Toshin Line

The Sapporo tram network as a whole is far older than the Toshin Line. Its first section opened in 1909 as a horse-drawn line, the Sapporo Stone Horsecar Railway, built to carry the soft "Sapporo stone" (札幌軟石) that was in heavy demand as a building material. The system was electrified and reopened as the Sapporo Electric Railway (札幌電気軌道) in 1918, and the City of Sapporo took it into municipal ownership in 1927. At its peak around 1958 the network stretched more than 25 kilometres over eleven lines and seven routes, reaching out across the eastern, western, southern and northern parts of the city.

The corridor the Toshin Line now occupies has carried trams before. The old Nishi-Yon-Chōme Line (西四丁目線) had opened in 1918, and on 16 December 1971 part of it was re-laid so that the track between Mitsukoshi-mae and Susukino was connected through to Nishi-Yon-Chōme, briefly creating a loop. That arrangement was short-lived: rising car ownership and the opening of the Sapporo Municipal Subway drove four successive rounds of route-cutting through the 1960s and 1970s, and the Nishi-Yon-Chōme Line was abolished entirely on 1 April 1973. By the end of the closures only three lines survived — the Ichijō, Yamahana-Nishi and Yamahana lines — leaving the network as an incomplete C-shape around the city centre with a gap across the heart of downtown.

Plans to close that gap matured in the 2010s. In January 2012 it was reported that the city had settled on connecting Nishi-Yon-Chōme and Susukino with a double-tracked line running along Ekimae-dōri, with a new stop to be built near Tanuki Kōji; unusually for the network, the new track would be laid beside the pavement rather than on a central reservation. The scheme — part of a wider "Sapporo Streetcar Utilisation Plan" adopted in April 2012 that also brought in new low-floor cars — was costed at roughly two billion yen, and would return trams to a stretch of Ekimae-dōri that had not seen them for about forty years.

The loop-closing extension had been announced for spring 2015, but in July 2014 the city transportation bureau revealed that failed construction tenders and quality-control problems would delay it. A new opening date was finally announced at the mayor's press conference on 5 November 2015. Test running over the new alignment began on the morning of 11 November 2015; because of the unfamiliar side-reservation layout, the first day was run with sixteen instructors taking turns at the controls and security staff posted on the pavement to watch for pedestrians and passing cars.

On 20 December 2015 the section between Nishi-Yon-Chōme and Susukino opened as the Toshin Line, and Tanuki Kōji stop opened at the same time. With the gap closed, the four lines — Ichijō, Yamahana-Nishi, Yamahana and the new Toshin Line — together formed a continuous ring, and the streetcar began running as a loop. The change drew passengers back: ridership after the loop opened averaged about 24,396 a day, an increase of some 11 percent over the figure before, far exceeding the roughly 600 extra riders a day the city had forecast.

Since the loop opened the Toshin Line has been operated as an integral part of the unified "Ichijō–Yamahana streetcar line," with almost every car running the full circle. In 2020 the way the network is run changed: under an up-down separation arrangement approved by the national government, the Sapporo City Transportation Bureau continues to own the tracks, cars and other facilities, while from 1 April 2020 day-to-day operation of the streetcar passed to a public corporation, the Sapporo Transportation Service Promotion Corporation (一般財団法人札幌市交通事業振興公社). Today the Toshin Line, for all its 0.449 kilometres, remains the keystone of the Sapporo tram, the segment that makes the loop a loop.

• 1909The first section of the Sapporo tram network opens as the horse-drawn Sapporo Stone Horsecar Railway, built to carry "Sapporo stone" building material.
• 1918The network is electrified and reopens as the Sapporo Electric Railway; the Nishi-Yon-Chōme Line, predecessor on the present Toshin Line corridor, opens on 12 August.
• 1927The City of Sapporo takes the tram network into municipal ownership.
• 197116 December: part of the Nishi-Yon-Chōme Line is re-laid, connecting the Mitsukoshi-mae–Susukino track through to Nishi-Yon-Chōme and briefly forming a loop.
• 19731 April: the Nishi-Yon-Chōme Line is abolished entirely, leaving only the Ichijō, Yamahana-Nishi and Yamahana lines and an open gap across the city centre.
• 2012January: the city is reported to have decided to connect Nishi-Yon-Chōme and Susukino with a double-tracked line along Ekimae-dōri; in April a "Sapporo Streetcar Utilisation Plan," with a new Tanuki Kōji stop and a project cost of about two billion yen, is adopted.
• 2014July: the city transportation bureau announces that the loop-closing extension, planned for spring 2015, will be delayed by failed construction tenders and quality-control problems.
• 201511 November: test running over the new side-reservation alignment begins, with sixteen instructors at the controls and security staff posted on the pavement.
• 201520 December: the Nishi-Yon-Chōme–Susukino section opens as the Toshin Line and Tanuki Kōji stop opens; the four lines now form a continuous ring and the streetcar begins loop operation.
• 2015After the loop opens, ridership averages about 24,396 a day, up roughly 11 percent on the pre-loop figure and well above the city's forecast of about 600 extra riders a day.
• 20201 April: under an up-down separation arrangement, day-to-day operation of the streetcar passes to the Sapporo Transportation Service Promotion Corporation, while the Sapporo City Transportation Bureau keeps ownership of the tracks and cars.