profits from a variety of other businesses that depend on the traffic generated through their transit systems: hotels, department stores, supermarkets, resorts, and real estate development and leasing. In the United States, a private railroad is a railroad owned by a company and serves only that company, and does not hold itself out as a "common carrier" (i.e., it does not provide rail transport services for the general public). 
