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Rapid transit operator Osaka Metro Co Ltd has applied to Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to operate by fiscal year 2024, a 3.2-kilometre (2.0-mile) rail link to Yumeshima (pictured in a file photo), an artificial island in Osaka Bay due host the country’s first integrated resort (IR) with casino within the next 10 years. Before that, the island will host in calendar-year 2025, the ‘Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai, Japan’.

The news of the formal request for the rail link was given on Friday by Osaka Metro. The Osaka city and prefectural authorities have tied to private-sector partners led by United States-based casino operator MGM Resorts International and Japan’s Orix Corp, for the creation of MGM Osaka at the land-reclamation site.

The new metro line – to be known as “Hokko Technoport Line” – will link the Cosmosquare station on the Osaka Metro Chuo Line, to Yumeshima. The stop at the latter will simply be known as “Yumeshima Station”.

On the basis that the national government “has approved the IR [integrated resort] District Development Plan of Osaka prefecture and city,” the metro section and new station “is placed as the access line to Osaka IR,” stated Osaka Metro in its Friday announcement.

Osaka Metro said it planned to start operating the new line “at the end of fiscal year 2024”.

MGM Resorts’ chief executive and president Bill Hornbuckle said in an interview in late July that his company had expected to begin construction of the Osaka IR “by middle to late next year”. The company aims for a 2030 opening for that project, Mr Hornbuckle mentioned in the interview at the time.