I Rode the World’s First Driverless Train 🇯🇵 (Kobe Port Liner)

I Rode the World’s First Driverless Train 🇯🇵 (Kobe Port Liner)

Hello guys from a very wet and miserable Cobay this morning. It’s just gone 6:00 and we’re going to be taking the world’s first driverless rapid transit system which is the Port Liner which connects Coobe City to Coobe airport which is actually an artificial man-made island. So we’re just going to pop upstairs or somewhere and buy ourselves a ticket and hop on and I’ll talk a little bit more about it once we get on there. It’s actually relatively straightforward to find this place um from the metro station anyway. There’s a metron not far from here and it’s all linked via a mall. You only have to go outside for that little passage over that road and then you’re at the port liner. Everything is fairly well signposted. You just look for port liner. Just follow the arrows and you’ll get there. Back outside we go. Time for the broly. It feels weird me using an umbrella. I never use a broly. I’m always a court kind of guy, but I didn’t bring one on this trip because it’s too hot. So, if I was to wear a waterproof court, I’d just be as wet from sweat. Right then, guys, let’s buy ourselves a ticket for the port liner. I don’t know if there’s a specific machine we need to use, the red or the blue. Right. So, that’s for a commuter pass only, which we don’t want. We just want a normal pass round trip. We need to go to um Naka Coen because I want to go that one just so we go over the bridge and have a little look over the bridge, but we don’t need to go any further than that. Unfortunately, that is the second option. So, we’re going to have to pay a little more. Got 500 yen. We’ll get a receipt cuz why not. Right, we got a 500 yen coin. So, I’ll just slot that in. Shouldn’t get any change. We should get a ticket and receipt. So, we got the ticket on the left and the receipt on the right. Let’s get ourselves on this train. Right, guys? So, it’s given us two tickets here. So that means obviously want to go in and want to come back which is great. I assume then it just swallows your ticket. Let’s have a go. All right. Okay. So it’s stampy ticket I guess. So like an inspector can check if they want to. Right guys? So after doing a little bit of digging here there’s two destinations actually. It’s not just straight to the airport. There’s Kobe airport which we expect but there’s also a place called Kita Futo and the one to Kita Futo is actually like a loop. So I guess cuz people will use this as a commuter line if they’re trying to go to work cuz some people will work in the port area. So this means they can obviously use this line to go to work but it just loops back around. You don’t have to go there’d be no point going all the way to the airport. They’ll have two trains for that. So there’ll be a more frequent service for people that need to work. Right guys, let’s get on this train then. So this is the port line here. So as we can see it’s it’s essentially like a metro line. Although it’s not technically a metro. It is the rapid transit system as a lot of these things are called here in Japan. But as you can see a very Japanese-esque design with the colors for the chairs that sort of bright purple. And you’ll notice that um the priority seats are usually a different color. Usually like a brown, but often times a blue as well. So what we can do actually we can go to the back and we can look out of this train because there’s no driver. There’s no cockpit in the way that’s going to block our view. Suppose we could probably go to the front and see from the front too. Now, a driverless train might not sound that uh fantastic today, but you got to remember this was uh brought out in 1981, two years before the French had their uh first driverless train, which was the second in Le, I think it was. So, they’ve been beaten by a couple of years, but to have a driverless train in 1981, that was pretty advanced back then. We’ll go stand at the back cuz the front’s busy actually. So, we’ll go to the back and we’ll be able to look and have a good view. We’ll leave in a few minutes. However, it does actually look like there is manual controls on this. If you look just there, that looks very similar to the metro we were on in I think it was Fukuaka. Yeah, in Fukuaka where there wasn’t really like a cab separating the driver. He just had like a little like a metal bar um and he just went from one side of the train to the other when it was time to change directions and just lifted up a panel uh and that exposed his control space. So it looks like I assume they would have have to have a fail safe in the off chance that the automated system wasn’t working. They could still manually drive the train and that looks like what that is there. And there seems to be like this is the emergency exit here as well. It’s like an inflatable slide similar to that of an aeroplane which is quite apt since we’re going to the airport. Well, we’re not but this train is. Yes. So, we can see in this case the priority seating is this kind of orangey color just right there. It’s good. It makes it easier even if you’re not really paying attention attention. You’ll notice the seats are different. We can still make mistakes here as tourists. I mean, just yesterday I got on the Kobe Metro and I got on the women’s only car. So, that wasn’t good. Stop or stand on the gang way. It must also be noted this train’s powered by a third rail. It doesn’t have overhead power lines. This train is bound for P 09 H airport station. The next stop is P 02 BI center station. Passengers going to please change the train at P6A station. [Music] Station doors will open on the right. Terminal station. Passengers going to the International Conference Center, International Exhibition Hall or World Hall should get off at K06 Shining Hobba station. definitely get some cool views on this uh trail. We can see the sea now. And what you’re seeing out here as well is all artificial man-made islands. Right. So, we just have one more stop and then we’ll get off. But we’ve already crossed a little bit of the bridge, but there is a bit more bridge to cross. The weather isn’t very good today, but I imagine when the weather’s lovely, it’s uh quite a nice ride. All right. Doors will open on the left. Awesome. Thank you. Right guys, we’ve made it to our station of Naka Coen. And soon it’ll be time for me to head back. Let’s see if we can get a picture of the train from the front here. [Music] [Applause] Hopefully I got the shot I wanted there. We’re heading back now, guys. And surprisingly, there’s a massive elevation difference. We got the front seat on the way back, guys. There’s actually a massive elevation difference between this station and the one we were just in. One lit, we’re just going back on the same station, but this platform, sorry, is way higher than the other one. So, we’re going to dip down. I don’t know why they’ve designed it that way. Kind of interesting. But we’ve got ourselves a front seat now. Why the seats aren’t taken up, I don’t know. I think it’s the best seat in the house. This train is ground station. The next stop is P3 Port Terminal Station. It’s actually really cool because you can see the mountains in the background there and how sort of Kobe is like a little flat patch and then behind it’s just mountains which will be why I assume they had to build this port liner and build the airport on an artificial man-made island because it’s just not the room really to build an airport in Coobe. They have some funky public transport music as well. I don’t think you’ll have caught that, but it’s a bit it’s a bit funny. Oh, there comes the outbound train as well. Nice. The next stop is I’m actually going to be taking the port liner for real uh later uh this later this month because I need to actually use Kobe airport to go home. So you can see as well it’s not on like metal rails there either. It’s just more of a guideway. Very much like a monorail. Don’t touch that. passengers. Thank you for taking our next stop [Music] terminal. P 01 terminal doors will open on the left. Thank you very much for taking our port liner today. Most importance. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] doesn’t my ticket. I think maybe because we didn’t Maybe because we didn’t leave the station. I didn’t t I didn’t get that new one done. See if this one will work. All right. So, I took that one. Very interesting. Right. So, I have a spare ticket. Um, so because I didn’t actually leave the station, which is probably not normal, I just walked over the top to that to the new platform and came back. I hadn’t actually stamped my new ticket, but they’re identical. So, that that one had been stamped, but because I hadn’t used it to exit the station, I can just use it exit this station. So, I could have just bought one ticket this whole time. Oh well, I don’t mind helping the the economy of Japan out. So, guys, I hope you’ve enjoyed this video, seeing the first driverless rapid transit system that was introduced in 1981 right here in Coobe, Japan. I hope you’ve enjoyed the video. I’ve enjoyed making it. The weather’s not been great, but you know, that’s just life. As an Englishman, I’m used to the rain. Uh, so if you like public transport videos, I got plenty more here. I got plenty more in Japan. I’ve got the different subways, the Osaka Metro, the Hiroshima Metro, the Fukuaka Metro. All very, very good and definitely worth a watch. And the metro here in Coobe, I’ve got metros in Mumbai. I got metros in Warsaw. And we got trains in India, Poland, you name it, all over the place. So if that’s what you’re interested in, guys, stick around and I’ll catch you on the next one. Bye.

I rode the Kobe Port Liner — officially the world’s first driverless urban train, opened in 1981 right here in Japan. 🇯🇵

The idea of a fully automated train with no driver still feels futuristic even today. I travel from Sannomiya Station out toward Port Island, showing how smooth, clean, and efficient this system is — and the amazing front-window view with no one in the driver’s seat!

🚆 Line: Kobe Port Liner
🧭 Opened: 1981 (World’s First Driverless Train)
📍 City: Kobe, Japan

▶️ Watch more from my Japan series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FHCUndSOatN1asrp83IOOgWwjvZi8JQ&si=RaquBpWtSeGA2ZfW

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⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:22 On the way to Port Liner Station
1:23 Buying a ticket
2:30 Passing the barrier
2:40 Checking which train to take
3:14 Boarding the train
6:08 Setting off (no driver!)
10:00 Arriving at the destination
10:45 Heading back
15:34 Arriving back where we started
15:49 Passing back through the barriers
16:46 Outro

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#Japan #Kobe #PortLiner #DriverlessTrain #JapanVlog #GallivanterDom #TrainTravel #JapanTransport #Metro #Subway