Higashiyama & Sakura-dori Line Automatic Train Operation
The Nagoya Municipal Subway runs single-driver Automatic Train Operation (ATO) on two of its six lines. The purpose-built Sakura-dori Line opened with ATO, one-person crews and full-height platform screen doors together from its 2011 opening. The much older Higashiyama Line, Nagoya's original 1957 subway, only qualified for one-driver running after platform screen doors were fitted at every station between September 2015 and February 2016; ATO began with the September 2015 timetable change, and one-person operation phased in from July 2016 to full coverage by July 2017. Trains remain driver-supervised, not driverless. In December 2024, an incident on the Higashiyama Line briefly halted the entire line despite the screen doors.
🎓 Lesson
Automating an old, busy subway line means building the safety net first: Nagoya spent from 2015 to 2017 fitting platform screen doors and phasing in one-driver ATO on a line that opened in 1957.
📖 Terms in this entry: CBTC (communications-based train control) · Grades of Automation (GoA) · ANPR (automatic number-plate recognition)
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This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed above and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Higashiyama & Sakura-dori Line Automatic Train Operation” — Nagoya, Japan. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/nagoya-subway-ato-oneman/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.