Toyama Toshin Line

The line belongs to a tram network whose origins reach back to the early twentieth century. Toyama Electric Tramway (Toyama Denki Kidō) opened the first street-railway routes in the city on 1 September 1913, linking Toyama Station with the exhibition grounds and, on a branch, running from the station via Sōgawa to Nishichō. The system was transferred to the City of Toyama on 1 July 1920 to become a municipal tramway, and on 1 January 1943 it passed to Toyama Chihō Railway, the operator that still runs it today. The network is laid to 1,067 mm gauge and electrified at 600 V direct current with overhead wire.

Central Toyama once had a circular tram service of its own. Loop running began on 30 December 1949, and at its 1960s peak the tram system extended to roughly eleven kilometres with several operating patterns, including loop services. That circuit did not survive the contraction of the network: on 31 March 1973 the branch between Nishichō, Hatagomachi and Marunouchi was abolished, and with it the loop operation disappeared. For the next thirty-seven years the city centre had no circular tram, and the missing Marunouchi–Nishichō connection was the gap that the Toshin Line would later close.

The revival came out of a deliberate light-rail policy. On 28 February 2008 the project received the first certification ever granted nationwide under Japan's "tramway transport upgrading" implementation-plan scheme, a framework built on vertical separation in which the city owns the infrastructure and the railway operates the service. Under this arrangement Toyama set out to lay a new central link and re-create a loop through the commercial core of the city, complementing the separate Toyamakō light-rail line that had already been converted on the north side of Toyama Station.

The Toyama Toshin Line opened on 23 December 2009, when the roughly 0.9 km single-track connection from Marunouchi to Nishichō entered service and loop running resumed — a return of the circular tram after thirty-seven years. Three new stops were built along the new section: Kokusai Kaigijō-mae at the north end of the Ōte Mall, Ōte Mall at its southern end by the Echizenchō intersection, and Grand Plaza-mae on Heiwa-dōri in front of the Sōgawa Ferio complex. To mark the opening, the city gathered the loop's three new low-floor trainsets on the pedestrianised Ōte Mall for a public display before a ceremony, and the 9000-series cars — branded "Centram" — began running on the loop that day.

With the new link in place, the loop runs via the Toshin Line in a single direction, circling roughly 3.5 km counter-clockwise from Toyama Station through Grand Plaza-mae and back to Toyama Station. The Toshin Line's own Marunouchi-to-Nishichō track is worked single-track and one-way, the only such stretch on an otherwise largely double-track network. A further stop, Nakamachi (Nishichō-kita), was added on the north side of the Nishichō intersection on 17 May 2013, refining the loop's service pattern.

The Toshin Line should be read as one piece of a broader remaking of tram travel in Toyama. On 14 March 2015 a north–south connection through Toyama Station opened together with the Toyama Station tram stop, and on 21 March 2020 the city trams began through-running with the Toyamakō Line across the station, knitting the once-separate northern light-rail route into the same operation. Within that larger system the Toyama Toshin Line remains the compact central spine that made the modern city-centre loop possible.

• 19131 September: Toyama Electric Tramway opens the city's first tram routes — the main line (Toyama-eki-mae–Kyōshinkaijō-mae) and a branch (Toyama-eki-mae–Sōgawa–Nishichō).
• 19201 July: the tramway is transferred to the City of Toyama and becomes a municipal operation.
• 19431 January: the tram network is transferred to Toyama Chihō Railway, its operator ever since.
• 194930 December: loop running begins in central Toyama.
• 197331 March: the Nishichō–Hatagomachi–Marunouchi branch is abolished, ending the original loop service.
• 200828 February: the project receives the first-ever national certification under the 'tramway transport upgrading' implementation-plan scheme (a vertical-separation framework: the city owns the infrastructure, the railway operates).
• 200923 December: the Toyama Toshin Line (Marunouchi–Nishichō, ~0.9 km, single-track) opens and loop running resumes after 37 years; three new stops open (Kokusai Kaigijō-mae, Ōte Mall, Grand Plaza-mae) and the 9000-series 'Centram' trams enter service on the loop.
• 201317 May: a new stop, Nakamachi (Nishichō-kita), opens on the north side of the Nishichō intersection.
• 201514 March: a north–south connection through Toyama Station and the Toyama Station tram stop open.
• 202021 March: the city trams begin through-running with the Toyamakō Line across Toyama Station, uniting the northern light-rail route with the rest of the network.