The list of urban rail systems in Japan lists
urban rail transit systems in Japan, organized by metropolitan area (都市圏), including number of stations, length (km), and average daily and annual ridership volume. Data is shown only for those areas designated as major metropolitan areas (大都市圏) by the
Statistics Bureau of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Considerations
There are several considerations for the data presented in this list.
Station count
Data is broken down at the line level, then rolled up for each specific railway operator. The total station count for each operator is a "unique station" count—an
interchange or transfer station between two lines operated by the same company is counted as a single station. As a result, summing together the station counts for all of the lines under a single railway operator will generally yield a value greater than the total station count cited for the operator.
Some station pairs are officially considered interchanges by their respective railway operators despite having different names (e.g.,
Tameike-Sannō and
Kokkai-gijidō-mae on the
Tokyo Metro and
Tenjin and
Tenjin-Minami on the
Fukuoka City Subway). As such stations have different names, however, they are counted as separate stations in this list.
Length
In a similar fashion to the station count, length is counted as route kilometers, but only considers "unique" segments. The following considerations are relevant for the lengths referenced in the tables.
Intra-company considerations
Generally, multiple-track sections classified under the same line name and without operational segregation into separate lines are only counted once, not twice. Examples include the
quadruple-track sections of the
Keihan Main Line and
Tōbu Isesaki Line, which are only counted once because fast (i.e., limited-stop) and slow (i.e., local or all-stop) services are branded together as a single line, not separately as distinct lines.
Other cases include
double junctions where a double-track
branch line ties into a double-track
main line, permitting interlining of the branch line with the main line. Examples include
Keiō Sagamihara Line trains that continue past
Chōfu Station onto the
Keiō Line. In this situation, the trackage of the Keiō Sagamihara Line is counted as only the section between Chōfu and
Hashimoto Station, while the double-track section east of Chōfu is counted under the Keiō Line, following traditional conventions for railway line nomenclature in Japan.
Likewise, double-track segments shared by lines under the same operator are only counted once. Examples include the
Yamanote Freight Line between
Ikebukuro and
Ōsaki, a segment shared by the
Saikyō Line and
Shōnan-Shinjuku Line. In this situation, the trackage is counted only once, under the Saikyō Line. Similarly, tabulations for the larger tram systems with a high degree of interlining, such as
Hiroshima Electric Railway, also consider only unique segments, and sections where multiple routes overlap are only counted once.
However, if there is some reasonable segregation of operations or distinction between lines, the trackage is counted more than once. Examples include the various quadruple-track sections of
East Japan Railway Company (JR East) that provide segregated local and rapid services (e.g.,
Chūō Rapid Line vs.
Chūō-Sōbu Line). Here, the route-kilometers are counted twice, once under the Chūō Rapid Line and again under the local Chūō-Sōbu Line.
Other situations include quadruple-track sections at the confluence of two distinct double-track lines, such as the
Ōsaka Uehommachi –
Fuse quadruple-track section of the
Kintetsu network in central
Ōsaka, officially designated as part of the
Osaka Line but actually two lines (the Osaka Line and
Nara Line) sharing a single
right-of-way west of Fuse. A similar situation applies for many JR East lines—the
Yamanote Line and
Keihin-Tōhoku Line officially use tracks classified as part of the
Tōkaidō Main Line and
Tōhoku Main Line, but that are fully segregated from the tracks used by the respective services operating under the names "Tōkaidō Line" and "
Utsunomiya Line" / "
Takasaki Line".
Cross-company considerations
As a general rule, trackage used by one company but owned by another company as part of a
trackage rights or
Through Train (直通運転) (often translated as through-service) agreement is not counted under the first company. For example, trackage on the
Toei Asakusa Line is not counted under
Keikyu Corporation, Keisei Electric Railway, or the
Hokusō Railway, despite the fact that all three operate their trains on the Asakusa Line. However, this list makes some exceptions to this rule, the most notable being the
Keisei-Takasago –
Inba-Nihon-Idai section of the
Keisei Narita Airport Line, which is shared with trains operated by Hokusō Railway but owned partially by Hokusō Railway (Keisei-Takasago –
Komuro) and
Chiba New Town Railway (Komuro – Inba-Nihon-Idai). This shared trackage is counted once under Hokusō Railway and again under Keisei Electric Railway.
Similar exceptions include trackage owned by third-sector railways that do not own any of their own rolling stock and instead contract out train operations to through-servicing operators. Notable examples include the double-track approach into
Narita Airport, which is owned by the third-sector
Narita Airport Rapid Railway. All trains on this railway, however, are operated by either JR East or Keisei Electric Railway, with each operator getting dedicated usage of one of the two tracks into the Airport. In this situation, the JR East single-track section is counted in the JR total, while the Keisei single-track section is counted in the Keisei total.
Ridership
Both average daily and annual ridership are included, because only average daily ridership or annual ridership (not both) is available for some operators. In cases where data for only one of the two is available, care has been taken to not extrapolate the passenger volume to obtain the other, as there is a potential margin of error when attempting to derive average daily ridership from annual ridership (which is usually rounded to the nearest thousand passengers) and natural disasters or other unforeseen situations may force some operators to shut down for extended periods of time, as happened with the
Sendai Subway in the days following the
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
Categories
For readability and ease of comparison across metropolitan areas, systems within each metropolitan area are broken down into the following categories:
Subways are divided into two types: publicly operated and privately owned, and are grouped together with each other regardless of ownership. See 日本の地下鉄 for more details.
Publicly operated subways (公営地下鉄): Systems generally considered "subways" and operated directly by government agencies at the city (e.g.,
Kobe Municipal Subway) or prefecture (e.g.,
Toei Subway) level.
Privately owned subways (民営地下鉄): Systems generally considered "subways" that are owned by private operators (e.g.,
Tokyo Metro), as well as
third-sector (semi-public) subways (e.g.,
Minatomirai Line).
Semi-major private railways (準大手私鉄): Any of the eight private railways considered by the
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and others to be intermediate in size, smaller than the major private railways but larger in scale than the medium and small private railways (中小私鉄). Examples include
Shin-Keisei Electric Railway and
Sanyo Electric Railway. Like the major private railways, they provide critical urban rail service in the metropolitan areas.
Japan Rail metropolitan network: Urban rail services operated by Japan Rail Group companies. While JR Group companies administer networks spanning multiple regions and operate various long-distance and intercity services such as
limited expresses and
Shinkansenhigh-speed rail, services in metropolitan areas are often focused on providing urban and suburban transit. JR East, for example, is the largest single urban rail operator in the world, carrying around 14 million passengers daily on its extensive rail network in Greater Tokyo.[1]
Other major railways: Any other major railways not fitting any of the above four categories. Examples include the
Tsukuba Express and the
Enoshima Electric Railway.
Other minor railways: Any other systems which provide rail service in the metropolitan area but do not fall into the above categories. Examples include tourist-heavy lines like the
Disney Resort Line (a
monorail line primarily serving the
Tokyo Disney Resort), local people mover systems such as the
Yamaman Yūkarigaoka Line (a small
automated guideway transit system primarily serving to connect a
new town development with a major suburban railway station), or other minor systems like the
Mizuma Railway (a minor private railway in suburban Osaka).
List
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(May 2019)
^Operated with buses, but also classified as a railway.
^Defined here as the
Suicacoverage area (as of 2012.05.31) in the Niigata area, omitting the
Jōetsu Shinkansen. The Suica coverage area is identical in scope to
JR East's Niigata Suburban Area (新潟近郊区間)
^Annual ridership for Kintetsu includes passengers on lines outside of the Osaka‒Kobe‒Kyoto area, including lines in the Greater Nagoya area.
^Defined as the JR West Osaka Suburban Area ([1]) for fare calculation purposes, omitting Shinkansen sections, all within
JR West's Urban Network (アーバンネットワーク) (as of 31 July 2019).
^Defined here as the
TOICAcoverage area (as of 2012.05.30) east of
Toyohashi, together with the
Kannami ‒
Atami section of the
Tōkaidō Main Line and the
Nishi-Fujinomiya ‒
Shibakawa section of the
Minobu Line.
JR Central has no suburban area (近郊区間) defined for the Shizuoka‒Hamamatsu area for fare calculation purposes, and the TOICA coverage area is limited, with many trains continuing beyond the boundaries of the current coverage area.
^Defined here as
JR East's Tokyo Suburban Area (東京近郊区間) for fare calculation purposes, and roughly correlating with the
Suicacoverage area (as of 2012.03.17). However, Suica coverage does not extend to the
Karasuyama Line,
Kashima Line, and
Kururi Line, which are considered part of the Tokyo Suburban Area.