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There was an interesting issue with a rail connection on the Narita International Airport serving Tokyo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narita_International_Air

There was an interesting issue with a rail connection on the Narita International Airport serving Tokyo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narita_International_Airport#Construction_and_local_resistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narita_International_Airport#C... The airport was build in big style on the 60s on farmland forcefully bought from local farmers and should have been served by a Shinkansen high speed line directly from Tokyo station, making it's 50+ km distance from the city center an non-issue! Lets say this did not go well with the farmers, who felt their rightful possession was forcefully taken and started what was effectively a major guerilla warfare campaign against the airport. There was a lot of sabotage, arson, general attacks and even high towers built near the Airport edge on still private land. Over the years the airport project managed to prevail and the situation mostly quieted down (there is actually still one farmer quietly farmer who never sold tending his farm in the middle of the airport grounds, complete with a route access tunnel!). Still, there was the problem of actually getting to the airport from Tokyo - no one wanted to risk another war with farmers for the land needed to build the Shinkansen line to the airport, so it ended up with a fully built Shinkansen station under the airport but no rail actually connecting to it. This got even more bizzare over the years as private railway companies creeped with their conventional lines ever closer to the airport yet the airport staunchly prevented anyone from using their shiny useless station with unworthy non-shinkansen trains. The situation was untenable long term, with travelers having to travel to a nearby train station and then take a bus to the airport, causing delays. So finally in 1991 after immense political pressure the first rail connection to the airport opened and these days 3 different rail lines serve the airport, including a non-shinkanse high speed train that takes you to the center of Tokyo in 45 minutes with 160 km top speed (~ 1/2 of what modern shinkansen can do).

mattm 6y ago
Wow, thanks for the background on this. I lived in Japan previously and I had always assumed that there was no Shinkansen to Narita due to airline lobbying. Most international flights go through Tokyo. If you live in Nagoya or Osaka and a direct Shinkansen connection was available to Narita for your international flight, I think a lot of people would choose to take the Shinkansen to/from the airport rather than the domestic flight.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  Osaka has plenty of international flights. I don’t think they are served by a shinkansen either, though definitely by a lot more trains than Narita.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Part of the lessons learned by Japan at Narita was that a flat land parcel big enough for an airport is extremely difficult to assemble, extremely unpopular to assemble, and will probably be located way too far out to be convenient. After all, Haneda is still the busier airport today. So now new airports tend to get built as artificial islands, since you are probably not trampling on anyone’s centuries-long family farm.
    - throwaheyy 6y ago
      There’s still a taxiway at Narita which has a kink in the middle of it that blocks use of the adjacent runway when any plane is travelling on it. The kink is there because of a parcel of private land that the owner refuses to sell. Link: https://goo.gl/maps/G83NUkot4i7JwwWBA https://goo.gl/maps/G83NUkot4i7JwwWBA
      - m4rtink 6y ago
        Well, there is that whole farm enveloped by the airport: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7828401,140.3896393,403m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en-AU https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7828401,140.3896393,403m/dat... BBC article/video: https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p08kz96l/the-man-living-at-an-international-airport https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p08kz96l/the-man-living-at-an...
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  It also didn’t help that by the 90s the JNR was so burdened with Shinkansen debt that the government took on all the debt in a dedicated bad bank and privatized the rest. Now Haneda is taking international flights again so the point is moot. I think there is enough demand for both to exist, but Narita’s current situation is just a touch better than Montreal Mirabel.
hef19898 6y ago
You don't need guerilla farmers to end up in a situation like that. MUC, the Munich airport, has two rather shitty metro lines connecting it to Munich. These lines aren't even direct ones, instead they have stops at every tree and milk bottle. Once they had a test with an ICE train stopping at the MUC metro train station. Worked like a charm. Well, but politicians wanted the Transrapid, so no conventional train connection was done. Direct metro connections, which would already be fast enough for most purposes, usually vet shut down by disputes between the city of Munich, the counties of Erding and Freising, various political parties and DB (the German train company).
- Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
  What really confused me when I visited Munich is that those two S-bahn lines pass through the centre in opposite directions on their way to the airport. The airport is northeast of the city. All of the S-bahn lines pass through the centre of the city in a roughly east-west direction, and all the central stations have two S-bahn platforms- one for trains going west, one for trains going east. If you want to take the S-bahn to the airport from the central station, you either take the S8 going east (towards Karlsplatz) or the S1 going west (towards Hackerbruecke).

mattm 6y ago

Wow, thanks for the background on this. I lived in Japan previously and I had always assumed that there was no Shinkansen to Narita due to airline lobbying. Most international flights go through Tokyo. If you live in Nagoya or Osaka and a direct Shinkansen connection was available to Narita for your international flight, I think a lot of people would choose to take the Shinkansen to/from the airport rather than the domestic flight.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago
Osaka has plenty of international flights. I don’t think they are served by a shinkansen either, though definitely by a lot more trains than Narita.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Part of the lessons learned by Japan at Narita was that a flat land parcel big enough for an airport is extremely difficult to assemble, extremely unpopular to assemble, and will probably be located way too far out to be convenient. After all, Haneda is still the busier airport today. So now new airports tend to get built as artificial islands, since you are probably not trampling on anyone’s centuries-long family farm.
  - throwaheyy 6y ago
    There’s still a taxiway at Narita which has a kink in the middle of it that blocks use of the adjacent runway when any plane is travelling on it. The kink is there because of a parcel of private land that the owner refuses to sell. Link: https://goo.gl/maps/G83NUkot4i7JwwWBA https://goo.gl/maps/G83NUkot4i7JwwWBA
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Well, there is that whole farm enveloped by the airport: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7828401,140.3896393,403m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en-AU https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7828401,140.3896393,403m/dat... BBC article/video: https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p08kz96l/the-man-living-at-an-international-airport https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p08kz96l/the-man-living-at-an...
bobthepanda 6y ago
It also didn’t help that by the 90s the JNR was so burdened with Shinkansen debt that the government took on all the debt in a dedicated bad bank and privatized the rest. Now Haneda is taking international flights again so the point is moot. I think there is enough demand for both to exist, but Narita’s current situation is just a touch better than Montreal Mirabel.

hef19898 6y ago

You don't need guerilla farmers to end up in a situation like that. MUC, the Munich airport, has two rather shitty metro lines connecting it to Munich. These lines aren't even direct ones, instead they have stops at every tree and milk bottle. Once they had a test with an ICE train stopping at the MUC metro train station. Worked like a charm. Well, but politicians wanted the Transrapid, so no conventional train connection was done. Direct metro connections, which would already be fast enough for most purposes, usually vet shut down by disputes between the city of Munich, the counties of Erding and Freising, various political parties and DB (the German train company).

Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
What really confused me when I visited Munich is that those two S-bahn lines pass through the centre in opposite directions on their way to the airport. The airport is northeast of the city. All of the S-bahn lines pass through the centre of the city in a roughly east-west direction, and all the central stations have two S-bahn platforms- one for trains going west, one for trains going east. If you want to take the S-bahn to the airport from the central station, you either take the S8 going east (towards Karlsplatz) or the S1 going west (towards Hackerbruecke).