The "Urban Network" is JR-West's name for its commuter rail lines in the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.

These lines mainly handle business and leisure travel between smaller cities and rural areas in western Japan.

JR-West was incorporated as a business corporation (kabushiki kaisha) on April 1, 1987, as part of the breakup of the state-owned Japanese National Railways (JNR).

[citation needed] JNRSC sold 68.3% of JR-West in an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 1996.

After JNRSC was dissolved in October 1998, its shares of JR-West were transferred to the government-owned Japan Railway Construction Public Corporation (JRCC), which merged into the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency (JRTT) as part of a bureaucratic reform package in October 2003.