Hokuso Railway was formed in the early ‘1970s as the transportation backbone of Chiba New Town. In this case, “New Town” is a key word and refers to the large-scale housing development consisting almost entirely of “Danchi” high-rise buildings (plus all necessary basic urban services, such as schools and sports centers) typical of Japan’s post-war economic miracle, being intended to relieve pressure on the existing limited and back then, often substandard and dilapdated housing stock of major metropolitan areas – Tokyo in this case.
All “New Towns” were built as pubblic works projects, and thus, where land was cheap and easily available, wich however often meant far away from their “reference” cities; for Chiba New Town this distance was to be exceptionally large, as the National and Prefectural Govenrment had jointly opted to “place” the new town along the corridor leading to the planned “New Tokyo International Airport”, the current Narita Airport, a good 30Km north-east of central Tokyo.
As Chiba New Town (as with all Japanese “New Towns”) was always intended to be a “Bedroom Town” for people working in Tokyo, a railway line was seen as the most natural, pragmatic, cost-effective (and borderline obvious) solution to rapidly move the huge number of “New Town” residents into the city in the morning and out again in the evening.
However, unlike other “New Towns” no existing railway line ran near the planned site of Chiba New Town: JNR’s Narita Line was too far north, and Keisei Railway’s Main Line was too far south. As such, it was decided early on, with the plans for Chiba New Towns still under development, to build a completely new line from scratch, wich was to serve as the New Town’s transportation backbone. Soon, these plans were also joined by the “Narita Shinkansen”, a national government and JNR-led plan to build a Shinkansen-type line from Tokyo station to Narita Airport, to serve in an “Airport Express” role, and after a bit of debating, both projects were settled to use the same corridor, running parallel, between the Airport and Chiba New Town, after wich, the Narita Shinkansen would’ve veered off towards Funabashi, running to Tokyo station via the current Shin-Kiba area, while the “commuter” railway would’ve continued westwards to eventually connect to the Tokyo subway network, with two Toei Subway Lines (as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government had a major stake in the project) being the most likely candidates: Line No.1 (the Asakusa Line) and the planned Line No.10 (the current Shinjuku Line).
The definitive plans for Chiba New Town were completed in 1969 and soon after the railway ones were as well: the new line was to connect to Line No.1 – the Toei Asakusa Line, and to operate it, a dedicated company was formed in 1972: Hokuso Railway, with “Hokuso” being “Northern Chiba”, both a geographical indication as well as the pre-meiji restoration province name for the area.
Hokuso Railway was formed as a joint-venture between the government of Chiba Prefecture and Keisei Railway, onto whose network Hokuso Railway’s trains would’ve continued to Tokyo. Chiba Prefecture was of course in charge of granting the majority of funding for the construction and operation of the line, along with the National Government and the “Japan Housing Pubblic Corporation”, the pubblic entity tasked with constructing the New Town itself. Keisei Railway was instead tasked with setting up the “operational” side of the company, providing supervision and guidance, as well as light and heavy maintainance for Hokuso Railway’s rolling stock.
As per modern praxis, the line was divided into two phases: the first phase of the “Western” section was to connect Chiba New Town to Shin-Kamagaya station on the Shin-Keisei Line where a provisional trough-service would’ve been set up to carry Hokuso Railway trains to Matsudo, an interchange station with the JNR Joban Line. The second phase would see the extension of the Hokuso Line to Keisei Takasago, where trains would’ve continued onto the Keisei Main Line and Keisei Oshiage Line into the Toei Asakusa Line, completing the line and abandoning the Shin-Keisei trough-services.
Construction started in the first half of the 1970s, and by late 1978, it was decided to open part of the “western” section, between Komuro and Shin-Kamagaya station (a total of circa 7Km with two intermediate stops: Shiroi and Nishi-Shiroi) in order to speed up the development of Chiba New Town. Hokuso Railway’s first section thus began operations on the 13th of March 1979, right as the first apartments within Chiba New Towns were handed to their new owners.
The rest of the line to Chiba New Town “proper” remained under construction, however, financial hardship soon struck the brand-new company, as it’s “operational” parent, Keisei Railway was entering a financial crisis, after many of it’s major non-railway investment schemes (especially in real estate, but not correlated to Chiba New Town) had failed, in part also due to a slight economic downturn following the 1973 oil crisis, leaving the company deeply indebted. Relatively minor issues also came from the abandonment of the Narita Shinkansen plans, due to local opposition, part of the broader and very politically active “Anti-Narita Airport Opposition Front”, leaving essentially one half of the right-of-way planned for the two railways empty.
As such, the Japan Housing Pubblic Corporation, renamed to the “Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation” was invited by the national and prefectural government to take the rest of the line over from Hokuso and Keisei Railway. After some delays, on the 19th of March 1984, the line was extended eastwards by 4Km to Chiba New Town-Chuo station, under the “Chiba New Town Line” name and HUDC management, remaining however operationally indistinct from the “other” Hokuso Line, as services ran seamlessly between the two lines.
In 1987 Hokuso Railway was restructured as a “Category 2” operator: the infrastructure (trackage and stations) were transferred to HUDC, with Hokuso Railway retaining it’s rolling stock and personnel (wich also operated HUDC-owned trains, as it had no railway personnel of it’s own), and the whole line between Shin-Kamagaya and Chiba New Town-Chuo was renamed “Hokuso-Kodan Line” (“Kodan” in this case being the “Pubblic Corporation” of “Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation”, reflecting the ownership of the trackage).
The long-awaited completion of the second-phase came in March 1991, adding 12,7Km of trackage from Shin-Kamagaya to Keisei-Takasago and seven stations: Omachi, Matsuhidai, Higashi-Matsudo (interchange with the Musashino Line), Akiyama, Kita-Kokubun, Yagiri and Shin-Shibamata. Trough-services with Keisei and the Toei Subway began right away as planned, bringing Hokuso trains directly into Tokyo for the first time, running out the other end of the Asakusa Line onto Keikyu Railway trakage, to Haneda Airport or all the way south to Misakiguchi Station.
One year later, also as planned, trough-services with Shin-Keisei were curtailed, and in 1995 the line was extended eastwards by 6Km to Inzai-Makinohara Station, and five years later, on the 22nd of July 2000, the final section of the Hokuso-Kodan Line opened to Imba-Nihon-Idai, serving the namesake Medical University and adding 5Km more to the trackage.
However, by then, the scope of Chiba New Town had been considerably re-sized: as the 1980s had come to an end, the burst of the asset price bubble, plus a strongly diminished demand for new housing meant that large-scale “New Town” developments were no longer economically feasable, or even needed at all. Within a few years all major governmental housing plans being put on hold, including Chiba New Town, in wichever state they were at the moment – often actually rather far from completion – population estimates for Chiba New Town had already been nearly halvened in 1986 from 340’000 to 176’000 inhabitants, and even this latter forecast was increasingly looking irrealistic as years went on.
As part of this “end of an era”, the Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation, the owner of Hokuso Railway’s trackage, was considerably restructured, first into the “Urban Development Bureau” and then into the current “Urban Renaissance Agency” in 2004, shedding in the process evrything that was not considered “vital” to the operations of the agency itself. As such, it’s “railway” sector was dissolved and trasferred to an ad-hoc created company: Chiba New Town Railway, inheriting both the infrastructure and rolling stock, to be allocated (as in “leased”) to Hokuso Railway. As part of this restructuration, the “Kodan” part of the “Hokuso-Kodan Line” was dropped (reflecting the exit of UR, ex-HUDC from railway affairs), with the whole line renamed to the current “Hokuso Line”.
The final major change for Hokuso Railway came in 2010, as Keisei acquired the old Narita Shinkansen right-of-way east of Imba-Nihon-Idai in order to build a faster link for it’s airport express services. As part of this plan, the Hokuso Line was essentially extended to Narita Airport, but under different management and operations, both Keisei’s.
The new section, was opened on the 17th of July 2010 as the “Narita Sky Access Line”, with Keisei operating express and limited-express services (under the “Narita Sky Access” branding) and Hokuso Railway handling instead local services, to and from Narita Airport.
As of today, Hokuso Railway owns the namesake Hokuso Line from Keisei-Takasago to Komuro (the section between Komuro and Imba-Nihon-Idai is still owned by Chiba New Town Railway, the successor to HUDC) but operates it wholly, for a total of 32,2Km with 15 intermediate stations and trough-services on both ends: in standard practice, Hokuso Railway runs local trains from Narita Airport, onto the Hokuso Line and then onto the Toei Asakusa Line, via the Keisei Main Line and Keisei Oshiage Line, with services running generally to Haneda Airport (via the Keikyu Airport Line) or Misakiguchi station on the Kurihama Line, the southernmost “tip” of the Keikyu Network, altough some services are also made to run to Nishi-Magome (the unofficial “Magome Branch” of the Asakusa Line) due to capacity constraints on the Keikyu network.
In terms of rolling stock, it’s of course another complicated mess: officially part of Hokuso Railway’s fleet are eight 8-car sets, five of wich wholly owned by Hokso Railway, and the remaining three “on lease” by Keisei. Five more 8-car sets in use by Hokuso Railway are owned by Chiba New Town Railway and leased to it, bringing the total count of Hokuso Railway “used” rolling stock to thirteen sets, of wich only slightly more than a third being wholly onwed by the company.
Trivia #1:
Hokuso Railway was one of the first in Japan to experiment with unstaffed stations in “high-traffic” commuter operations, with all stations on the Hokuso Line being only fitted with vending machines and turnstiles. However, the usage of an early, proprietary magnetic strip ticket system, the inability of the system to sell fares beyond Matsudo, the end of it’s operational area (for example, whoever needed to go to Tokyo, that is, the whole user base of the line, had to buy a Hokuso ticket to Matsudo, then buy the ticket to Tokyo in Matsudo itself) and the relative complexity and unreliability of the equipment led to the retrofitting of conventional ticket machines and staff booths at evry station by 1982.
Trivia #2:
As part of this experimental “unstaffing”, fare-adjustment was also “automated”. “Fare-adjustment” means paying the difference (adjusting) on a “short-fare”: e.g. for a trip whose cost is 600¥ for example, with a ticket for a 400¥ fare you need to “adjust”, as in paying 200¥ more. This is done “ex-post”, meaning at your arrival station, and was traditionally done face-to-face with a station attendant (as the adjustment requirements are extremely varied and unpredictable). Hokuso Railway replaced the attendant with a machine whose “automation” was only a façade, as once fed into the machine, the ticket was read remotely by a dedicated “fare adjustment attendant” using a mini-camera installed in the machine (this applied for classic printed tickets coming from other operators, as Hokuso had it’s internal proprietary magnetic ticketing system). The attendant then had to caluclate the fare to be adjusted using the “traditional methods”: a fare chart and a calculator! After the difference had been calculated, he would then signal to the passenger via the machine the amount to be paid in coins (also to be fed to the machine). This is the classic idea that seems good on paper, but then meets reality: issues with reliability, slowness and a general impossibility to handle rush hours also led to the axing of this system in 1982, replacing it with the traditional face-to-face station attendants. The issue of fare adjustment would be finally solved in the early 1990s with the standardization and wide adoption of magnetic ticketing, enabling computerized ticket machines to calculate the fare to be adjusted in some tenths of a second.
Trivia #3
Due to the high construction costs, lower-than-envisioned ridership and additional costs (such as the necessity to lease nearly 2/3 of it’s fleet), Hokuso Railway’s fares are among the highest in the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area (along with Toyo Rapid Railway, coincidentally also a line built to serve new developments and tied to Hokuso’s parent, Keisei Railway). This has been quite contentious, even in political terms, as the prefectural government of Chiba is one of Hokuso Railway’s major shareholders, with residents along the line veehmently demanding a slight reduction in fares. This also escalated slightly after the opening of the Narita Sky Access Line, with Keisei Railway being variously accused of “free riding” off Hokuso Railway (as the airport express services use the Hokuso Line’s trackage) and Hokuso being accused of not demanding high enough track access charges. This problem has been relatively mitigated in recent years by the arrival of some subsidies from the prefectural government, but not nearly as much as demanded by residents and commuters alike, and as such, the issue of Hokuso Railway’s fare will remain contentious for the forseeable future.
Hokuso Line
Trough-services with the Narita Sky Access Line, Keisei Main Line, Keisei Oshiage Line, Toei Asakusa Line, Keikyu Main Line and Keikyu Airport Line
