FEATURE
T
he skies above Tokyo and the surrounding area are about to get a lot busier. Over the next year or so, a combination of new airports and upgraded facilities at existing airports could change the way Kanto residents travel to and from the region. For starters, Tokyo’s Haneda Airport is on course to open a fourth runway in the fall of 2010. This addition is expected to increase the airport’s operational capacity from just under 300,000 landings and takeoffs a year to 407,000 by 2017 and, along with a new international terminal slated to open this December, help Haneda in its continuing internationalization. At the same time, Narita International Airport in Chiba Prefecture, the nation’s rather inconveniently located main international airport, which opened in 1978, is not only in the process of having its second runway extended to accommodate larger aircraft and increase the airport’s capacity, but also about to get a new high-speed rail link that promises to shave 15 minutes off the travel time into Tokyo.
Approximately 230 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, in Shizuoka Prefecture, the Kanto region’s makeover will begin with the opening of Mount Fuji Shizuoka Airport this June, and will continue to the north, in Ibaraki Prefecture, in the shape of Ibaraki Airport, which is scheduled to open for domestic and international service in March 2010 after being converted from a Self-Defense Force airfield. Substantial changes like these, though, don’t come cheap. The total cost of redeveloping Ibaraki and adding associated facilities will run to ¥50 billion, a sum that pales against the ¥190 billion being spent on Shizuoka, the ¥126 billion for the Narita Rapid Railway and the staggering ¥598 billion the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT) originally allotted for Haneda’s fourth runway. The investment is heavy, but is the money being well spent? The governments of Shizuoka and Ibaraki’s prefectures, which are sharing the costs of their projects with MLIT, seem to think so. Tomohisa Iwase of Shizuoka Prefecture’s Airport
Destination Tokyo 27