Asatō Line
railway line in Japan
The Asatō Line (阿佐東線, Asatō-sen; lit. 'Asa East Line') is a Japanese railway line connecting Kaifu Station, Kaiyō and Kannoura Station, Tōyō in Tokushima and Kōchi Prefectures. Together with JR Shikoku's Mugi Line, it has the official nickname Awa Muroto Seaside Line (阿波室戸シーサイドライン, Awa Muroto Shīsaido Rain).
This is the only railway line operated by the third-sector Asa Coast Railway Company (阿佐海岸鉄道株式会社, Asa Kaigan Tetsudō kabushiki-gaisha). The company's name is abbreviated to the portmanteau Asatetsu (阿佐鉄), and was previously translated as Asa Seaside Railway Corporation prior to 2013. Since the line goes through a relatively sparsely populated area, it is under severe business stress, to the point where closure of the line has been proposed.
The railway company commenced operating road–rail vehicles, known as DMV (dual-mode vehicle) in Japan, on the Asato Line from 25 December 2021 The vehicles used are three extensively modified Toyota Coaster minibuses, claimed to be the first in the world, which enable through service to locations without rail infrastructure. Actually, it is not even second of that kind, as the famous Schienen-Straßen-Omnibus of the Deutsche Bundesbahn, built in 1953, had already predecessors of Road–rail buses in the 1930s and 1940s.
The vehicles are classed as DMV93 type. In preparation for the beginning of DMV operations, the rail line was disconnected from the Mugi Line in summer 2019.
History
Japanese National Railways started the construction of the eastern section of the Asa Line in 1959, proposed to reach Muroto, where it would connect with the planned extension of the western section of the Asa line from Kochi.
The public source identifies “Asatō Line” as railway line in Japan. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Asatō, Line and railway.
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This entry incorporates text from “Asatō Line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.