Woah, what a mouthful for a title! Welcome to the page of one of Japan’s oddest, most convoluted and obscure railway companies (and of course, one of my favourites as well!)

The story of this oddball company is indissolubly tied with the history and development of Chiba New Town, and starts right with the inception of Chiba New Town itself.

Before that however, a brief detour: what’s a “New Town”?

As the name says, a “New Town” is quite literally an entirely “new” town built from scratch, a large-scale housing development but complete with all necessary services (schools and other education facilites, hospitals, sports centers) as well as shops and other commercial facilties, technically self-contained (if not self-sufficient) and built relatively isolated from existing urban fabbric.

In Japan, “New Towns” are a hallmark of the post-war economic miracle from the 1960s up to the late 1980s – their construction was intitated to accomodate the rapidly expanding population of major metropolitan areas, wich at the time was ballooning due to the masses of people moving from the relatively impoverished countryside, but unable to be fully accomodated due to a shortage of housing stock (partly also as a legacy of wartime bombing), and often inadequate even when present – consisting of dilapdated, cramped “Machiya” houses with wood framing and roof tiling. “New Towns” were seen as the solution, being neatly and orderly-planned developments, consisting almost entirely of “Danchi” medium- and high-rise apartment blocks (derived from Soviet practice). 

 As the focal point of these “New Towns” was to essentially be “Bedroom Communities”, serving people commuting to work in the city and back, the connection with the city itself was of utmost importance, with railway lines being 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, some limitations became apparent, in the form of the land’s natural geography: Tokyo’s western side was already railway-wise extremely well-developed, but the same area is also rather hilly, limiting chances to expand without undergoing expensive and time-consuming land adjustment works (basically flattening hills and mountains – actual environmental concerns would come only in a decade or so). The only favourable site had been already occupied by Tama New Town, and with no end in sight to the urban population boom, an alternative had to be found.

This alternative came on the other side of Tokyo, all the way in Chiba prefecture: unlike it’s southern counterpart, with a coastline littered with industries, the northern portion of Chiba prefecture always was relatively underdeveloped and almost entirely rural, plus an essentially flat landscape meant that the urban planners in charge of designing the new town could be handed over the closest possible real-life equivalent to a clean slate.

The location was cemented also thanks to another major project – the New Tokyo International Airport, today’s Narita Airport, wich was to be built on government-onwed land north-east of Narita City, also in Chiba Prefecture. As such, per joint agreement between the National Government, the Chiba Prefectural Government and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (wich had major stakes in both project, as the two were being essentially being built for itself), the “Chiba New Town” was to be placed along the “corridor” linking the New Tokyo International Airport to Tokyo city itself.

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.

As New Town were major pubblic works projects, major pubblic corporations were in charge, with the overarching entity for Chiba New Town being the “Japan Housing Corporation”, a national government-owned pubblic corporation tasked with managing pubblic housing stock and most urban-planning related matters, including new towns. Using funding from the three government entities concerned (National, Tokyo Metropolitan and Chiba Prefectural), the Japan Housing Corporation was to build essentially the entire town itself.

The railway issue was instead solved differently, as Chiba Prefecture and Keisei Railway forming essentially a joint-venture company: Hokuso Railway. 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. Keisei Railway (onto whose network Hokuso Railway trains were intended to trough-run to reach Tokyo) 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 Hokuso Railway, 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, with financial hardships looming on Hokuso Railway itself, the National, Tokyo Metropolitan and Chiba Prefectural governments entrusted the Japan Housing Corporation with the rest of the railway project itself.

Thus, after passing some necessary administrative and bureaucratic steps, Japan’s pubblic housing corporation became a full-fledged railway company as well, being restructured from the “Japan Housing Pubblic Corporation” to the “Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation”, reflecting the agency’s widened scope.

HUDC’s first railway line, the first portion of the second phase of Chiba New Town’s railway, the four Kilometers between Komuro and Chiba-Newtown-Chuo stations, finally opened for regular services on the 19th of March 1984 as the “Kodan” Line (“Kodan” being Japanese for “Pubblic Corporation”) – in contrast to the rest of the line to Kita-Hatsuomi, named as the “Hokuso Line”. (the two lines however remained operationally seamless, with all services trough-running between the two).

HUDC was a railway company by all means, but had no personnel of it’s own: trains were driven and tracks were maintained by Hokuso Railway employees – HUDC being essentially just the owner of two trains and the trackage between Komuro and Chiba-New Town Chuo on wich they (also) ran.

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). In the same year, as the rural-to-urban immigration finally started to relent after two decades, the grandous “340’000 residents” original forecast quickly became more and more irrealistical and the plans for Chiba New Town were modified and shrunk to a forecast of 176’000 residents, just a little more than half the original estimate.

March 1991 saw the second biggest change in the line(s)’ operational history, as the 12,7Km section between Kita-Hatsuomi and Keisei-Takasago was finally opened, allowing for the commencment of trough-services between the Hokuso-Kodan Line, the Keisei Line, the Toei Asakusa Line and Keikyu Railway’s Main Line, enabling direct services between Chiba New Town and Tokyo’s city center.  1995 saw a further extension of the Hokuso-Kodan Line, this time eastwards, adding 4,7Km to Inzai-Makinohara, still as part of “Phase 2” and thus built and owned by HUDC, but operated by Hokuso Railway.

 In 2000, “Phase 2” was finally completed, with the final section of the Hokuso-Kodan Line opened to Imba-Nihon-Idai on the 22nd of July 2000, serving the namesake Medical University and adding 5Km more to the total trackage count.

However, as the 1980s had came 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 – the “New Towns” had successfully completed their “mission”.

Thus, 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. In 1999, the Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation was extensively reformed, morphing into the “Urban Development Pubblic Corporation”, reflecting the dwindling importance pubblic housing projects had. The new UDC however still inherited and maintained all the assets of the HUDC, including the rolling stock and trackage.

The UDC however was always intended to be a sort of a “temporary entity”, useful to take some time to evaluate wich was to be the path that the agency should be following in the future. As the Japanese economy started to stagnate in the post-bubble era, the answer came in 2004: the once rather powerful former HUDC was considerably downsized and restructured into the “Urban Renaissance” agency, yet again reflecting it’s changed scope: from now on, the new UR was just to manage the areas built by it’s predecessors, focusing on redevelopment and regeneration of existing buildings; large-scale developments and “New Towns” were to be a thing of the past, glorious, but gone.

As part of the reformation and downsizing, UR sought to sell off or hand over all unnecessary, superfluous or, simply, “unusual” assets acquired by it’s predecessors – the “railway sector” being the foremost candidate. As such, in 2004, all of HUDC’s owned rolling stock and trackage was spun off and trasnferred to a newly-created company, Chiba Newtown Railway, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Keisei Railway, wich began operations on the 16th of March of the same year.

Chiba New Town Railway as a company was however the diametrical opposite of HUDC, being nothing more than a legal entity with some rolling stock and trackage attached: it has no personnel of it’s own, and not even a website or a logo – it exists essentially only to provide a legal owner to it’s rolling stock and infrastructure.

As of today, Chiba New Town Railway still is the legal owner of the HUDC-built section of the Hokuso Line, between Komuro and Imba-Nihon-Idai, as well as five electric multiple unit trains, wich are leased to Hokuso Railway and are thus in the latter’s “availability fleet”.

Given that Chiba New Town Railway is little more than a legal entity, all services on the whole Hokuso Line are operated by Hokuso Railway, using both Hokuso-owned trains and trackcage as well as Chiba New Town-owned trains and trackage.

In standard practice, Hokuso Railway runs local services, also operated with Chiba New Town Railway rolling stock, from Narita Airport, onto the whole 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.

Note: the light-blue logo shown above is the Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation’s one – as stated in the above text, Chiba New Town Railway has no logo of it’s own.

 

Trivia #1

While Chiba New Town Railway doesn’t have any actual railway personnel, it has a grand total of two official employees: the president and the general director, both de-jure figures appointed from a pool of Keisei officials.

The company’s main and only office is also registered within the same building that houses Keisei Railway’s headquarters – this being of course a legally required “on paper” adress – no actual Chiba New Town Railway headquarter exists.

 

Trivia #2:

Chiba Newtown Railway is a fully-owned subsidiary of Keisei Railway, and it leases tracks and rolling stock to Hokuso Railway, wich is 50% owned by Keisei Railway. 

In other words, Keisei Railway is paying part of the leasing costs to itself.

Trivia #3:

Out of the various small “heritages” of the HUDC era, one of the most interesting ones is the fact that, depsite having shed any direct participation in transport operations for near two decades, the successor to the HUDC, the Urban Renaissance Agency still owns 17,27% of Hokuso Railway’s shares.

Trivia #4:

The actual population of Chiba New Town ended up being only about 100’000 residents (105’908 as of today), less than a third of what was originally forecast in the 1970s.

 

 

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