Kawasaki Municipal Subway


The Kawasaki Longitudinal Rapid Railway is a proposed subway line that would run between and, ultimately extending to. The whole line will lie within the city of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It would link the eastern and western parts of southern Kawasaki that are otherwise not well served by rail transport. The railway line is planned by the city government of Kawasaki, therefore the operator would be Kawasaki City Transportation Bureau, which previously ran a city tram, busway, and currently operates extensive bus services.
The project is commonly known as the Kawasaki Municipal Subway.

History

A plan for a subway through Kawasaki was first devised in the 1960s. In 1966, the Ministry of Transport planned to construct a subway line between and stations.
In 1985, the ministry changed the plan to use the existing Musashino South Line right-of-way, converting it from a freight-only to passenger-only operations. However the operator of the line, Japanese National Railways, was not favorable to the plan due to the line's importance for transporting freight, especially since the passenger-only Nambu Line was already operating nearby. The plan was therefore put on hold.
In 2001, the ministry announced plans to build the line between Shin-Yurigaoka and Kawasaki stations, erasing the eastern segment to Sangyō-Dōro present in the 1966 plan. Instead, the line would have connecting service onto the Keikyū Daishi Line. The Kawasaki city government then divided the 2001 plan into two segments: the segment between Shin-Yurigaoka and to be built first, and the segment between Motosumiyoshi and Kawasaki to be extended later.
However, in 2003, due to the weak Japanese economy, the city government postponed the subway's construction for five years. In 2005, they changed the path of the line to go through Musashi-Kosugi rather than Motosumiyoshi, to improve the line's revenue potential. The current funding has been shelved, and as of 2013 there are no concrete plans to proceed.

2005 plan

Basic data