Life is Getting Fast -- Odakyu Line

[bill937ca]

 

Taken between Odakyu line Mukogaoka amusement ~ Ikuta Station about 1 hour.

[JR 500系]

That's nice! I like how there's a safety personal at the crossings to guide pedestrians and vehicles through....

[Kabutoni]

That's nice! I like how there's a safety personal at the crossings to guide pedestrians and vehicles through....

 

Those are the Midori no Obāchan/Ojīsan that guide elementary school kids (sometimes JHS as well) on their way to school. These are typically seen everywhere on street routes with green pedestrian zone strips. They are usually there before school starts and when the majority of the classes (mostly for 1st and 2nd graders) end. Depending on the day, there sometimes also is a police observation or assistant unit present (usually the chaps from the local Kōban). When I bring the little one to daycare, I also see them and have developed a friendly relationship with a few of them I see every day. :)

[cteno4]

That's nice you can get to know folks doing work like that in your hood, makes everyone feel better and I sure helps with job satisfaction with friendly appreciation and makes the job more personal to them and they do it more diligently. Nice for your son (and you) to form nice relationship with someone looking out for his safety. Win-win-win!

 

Jeff

[Sacto1985]

And here's the real-time speed version of that same video:

 

[railsquid]

Gotta say that line has become fast - I went for a long-overdue trip on it to see how things are coming along and erroneously boarded the first train which stopped at Shimokitazawa in the assumption that all non-Romance cars stop at Seijo Gakuenmae (well it used to be like that when I lived there). However it turned out to be a kaisoku-kyuko or something unfamilar which whisked me all the way to Shin-Yurigaoka in a surprisingly short time.

[Kabutoni]

The Odakyū Odawara line has become really really fast. From our home station (Sagamiōno) to Shinjuku, it takes only 30 friggin' minutes with the Rapid Express (kaisoku-kyūkō). During the off-peak hours it only runs once per hour or so, so you're most of the time forced to take the 40 min. Express (kyūkō) with an extra stop at Noborito. However, the late evening Express trains are maybe the most impressive runs, as these constantly travel at top speed to maximise station layover.

 

And yes, getting to know your local neighbours is great! We live in a still relatively rural, secular, neighbourhood, as there are still quite a lot of farming fields strewn around. I think it has to do with this being a riverbank neighbourhood that first got sewer connections in the late seventies, and was known as a Korean 'ghetto' until the mid-eighties (yes, I've been doing some research). This stigma has since vanished, but still traces of it can be found, such as family names and shop names which remind of Korean origins. A very interesting setting to live in, but because this has vanished, there are no Korean restaurants or eateries to be found... :( Anyway, knowing your surroundings is a great thing, sicne if something happens, at least you won't be a stranger in your own place.

[bikkuri bahn]

According to the video maker, the express towards the end of the video stops because the local service ahead of it had not cleared the siding at Mukogaoka and was entering the mainline late.  But apparently the express was able to arrive on time at same station.

 

I like these type of videos, which stay static on one spot, and take in whatever moves in and out of the field of view.  Helps that trains have variety but also an organized way of appearing in a scene- you can learn alot about the operations of a railway by analyzing what you see in that spot (I recall this is how scientific observation is done).

 

 A very interesting setting to live in, but because this has vanished, there are no Korean restaurants or eateries to be found.

 

Back in the day, few Japanese ate Korean food (basically anyone before the baby boomers didn't touch it).  You had to go to the Korean ghettos such as in Kawasaki to get any.  Of course now there are Korean BBQ places (of varying quality) everywhere, and kimchi and kimchi base products can be found in any supermarket.  By the way, you can get really good Korean BBQ in Tsuruhashi in Osaka, which might be one of those original ghettos.

[kvp]

Sagami-Ono to Shinjuku is around 32.4 km, so in 30 minutes that's an average of 1 km / minute or 60 km/h with 4 stops, so with a dwell time of 2 minutes each, that's 22 minutes or an average speed of 88.2 km/h, a bit shy of the 100 km/h top speed of the trains This is good and in line with most modern european s-bahn and JR East sets that can run at 120-160 km/h.

[Sacto1985]

The Odakyū Odawara line has become really really fast. From our home station (Sagamiōno) to Shinjuku, it takes only 30 friggin' minutes with the Rapid Express (kaisoku-kyūkō). During the off-peak hours it only runs once per hour or so, so you're most of the time forced to take the 40 min. Express (kyūkō) with an extra stop at Noborito. However, the late evening Express trains are maybe the most impressive runs, as these constantly travel at top speed to maximise station layover.

 

And yes, getting to know your local neighbours is great! We live in a still relatively rural, secular, neighbourhood, as there are still quite a lot of farming fields strewn around.

 

If I remember correctly, the Odakyū Odawara line has always been quite fast given that when the first Odakyū Romancecar trainssets went into operation on this line in 1957, they were probably the fastest trains in Japan when a test trainset exceeded 145 km/h on certain stretches of this line. Indeed, on the four-track stretches of this line, it feels like the train must be going around 130 km/h.

 

Based on that zenmen tenbou video of a train trip on the JR East Sagami Line I posted many months ago, that area along the Sagami River is still not exactly what you call "urban."

[bikkuri bahn]

trivia: the max line speed for revenue services on the Odakyu Main Line (and Enoshima Line) is 110km/h (this is for ltd. expresses, it's 100km/h for the rest). 

 

This has the various revenue service line speeds for the major private railways in the Tokyo area:

http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/yotajii/62776092.html

[Kabutoni]

The Odakyū Odawara line was built with straight speed in mind, as it refrains from having tight curves at critical points. Where there are low speed curves, this couldn't have been avoided due to the geography, or are tight because speeds wouldn't be reached anyway (e.g. sections before and after major stations). IIRC only since a decade (or two?), commuter trains have become as fast as they are now.

 

Based on that zenmen tenbou video of a train trip on the JR East Sagami Line I posted many months ago, that area along the Sagami River is still not exactly what you call "urban."

 

The Sagami Line isn't very representative of Sagamihara-shi as a whole, as it has less than half of its stations in actual Sagamihara-shi (which is a part of the Sagami area). These stations are also on the westernmost part, along the Sagami River, which is farthest away from the Metropolitan area. Hence the short trains, low speeds and rural surroundings. Our little (neighbour)hood, is still rural, not because it's physically far away and hard to reach, but because it has been socially secluded. Hence, we have humble vegetable patties and farmers houses next to super expensive 30 floor apartment buildings. All the other parts (at least mostly in Minami-ku and Chūō-ku) have quite well built-up residential areas and commercial hubs around the stations.

[railsquid]

The Odakyū Odawara line was built with straight speed in mind, as it refrains from having tight curves at critical points. Where there are low speed curves, this couldn't have been avoided due to the geography, or are tight because speeds wouldn't be reached anyway (e.g. sections before and after major stations). IIRC only since a decade (or two?), commuter trains have become as fast as they are now.

 

The section say from Noborito to Shinjuku was always fairly slow because it was running at capacity along a typical unmodernised urban route with lots of level crossings. The quadrupling, which has been ongoing in stages since the early 1990s, has gradually speeded things up, it won't be much longer before the last remaining section (the slow lines between Umegaoka and Yoyogi-Uehara) are complete, which will finally relieve the Shimokitazawa bottleneck.

[Sacto1985]

And now, here are the 2016 editions of this video shoot, done by the same YouTube member (e5332819):

 

Real time:

 

 

Speeded up 10x:

 

[bikkuri bahn]

That's a sensitive mic being used.