There’s actually a good reason for a train to quickly get people between the Tokyo area’s two airports.

Keisei Electric Railway, which operates trains in Tokyo and the neighboring prefecture of Chiba, is planning to add a new high-speed train service from Narita Airport, one of the Tokyo area’s major international travel gateways. Where will this speedy new train take passengers to? Tokyo’s other airport, Haneda.

The idea of spending several hours on a plane to fly to Japan, only to get off, collect your luggage, and hop on a train to go to another airport might seem weird, until you take into account the different roles Narita and Haneda play. Haneda is the older of the two, and when Narita was opened in 1978, it took over all of the Tokyo area’s commercial international flights, with the exception of a few routes to/from Taiwan and Hawaii which stayed at Haneda. Following extensive renovations and expansions in the early 2000s, Haneda has been expanding its international flight offerings, but to this day there are still many international airlines with flights that only land at Narita. On the other hand, Haneda has remained much more popular with airlines for domestic flights, because it’s much closer to downtown Tokyo (Narita isn’t actually even located within the Tokyo city limits and is instead part of Chiba).

This sets up scenarios where if your final destination in Japan is somewhere that doesn’t have its own international airport, you might end up having to land in Narita, then figure out how to get from there to Haneda so that you can then catch a flight to where you really want to go. Unfortunately, while Narita and Haneda are close enough that no airline has a route that flies between them, they’re not exactly within quick-cab-ride distance of each other.

▼ Narita Airport

▼ Haneda Airport

So Keisei Electric Railway’s plan is to add a new rapid express train that will take travelers directly between Narita and Haneda. The timetable for the project would have the train start running sometime in the 2030s. This new train service would be an extension of the rapid express service Keisei is getting set to introduce in 2028 between Narita Airport and Oshiage, in the north part of downtown Tokyo, which is expected to shave about 20 minutes off the current 55 minutes or so it takes to travel between them.

Currently, Keisei’s Access Express train makes the trip from Narita to Haneda in around 90 minutes, so ostensibly the new train would be faster than that. The 2030s express will also have reserved seats, providing peace of mind to international travelers and, most likely, a boost to Keisei’s bottom line through justifying higher ticket costs than the current train’s. The 2030s express would make use of track on the Keisei Line, Asakusa Line, and Keikyu Line.

Faster rail connection between Narita and Haneda would align with the Japanese government and tourism industry’s goal of channeling more of the increasingly large numbers of foreign tourists to less-visited parts of Japan in order to simultaneously combat overtourism and support local economies. Many of those non-overtouristed locations aren’t on Japan’s high-speed rail networks but do have regional airport access, an faster rail connections between Narita and Haneda could help promote international tourism to places like Shikoku, western Tohoku, southeastern Kyushu, or other places worth visiting but not on any Shinkansen routes. The more tourist-oriented express would also likely help ease congestion on trains used by local residents along the Keisei Line.

Source: Yahoo! Japan News/Kyodo, Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo Joho Shimbun
Top image: Wikipedia/MaedaAkihiko
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