NTT West put six towns behind one remote monitoring site in a Gifu bus trial

NTT West said on October 9 that it would begin a second year of automated bus running in Ena City, Gifu Prefecture, with two named verification items that sit above the vehicle itself. The program is funded under a Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism subsidy for the social implementation of automated driving, and runs with a consortium covering Ena, Tajimi, Nakatsugawa, Mizunami, Toki and Gero.

The first item is signal-cooperative intersection passage, in which signal color and remaining-time data from a traffic-signal system are used to control the vehicle. The second is an aggregated remote monitoring system covering several municipalities and several vehicles from one unified site, which NTT West said it would assess for feasibility and for its effect on cost.

The company said it aims at SAE Level 4 operation during the 2027 fiscal year, and that this year’s running remains Level 2. Public operation covers 45 days from October 10 to December 12, nine runs a day between 09:00 and 16:00, on a 2.4-kilometer loop around the Iwamura castle town using a Navya Mobility EVO3 shuttle. Rides are free and require advance booking.

NTT West is a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT and files no separate disclosure; no NTT entity filed on this in the Japanese register in the window.