The Osaka Monorail is the world's largest operational
monorail line. It opened in 1990 as a 6.6 km track between
Osaka Itami Airport and
Senri, and has now been extended to
Kadoma for a total of 23.8 km of track, including a 2.6 km spur between the
Expo Commemoration Park and
Osaka University Hospital. Plans are in the works to extend this spur to the new
International Culture Park City outside of
Ibaraki. The monorail tracks are elevated in the
median of the
Kinki Expressway—after the
Great Hanshin Earthquake, the monorail proved to be a vital transportation link over the jammed road below. It uses
Hitachi four-car trains powered by 1500
volts of
direct current.
The monorail was intended as a beltway line to supplement the JR, Keihan, and Hankyu lines, which run in a web from the northern suburbs and new towns to the city. Many companies based in the suburbs, such as Panasonic and Seiko, pumped money into the monorail to improve commuting conditions for their employees, who would have previously had to go to Umeda and back twice a day to make the necessary connections between lines. Unfortunately, the monorail is slow in comparison to other commuter trains, and excessively expensive (presumably to cover its gargantuan construction expenses). Like the Tokyo Monorail, its best use is as an airport access.