O Sora

Asahi newspaper Japanese edition reported JR East is projecting a new line to HND from central Tokyo. It says JRE already has tracks except for last few miles to the airport.

There has been another project by Tobu-Toei-Keikyu team.

We may see NEX and Skyliner at HND in 2020, the olympic year.

http://www.asahi.com/articles/TKY201...f=com_top6_2nd

Please don't call it HEX.

LapLap

Don't worry, the acronym has already been bagged by Londoners:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathrow_Express

ChrisLi

Wirelessly posted (Xperia Z: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.2.2; C6603 Build/10.3.1.A.2.67) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.92 Mobile Safari/537.36)

Why JR bothered to buy Tokyo monorail few years back???

aster

Will be interesting to see what new connections/lines are added ahead of the Olympics. When I was there I just took the monorail from the first station right to the airport (HND), with no stops on the way. Worked well for me, but then not everyone stays in the Shiba/Daimon area.

This will also be a great place to stay during the Olympics with a different monorail heading to Odaiba from the same area.

P.S. Hope thry change the misleading signs about Haneda, which label the different terminals as "International airlines" and "Domestic airlines" when in fact this should read International/Domestic destinations.

AlwaysAisle

This new Tokyo station and Haneda Airport connector idea by JR East make use of unused freight track which runs from near Tamachi station to near north of Haneda Airport. However, JR East even admitting at this moment that most difficult part is extending this unused track into Haneda Airport. Due to the nature of an airport, it will be difficult to construct a train station above the ground at Haneda Airport. There are already underground stations at Haneda Airport for Tokyo Monorail and Keikyu Line. New underground station has to be far deeper underground. At this moment JR East is saying that even if all those are resolved and new Tokyo station and Haneda Airport connector get go ahead, it will be still difficult task to complete the construction prior to 2020 Olympics.

Another part is that this time around Tokyo Olympics organization and government organization working along are reluctant to spend a lot of money. Back in 1996 President of International Olympics Committee criticized excess corporate sponsorship on the Olympics. In 2009 Tokyo had a bid to host 2016 Olympics but lost out on Rio de Janeiro. Least Olympics committee in Japan thinks that reason for losing the bid back in 2009 is that they did not learn the lesson of 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and Olympics committee in Japan proposed ravish spending for 2016 Olympics. Least Olympics committee in Japan believes that was one of major reasons they lost the bid for 2016 Olympics.

Olympics committee in Japan turn around and for 2020 Olympics bit, they proposed far less spending utilizing a lot of existing facilities. This year Tokyo won the bid to host Olympics in 2020. With that background, compare with last time Tokyo hosted Olympics in 1964, this time Japan does not want to overspend in Olympics. Also, there is criticism that there still are hardly any rebuilding done by the government after Tohoku earthquake but spending a lot of money for 2020 Olympics.

O Sora

I think it is because they didn't know the government would publish new expansion plans for HND operation.

Thanks, AlwaysAisle for detailed explanations. I noticed Machida should be Tamachi. 町田 and 田町 are confusing. Tamachi is near Tokyo Tower in Minato Ku while Machida is about 1/3 point from Shinjuku to Hakone.

AlwaysAisle

Yes, thank you, it is 田町! Tamachi, Tamachi! Sorry about that. However, I am sure residents of 町田 would not mind having a direct train service to Haneda Airport.

joejones

From what I have read, the only way to keep the monorail competitive with Keikyu was to improve its connections with JR at Hamamatsucho by renovating the station and making transfers to/from JR easier, so at the end of the day it made the most sense for Hitachi to simply sell most of the monorail operation to JR and let them figure it out. JR was also considering running the monorail to Tokyo Station over the JR tracks but eventually threw that plan out (we discussed this in another thread recently).

O Sora

We are seeing a lot of the kanji, "田" here. Actually Haneda is 羽田 and Narita is 成田. Aren't the readers wondering what "田" means?

The answer is


Got the idea? Rice field was everywhere in Japan.

LapLap

Tada!

田田

O Sora

JR East is considering direct operations between HND and northern Kanto cities.

Utsunomiya and Takasaki -Omiya-Ueno-Tokyo-Haneda Airport

This would enable convenient access from HND to
Train Museum
Nikko
Shinkansen (At Tokyo station, the platforms are, thankfully, next to each other!)
etc...

にほんご
http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/new...0503005-n1.htm