Shōnan Monorail

photo by jetsun · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by くろふね · CC BY 3.0

It hangs below the beam, and its 1970 tunnel was the first of its kind in the world.

The car does not sit on top of the rail, it hangs beneath it, and from the window you see no track at all: only the rooftops sliding past. In six and a half kilometres the line goes through two tunnels and takes on a gradient of seventy-four per mille on the way down to Enoshima, which is something an ordinary railway does not do. Ōfuna and Enoshima are fourteen minutes apart.

A suspended monorail of the SAFEGE system, built by Mitsubishi under a French licence, opened in March 1970 between Ōfuna and Nishi-Kamakura and completed to Shōnan-Enoshima in July 1971. It is one of only two SAFEGE lines in Japan, together with the one in Chiba: all the other Japanese monorails are straddle-type, meaning the car sits on top of the beam. Building it meant digging the Kamakurayama tunnel, 451 metres, the first tunnel in the world built for a suspended monorail; the second, the Kataseyama tunnel, is 205 metres long and has only five to ten metres of cover above it. In 2018 the company entered into the first twinning between a Japanese and a German monorail operator, with the Wuppertal Schwebebahn.

ℹ️ Six and a half kilometres, eight stations, fourteen minutes from Ōfuna to Shōnan-Enoshima. Single fare 340 yen for adults and 170 for children aged 6 to 11; day ticket 750 and 380 yen, fares in force from 14 March 2026. ⚠️ **Lifts only at Shōnan-Enoshima, Fujimichō, Shōnan-Machiya and Nishi-Kamakura**, a ramp at Kataseyama, nothing at the other three. **Shōnan-Fukasawa and Mejiroyamashita are unstaffed**: you call using the intercom next to the ticket office. Toilets only at Ōfuna, Shōnan-Machiya, Nishi-Kamakura and Shōnan-Enoshima. Assistance with pushchairs and wheelchairs is requested at Ōfuna. The website publishes how crowded each station is, hour by hour, with blue for the usual pattern and red for the current day.

🚉 Ofuna · 8 min walk

Sources: shonan-monorail.co.jp · shonan-monorail.co.jp · shonan-monorail.co.jp · shonan-monorail.co.jp · shonan-monorail.co.jp

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