Nanko Port Town Line (New Tram) Driverless Guideway
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below 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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It opened as an automated line in 1981 and still carried staff aboard until 1991. A runaway train injured more than 200 people in 1993, and crews rode again until unattended operation resumed in February 2000.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 8 more in Osaka · 🚌 Public transport guide · 🚲 Mobility projects
Osaka's New Tram is a 7.9 km, 10-station automated guideway line serving the city's bayside artificial islands. It opened in March 1981, six weeks after Kobe's Port Liner, but ran with staff aboard until October 1991. A runaway train hit the buffers at Suminoekoen in October 1993, injuring more than 200 people; crews rode again until unattended operation resumed in February 2000. Osaka Metro finished replacing the whole fleet with 200 series cars in 2019.
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Driverless: who actually sits in the cab?
Four automated rail systems and the question that separates the label from the reality. Two have genuinely nobody aboard — and two are the atlas's documented automation rollbacks, where the staff came back after a crash.
| Project | Since | Status | Outcome | Evidence | Run by | Cost | Who sits in the cab |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santiago Metro Automation: Two Cabless Lines and CBTC on the RestSantiago, 🇨🇱 | 2017 | Live | Succeeded | Media | Utility or public operator | US$451.9M (2013 CAF-Thales trains and CBTC for lines 3 and 6) | No one — and no cab to sit in: the trains carry only a concealed console for manual recovery. |
| Réseau express métropolitain: a pension fund's driverless metroMontreal, 🇨🇦 | 2023 | Live | Ongoing | Independent | Utility or public operator, Private company | CA$8.34B construction (CDPQ Infra); ≈CA$9.4B project total (Auditor General, Nov 2024) | No one aboard since opening; the network is owned by a pension fund that is paid per passenger-kilometre. |
| Nanko Port Town Line (New Tram) Driverless GuidewayOsaka, 🇯🇵 | 1981 | Live | Succeeded | Official | Utility or public operator | not public | Automated in 1981, staff back aboard after the October 1993 runaway, unattended again only from 2000. |
| Washington Metro's automatic train operation, switched off for 15 yearsWashington D.C., 🇺🇸 | 1976 | Live | Ongoing | Official | Utility or public operator | not public | Self-driving from 1976, switched to manual within about a day of the 2009 Fort Totten crash — automation returned line by line only from December 2024. |
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Nanko Port Town Line (New Tram) Driverless Guideway” — Osaka, Japan. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/osaka-new-tram-agt/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.