Last year I filmed on a railway in Scotland called the West Highland Line.
And as part of that video, I got to travel on a “road-rail vehicle”,
basically a van which also has a set of retractable train wheels.
For the people who work on the railway, it's everyday mundane stuff,
but it's a delight for this sort of nerd.
But riding on one of those isn't
generally the sort of thing that the public can do...
except here, on the coast of Tokushima Prefecture in the south-west of Japan.
It took a long while to get here.
There was a lot of travel along beautiful coastline, but now I can show you this:
what the Asa Coast Railway calls the “DMV”, dual mode vehicle.
It's a bus and it's a train.
And it takes about 15 seconds to switch from one to the other.
[in Japanese]
So right now, this is just a regular bus.
And there are plenty of places in the world
who've come up with solutions to making buses go faster.
Separate bus lanes, guided busways.
So why this, and why here?
[recorded announcement] “The DMV will now change to train mode.”
“Mōdochenji, sutāto!”
[child’s voice] “Hai!”
[recorded drumming]
[drumming continues, children chant]
[recorded track ends] “Finish!”
The folks here are clear that this is partly a tourist attraction.
They've got a gift shop with plush versions of the vehicle.
You can buy “dual mode curry”,
and they've got rock candy printed with the design.
Yes, it would be more practical to have a small train
and ask people to change onto a bus, the same as basically everywhere else.
They could have ripped up the rails and had a guided busway.
Or they could have just used a bus on the road!
There aren't too many traffic jams out here.
And even here, the bus is still powered by the rear tires.
The metal train wheels are just for guidance.
But it's not just about “what is the most practical or the cheapest solution”.
It's about positioning the Asa Coast Railway in this region long term,
attracting the sort of tourists who want to ride on a
road-rail vehicle.