Hokuriku Shinkansen Extension Newly Seen Costing 1.7-7.9 T. Yen

Tokyo, June 19 (Jiji Press)--Japan's transport ministry on Friday showed new cost estimates for eight candidate routes for the planned extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen bullet train line between Tsuruga Station in the central prefecture of Fukui and Shin-Osaka Station in the western prefecture of Osaka.

Including future price rises, the estimated construction costs for the eight routes range from 1.7 trillion yen to 7.9 trillion yen. The estimates were presented to a meeting of a related committee between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party.

The cost for the main candidate route, connecting the Fukui city of Obama and Kyoto Station in Kyoto Prefecture, located between Fukui and Osaka, is projected at 5.5 trillion yen to 5.8 trillion yen, up from the originally estimated 2.1 trillion yen and from 4.8 trillion yen to 5.2 trillion yen projected by the ministry in 2024.

Least costly is the so-called Maibara route, which links Tsuruga with Maibara Station in Shiga Prefecture, south of Fukui and east of Kyoto, and allows passengers to transfer to the Tokaido Shinkansen Line, leading to Shin-Osaka, at Maibara. This route is now estimated to cost about 1.7 trillion yen.

Of the eight candidates, the cost-effectiveness ratio, calculated by dividing profits by construction costs, is the highest for the Obama-Kyoto route, estimated at 1.1, when the calculation is made for the whole of the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka stations. The ratio is put at 1.0 for the seven remaining candidate routes.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]