Tokyo Metro Ginza Line

The Nihongo|Ginza Line|銀座線|Ginza-sen is a metro line of Tokyo Metro in Tokyo, Japan. The official name is Nihongo|Line 3 Ginza Line|3号線銀座線|3-gōsen Ginza-sen. It is 14.3 km long, and serves the wards of Shibuya, Minato, Chūō, Chiyoda and Taitō.

On maps, diagrams and signboards, the line is shown with coloured circle or line of orange , and its stations are given numbers following the letter "G".

History

The Ginza Line began as the brainchild of a businessman named Nihongo|Noritsugu Hayakawa|早川徳次, who visited London in 1914, saw the London Underground and concluded that Tokyo needed its own underground railway. He founded the Nihongo|Tokyo Underground Railway|東京地下鉄道|Tōkyō Chika Tetsudō in 1920, and began construction in 1925.

The portion between ja-stalink|Ueno and ja-stalink|Asakusa was completed on December 30, 1927 and publicized as "the first underground railway in the Orient." It was actually the first fully underground railway in East Asia. Upon its opening, the line was so popular that a passenger often had to wait more than two hours to get on a train for a five-minute trip.

In January 1, 1930, the subway was extended by 1.7 km to temporary Manseibashi Station, abandoned on November 21, 1931 when the subway reached ja-stalink|Kanda, 500 meters further down south the line. The capital crunch resulting from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 slowed down construction, but the line finally reached its originally planned terminus of ja-stalink|Shinbashi on June 21, 1934.

In 1938, the Nihongo|Tokyo Rapid Railway|東京高速鉄道|Tōkyō Kōsoku Tetsudō, a company tied to the predecessor of today's Tokyu Corporation, began service between ja-stalink|Shibuya and ja-stalink|Toranomon, later extended to Shinbashi in 1939. The two lines began through-service interoperation in 1939 and were formally merged as the Teito Rapid Transit Authority ("Eidan Subway" or "TRTA") in July 1941.

The "Ginza Line" name was applied in 1953 to distinguish the line from the new Marunouchi Line. In the postwar economic boom, the Ginza Line became increasingly crowded. The new Hanzōmon Line began to relieve the Ginza Line's traffic in the 1980s. The Ginza Line still is one of the Tokyo's most crowded, however, because its train cars are not long in sizes and it stops at numerous major stations.

Tameike-Sannō Station opened in 1997 to provide a connection to the new Namboku Line.

Rolling stock

The Ginza Line uses a total of 38 six-car 01 series EMUs which have a maximum speed of 80 km/h. Each car is 16 m long and 2.6 m wide, with three doors on each side. Both the Ginza Line and the Marunouchi Line run on standard gauge (1,435 mm) rails powered by a 600 V DC third rail, while the other Tokyo Metro lines run on narrow gauge (1,067 mm) rails and use 1,500 V DC overhead.

Cars are stored and inspected at the nihongo|Ueno Inspection Division|上野検車区|Ueno-kensha-ku, a facility located northeast of Ueno Station with both above-ground and underground tracks. The facility is capable of holding up to 20 6-car formations. Major inspections are carried out at Tokyo Metro's Nakano on the Marunouchi Line forwarding over a connecting track at Akasaka-Mitsuke.

Operation

Almost all Ginza Line trains operate on the line's full length from Asakusa to Shibuya. However, two trains depart in the early morning from Toranomon, and some late-night trains from Shibuya are taken out of service at Ueno.

On weekdays, trains run every two minutes in morning, and 2 minutes and 15 seconds in evening. It's same as holidays, the interval in afternoon is 3 minutes. This line is one of the most frequent served lines for passengers, like JR East Yamanote Line and Chūō Line. Its first trains start from Shibuya and Asakusa at 5:01 in early morning, and the last ones reach Shibuya at 0:37, and Asakusa at 0:39 in midnight.

tations

Being the oldest line, stations of the line are also the closest to the surface, generally no more than one and a half stories underground. The western tip of the line emerges to the surface, then entering on the third-floor (in Japanese sense, second floor in European sense) of a building in Shibuya, located in a depression.

ee also

References