After enjoying the full-blown sakura (cherry) trees on the Keisei-Chihara line in Chiba City, I stopped by Chiba Urban Monorail in the same city. My visit to this unique monorail line was for the first time in four years.
Let me quickly review Chiba Urban Monorail. It's the world's longest suspension type monorail line. Currently, it has a total length of 15.2 kilometers. The route consists of two lines named Line 1 and Line 2. Different from the straddle-beam type monorail such as Tokyo Monorail, a train of the suspension type monorail is suspended from a track. Chiba Urban Monorail and Shonan Monorail are good examples of this type of monorail.
I'm going to show you two spectacular spots on the Chiba Urban Monorail line. The top photo shows a precious double-double track (DDT) near Chiba station. Line 1 and Line 2 run parallel there. A total of four tracks are seen overhead. It's probably the world's only DDT monorail section. You can see a westbound 2-car train, the EMU 0 series, traveling on Line 1. On the other hand, the photo below is the branch point of Line 1 and Line 2 near Sakaecho station. You can see four tracks complexly tangled with each other over streets. Again, you can see a westbound train traveling on the curved track of Line 1.
It was hard work to take pictures of Chiba Urban Monorail, since the tracks were located high in the sky. My neck still hurts.
