Hiroshima Station

Hiroshima Station (広島駅, Hiroshima-eki) is a railway station in Minami-ku, Hiroshima, Japan, operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West). Hiroshima Station is the terminal station for several lines, and all San'yō Shinkansen trains stop here.

Station layout

Hiroshima Station has two main entrances: the north — or Shinkansen — entrance, and the south entrance. Until the 1975 opening of the Shinkansen service, the Shinkansen entrance was called the "north entrance", and many local residents, newspapers, and real estate advertisements continue to refer to it as the "north entrance".

A pedestrian tunnel connects the area in front of the Shinkansen entrance to an underground plaza underneath the south entrance to Hiroshima Station. The tunnel includes many gift shops and restaurants, as well as two exits to Fukuya, one to the Hiroshima Station Tram Stop, one in front of the Hiroshima Higashi Post Office, and one directly in front of the south entrance to Hiroshima Station.

Elevator and escalator access is available for several of the entrances. Events are sometimes held in the large area of the underground plaza in front of the entrance to Fukuya.

Prior to 2017, the south entrance connected the plaza outside directly to the platform for track 1; passengers wishing to access any other track from the south entrance were forced to first enter onto the track 1 platform and then ascend to the concourse above. Similarly, passengers wishing to exit the south entrance after arriving on any other platform were forced to descend from the concourse level to the track 1 platform to exit. To eliminate this bottleneck, the concourse level was expanded and a new south entrance was added slightly to the east of the old one. This design, which is standard for major Japanese rail stations, enables direct access to the concourse level from the south entrance. The new south entrance of the station was opened on May 28, 2017, and the old south entrance was permanently closed.

Platforms

The Shinkansen station has two island platforms which serve a total of four tracks. The non-Shinkansen lines use three island platforms and one side platform serving eight tracks.

Other tracks:

• 0: formerly a platform for the Ujina Line
• 10: formerly a platform for freight services

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Hiroshima Station" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.