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「開業時期の明示を」　リニア関係15市町村　JR東海に要望　／長野
“Request for Clear Opening Date” 15 Municipalities Along Linear Shinkansen Route Submit Request to JR Central / Nagano

Fifteen municipalities along the planned Chuo Shinkansen (maglev) route in southern Nagano Prefecture submitted requests to JR Tokai calling for earlier opening and a clear, stated opening date. The requests were raised at an annual opinion-exchange meeting held on January 14, 2026 in Iida City, convened by Nagano Prefecture and attended by mayors (or their representatives), prefectural officials, and JR Tokai Vice President Takanori Mizuno with relevant departments.

Municipal leaders also pressed for stronger secondary transportation links connecting to the future maglev station(s), anticipating post-opening passenger flows and regional mobility needs.

The meeting highlighted the widening gap between the project’s original assumptions and current reality. JR Tokai’s earlier plan had treated a 2017 start for the Shizuoka segment as a prerequisite for a 2027 opening, but construction delays across the project and the fact that the Shizuoka segment remains unstarted have complicated municipal planning. Local governments reported that uncertainty over timing is disrupting town planning and regional revitalization strategies built around the maglev.

Info based on: https://mainichi.jp/articles/20260116/d ... 20/045000c Accessed 2026-01-18

No One Knows When It’ll Open: Japan’s Maglev Hits a Tunneling Wall


Summary of もう誰にもリニア開業時期はわからない…着工11年､都市部で掘ったのは8キロ｢夢の超特急｣本当に完成するのか

Railway journalist Jun Umehara’s core claim is that no one—including JR Central—can responsibly state an opening date for the Linear Chuo Shinkansen right now, because a critical stretch still hasn’t even started and its start date remains undecided. The project’s Shinagawa–Nagoya segment broke ground on December 17, 2014 and originally targeted a 2027 opening, but that schedule collapsed as unresolved permitting and engineering constraints accumulated. A major reason is that the line is, by design, overwhelmingly underground: on the Shinagawa–Nagoya route (about 286.5 km), roughly 86%—around 246 km—is tunnel, making tunnel excavation the true pacing item for the entire program.

The single biggest bottleneck is the 25.0 km South Alps tunnel in Shizuoka Prefecture, where about 10.7 km remains unstarted because the prefecture has not granted approval amid environmental concerns. The article distinguishes among three concern areas—Oi River water, alpine ecosystem impacts, and spoil/soil handling—and notes that the Oi River water concern is considered resolved, while the other two are still not fully agreed. Shizuoka reportedly listed 28 items needing agreement; as of December 11, 2025, 13 were agreed and 15 were still under discussion in expert subcommittees. While some media suggested Shizuoka might allow construction to begin sometime in 2026, Umehara points out that as of February 6, 2026, neither Shizuoka nor JR Central had issued any official statement confirming that timeline. JR Central had already indicated (as of 2024) that opening would be 2034 or later; even under the optimistic assumption of a 2026 Shizuoka start and a minimum 10-year build for that section, the opening would slip to 2036 or later—and both the start date and the “10 years” assumption are uncertain.

Umehara also argues that “just bypass Shizuoka” is not a realistic workaround. To keep 500 km/h operation feasible, the line would need to bend around the prefecture with multiple near-right-angle turns, constrained by a minimum curve radius of 8,000 m; his back-of-the-envelope geometry yields a detour of about 21.9 km, stretching the planned 285.6 km route to 307.5 km (~1.1× longer) and potentially turning the South Alps tunnel into a roughly 47 km continuous tunnel—hardly an “easy” alternative.

At the same time, he stresses that visible progress is measurable where work is moving: JR Central publishes weekly tunneling updates, and by February 8, 2026, shield machines had advanced a combined 6.877 km in the First Capital Area Tunnel and 1.075 km in the First Chukyo Area Tunnel (about 7.95 km total). He notes that once setup and tuning are done, the best sections can advance around 100 meters per week, which can make later progress look faster than the early years suggest. Station construction is also becoming tangible—JR Central showed the (provisional) Kanagawa Station site to the media on October 25, 2025, and public-relations events like “Sagamihara Linear Festa 2025” are framed as efforts to sustain public buy-in during a long wait.

To set expectations, Umehara compares today’s skepticism to doubts once surrounding the Seikan Tunnel: its construction-related work began on January 26, 1964, and it opened on March 13, 1988, taking 24 years and 2 months—roughly 2.2 km per year on average. His conclusion is essentially: expect more problems and more slippage, but if issues are resolved one by one, the maglev could still eventually open and become as “normal” as the Tokaido Shinkansen is today.

Summary based on https://president.jp/articles/-/108750 Accessed 2026-02-15