Higashiyama & Sakura-dori Line Automatic Train Operation
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Nagoya retrofitted its oldest subway line — opened in 1957 — with platform screen doors at every station before trusting a single driver with automatic control, finishing in 2017.
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 · 🏙️ 5 more in Nagoya · 🚌 Public transport guide · 🚲 Mobility projects
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.
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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.