Tokyo, Japan: Japan conjures up images of high tech rail travel in vehicles such as the Bullet Train or Shinkansen in Japanese. The Central Japan Railway Company describes the Bullet Train on its web page as "an amalgamation of Japanese aesthetics and cutting-edge technology and symbol of Japan." However, when it comes to describing light rail engineering, in Tokyo at least, this perception of modern Japanese technology is not automatically true.

Unfortunately, a lot of Tokyo’s once extensive light rail system that at its peak in 1955 carried more than 600,000 passengers a day, has been dug-up, disappeared or relegated to the sidelines. Nowadays, in Tokyo only two streetcar lines remain in operation. The Toden Arakawa Line and The Tokyo Setagaya Line.

Toden Arakawa Line

The Toden Arakawa Line is managed and operated by The Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation.

The Oji Electric Tram Company as a part of their once extensive network originally built the Toden Arakawa Line. The oldest section, which is the one still operating today, was opened in 1913.

The line was under threat of closure along with the rest of Tokyo's streetcar system in the 1960s when lines 27 (Minowabashi-Akabane) and 32 (Arakawa-Waseda) were merged to form the route that runs nowadays. The line was sold to the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation in 1974, which renamed it the Toden Arakawa Line

The Toden system at its zenith had 41 routes and 213 kilometres of track. However, as in many countries the increasing dependence on automobiles resulted in fewer passengers making the network uneconomic. And between 1967 and 972, 181 km of track was discarded as the emphasis turned to bus and subway transportation.

Although it is characterized as a streetcar the Arakawa Line almost never ventures into the heavy Tokyo traffic. Its more like a railway line in that the track crosses streets at only one point and as such does not have to contend with traffic lights, jams or pedestrians crossing the tracks.

The Toden Arakawa Line operates 8500 and 7000 series trams and runs between Minowabashi Station and Waseda Station. It runs along Meiji Street between Asuka-yama Station and Oji Eki-mae Station. The driver only operated streetcars make the 12.2 km trip in 50 minutes.

The Toden Arakawa Line operates in northern and eastern Tokyo, in areas that tourists usually do not see as the streetcar takes passengers way off the main beaten tracks and tourist attractions of this huge maze of a metropolis

Tokyo Setagaya Line

The Tokyo Setagaya Line is managed and operated by Tokyu Corporation and runs from Sangen-Jaya to Shimo-Takaido, entirely within Setagaya area of Tokyo.

The Setagaya line is all that remains of the 1907 Tamagawa tram network that once stretched from Shibuya out past the Tama River, but was dismantled in 1969. The Setagaya Line, connecting Sangen-jaya and Shimo-takaido was completed in 1925 as a branch route of the Tamagawa Tram Line.

The Setagaya line makes the 5km, ten-stop journey from Sangenjaya to Shimo-Takaido in 17 minutes, winding its way at a leisurely pace through quiet suburbs on Tokyo’s on a line that time and seems to have forgotten.

The Setagaya Line operates the 300 series trams that went into service in 1999. The tram is articulated and made-up of two cars that were built by the Tokyu Railway Division part of the Tokyu Car Corporation

As to the future of light rail in Japan, it seems a pity that at a time when Japan is facing an energy crisis, with declining oil stocks and doubts about nuclear power (Fukoshima), that a country which is so technologically advanced, has turned its back on an environmentally friendly and economically proven form of transport. Given that many parts of the world are thinking once again of reintroducing light rail engineering, maybe Japan should be looking anew at how to re-capitalise and benefit from this field.