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Jiji Press People take pictures of a W7 series train at Tsuruga Station on the Hokuriku Shinkansen line on Saturday.
Jiji Press
11:30 JST, February 5, 2024
TSURUGA, Fukui (Jiji Press) — West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) held a test ride event Saturday on a newly built section of the Hokuriku Shinkansen bullet train line.
Members of the general public who were selected by a lottery rode a 12-car W7 series train on the roughly 125-kilometer section between Kanazawa Station in Ishikawa Prefecture and Tsuruga Station in the neighboring prefecture of Fukui.
The new section is set to open on March 16. The test ride event runs through Sunday, with a total of 2,000 participants selected randomly from about 150,000 applicants.
“The scenery is beautiful, and I’m really looking forward to the section’s opening,” Megumi Usui, 29, a participant from the city of Saitama, near Tokyo, who boarded from Kanazawa, said.
“I want to use the [Hokuriku] Shinkansen for my business trips to Tokyo,” Hidenobu Hiraoka, a 23-year-old participant from the city of Tsuruga, said.
Others expressed hopes that many tourists will come to the Hokuriku region of central Japan using the extended Shinkansen line.
The Hokuriku Shinkansen line currently connects Tokyo Station and Kanazawa Station.
After the launch of the extended section, the fastest train on the line will travel between Tokyo and Fukui Station in Fukui Prefecture in two hours and 51 minutes.
