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hinjuku Station (新宿駅 - Shinjuku-eki) is a train station located in Shinjuku and Shibuya wards in Tokyo, Japan. Serving as the main connecting hub for rail traffic between central Tokyo and its western suburbs on inter-city rail, commuter rail and metro lines, the station was used by an average of 3.64 million people per day in 2007, making it the busiest train station in the world in terms of number of passengers. It is registered with Guinness World Records. Including an underground arcade, there are well over 200 exits.
The station is centered around facilities servicing the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) lines. These consist of 7 ground level island platforms (14 tracks) on a north-south axis, connected by two overhead and two underground concourses. Most JR services here are urban and suburban mass transit lines, although JR's intercity express services to Kōfu and Matsumoto on the Chūō Main Line, Narita Express to Narita Airport, and joint operations with Tobu Railway to Nikkō and Kinugawa Onsen also use this station. The JR section alone handles an average of 1.5 million passengers a day.
Odakyū
The terminus for the private Odakyu Odawara Line is parallel to the JR platforms on the west side, and handles an average of 490,000 passengers daily. This is a major commuter route stretching southwest through the suburbs and out towards the coastal city of Odawara and the mountains of Hakone. The 10 platforms are built on two levels beneath the Odakyu department store; 3 express service tracks (6 platforms) on the ground level and 2 tracks (4 platforms) on the level below. Each track has platforms on both sides in order to completely separate boarding and alighting passengers.
Toei Subway
The shared facilities for the Toei Shinjuku subway line and the Keiō New Line consist of 2 platforms stretching east-west 5 floors beneath Kōshū Kaidō avenue to the southwest of the JR section. The concourse is managed by Keio Electric Railway but is in a separate location to the main Keiō platforms. Further south (and deeper underground) are the 2 north-to-south Toei Ōedo subway line platforms.
Commercial facilities
Many department stores and shopping malls are built directly into the station. These include
- Lumine Est - above JR's east exit
- Odakyu department store - above the Odakyu line concourse
- Odakyu Mylord - above the southern end of Odakyu line concourse
- LUMINE 1 shopping mall - above the Keiō Line concourse
- LUMINE 2 shopping mall - above JR's south and Lumine exits
- Keio Department store - above the Keiō Line concourse
- Keio Mall - underground mall to the southwest of the Keiō Line concourse
- Odakyu Ace - underground malls beneath the bus terminal by the west exit.
In addition to the above, the Metro Promenade, which is an underground mall owned by Tokyo Metro, extends eastwards from the station beneath Shinjuku-dori avenue, all the way to the adjacent Shinjuku-sanchōme station with 60 exits along the way. The Metro Promenade in turn connects to Shinjuku Subnade, another underground shopping mall, which leads onto Seibu Railway's Seibu-Shinjuku station.
Shinjuku Station is connected by underground passageways and shopping malls to:
- Nishi-Shinjuku Station (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line)
- Seibu Shinjuku Station (Seibu Shinjuku Line)
- Shinjuku-nishiguchi Station (Toei Ōedo Line)
- Shinjuku-sanchōme Station (Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line, Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line, and Toei Shinjuku Line)
- Tochōmae Station (Toei Ōedo Line)
Bus terminals
There is a bus terminal at the west exit servicing both local and long-distance buses, and a JR Highway Bus terminal at the new south exit.
Average number of daily users
The average number of daily users at Shinjuku Station is 3,640,583 which is the most of any station in the world. The figure is a total of entering and exiting customers of each operator. Therefore, users who transfer between different operators' lines are counted twice.
History
Shinjuku Station opened in 1885 as a stop on Japan Railway's Akabane-Shinagawa line (now part of the Yamanote Line). Shinjuku was still a quiet community at the time and the station was not heavily trafficked at first. The opening of the Chūō Line (1889), Keiō Line (1915) and Odakyū Line (1923) led to increasing traffic through the station. Subway service began in 1959.
In August 1967, a freight train carrying jet fuel bound for the U.S. air base in Tachikawa derailed and caught fire on the Chūō Rapid tracks.
The station was a major site for student protests in 1968 and 1969, the height of civil unrest in postwar Japan.
There have been plans at various points in history to connect Shinjuku into the Shinkansen network, and the 1973 Shinkansen Basic Plan, still in force, specifies that the station should be the southern terminus of the Jōetsu Shinkansen line to Niigata. While construction of the Ōmiya-Shinjuku link never started and the Jōetsu line presently terminates in Tokyo Station, the right of way, including an area underneath the station, remains reserved.
On May 5, 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult attempted a chemical terrorist attack by setting off a cyanide gas device in a toilet in the underground concourse, barely a month after the gas attack on the Tokyo subway which killed 12 and injured thousands. This time the attack was thwarted by staff who extinguished the burning device.
Keiō Shinjuku Station
When the Keiō Line extended to Shinjuku in 1915, its terminal was located several blocks east of the government railway (presently JR) station. The terminal was first named Shinjuku-Oiwake Station (新宿追分駅) and was on the street near the Isetan department store. In 1927, the station was moved from the street to a newly-built terminal adjacent to the original station. The station building housed a department store. The station name was changed to Yotsuya-Shinjuku Station (四谷新宿駅) in 1930 and again to Keiō Shinjuku Station (京王新宿駅) in 1937.
The tracks from the terminal were on the Kōshū Kaidō highway, which crosses the Yamanote Line and the Chūō Line in front of the south entrance of Shinjuku Station by a bridge. The Keiō Line had a station for the access to Shinjuku Station, named Teishajō-mae Station (停車場前駅) and renamed in 1937 Shōsen Shinjuku Ekimae Station (省線新宿駅前駅).
In July 1945, the terminal of the Keiō Line was relocated to the present location, though on the ground level, on the west side of Shinjuku Station. Keiō Shinjuku Station and Shōsen Shinjuku Ekimae Station were closed. This was because the trains faced difficulty in climbing the slopes of the bridge after a transformer substation was destroyed by an air raid. The site of Keiō Shinjuku Station near Shinjuku-Sanchōme subway station is now occupied by two buildings owned by Keiō : Keiō Shinjuku Sanchōme Building and Keiō Shinjuku Oiwake Building.
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku_Station
Text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License
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