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Japan unveils 310 mph floating train

By | November 26, 2012, 2:37 PM PST

Japan has always been a leader in high-speed rail transportation. Since the 1960s, Japan has run the Shinkansen bullet train network which now consists of nearly 1,500 miles of rail lines.

Japan is continuing to lead the way in high-speed rail innovation with Central Japan Railway’s unveiling of a prototype for a maglev train with a top speed of 310 miles per hour, The Daily Yomiuri reports.

Magnetic levitation trains are propelled forward with magnetic force without touching tracks, making the frictionless trains fast and efficient. Japan has previously tested a maglev train at 361 mph.

It will be awhile before the trains leave the test track and are used commercially, but when they are finally put to use they will cut travel times significantly. The trains are expected to be used starting in 2027, connecting Tokyo with Nagoya. The already fast bullet trains currently make it a 90 minute trip. With the maglev trains the trip could take as little as 40 minutes. The Telegraph reports:

“Through the test runs, we will make final checks to ensure that commercial services are comfortable,” Yasukazu Endo, the head of the development centre, told local media.

The aim is to extend the line to Osaka by 2045 and the cost of the new lines has been put at Y8.44 trillion (£64 billion). [...]

Japan will be the first nation to build a large-scale maglev route and hopes to be able to export the technology once it has been perfected.

Meanwhile, in the United States, 110 mph trains are a big deal.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Tyler Falk

About Tyler Falk

Tyler Falk is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Tyler Falk

Tyler Falk

Contributing Editor

Tyler Falk freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. Previously, he was with Smart Growth America and Grist. He holds a degree from Goshen College.

Follow him on Twitter.

Tyler Falk

Tyler Falk

Tyler does not have financial holdings that would influence how or what he covers.

He writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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0 Votes
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maglev trains
I heard that China is building one also. How will this one compare? Higher cost, but better reliability? How about the speed? 300+ mph trains would take a very long time to slow down, I'd think, making them impractical for short-hauls.
Posted by Starman35
27th Nov
0 Votes
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That depends on what you mean by a "short haul"
Imagine riding from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 40 minutes. Sure, it may take 5 minutes or so at each end to accelerate and slow down again (you don't want to hit your passengers with any real G-forces so you'd probably look at about a .1G accel/decel rate) but the ride between would probably be as smooth as flying. Anything less than about 100 miles would be a "short haul" for one of these.
Posted by DWFields
27th Nov
+3 Votes
+ -
At What Cost?
At what cost to move this quickly? And if I live in Bakersfield or Fresno - how can I get on board? Sounds like your train just blows right by me. After all - my California tax $$ will have to support it's construction and operating costs (even the original proposal for basic "slow" HSR that was passed by voters a few years ago said it would cost CA taxpayers >$1bn /year just to operate and maintain.) So unless I lived in S.F. or LA - and actually needed to travel to the other city - where's the benefit to me?
For enough $$ you can build almost anything. But why? I can find flight deals right now, today, for as low as $59 that get me between these 2 cities in 90 minutes. What does spending more than $100bn to build HSR really accomplish?
Posted by HappiHenri
27th Nov
+3 Votes
+ -
And there's the rub.
To get political buy-in, California's high-speed train will be anything but; expected to stop every 20 miles or so, in the end rendering it little faster than taking your car, and at a far higher price.
Posted by JohnMcGrew@...
27th Nov
+5 Votes
+ -
It takes 8 times the power to move at twice the speed
@HappiHenri You are correct. Let us also look at the engineering, physics and economics behind all this.

A vehicle in a gaseous medium needs 8 times the power to go twice the speed.

And since ENERGY is POWER * TIME, it needs 4 times the Energy.

Let us put this into perspective

A train travelling at 310 mph needs almost 8 times the power as one travelling at 100 mph.

Now if the energy component of the ticket price is say 25%, then how many people would be prepared to pay twice as much to get there 3 times as fast.

Very few I 'd wager, but it would be instructive to see this analysis done.
Posted by DRTGuy
27th Nov
+2 Votes
+ -
Cal High Speed Rail?
In your LA to SF example, the CalHSR will definitely be a 'short haul' with all the stops they plan to have. 40 minutes!!! Never happen.
Posted by kralspaces
27th Nov
0 Votes
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China already has a commercial maglev in operation.
It runs from the Shanghai Pudong International Aeroport to central Pudong - a distance of a bit more than 30 km, which it covers in a bit more than 7 or 8 minutes, depending upon the hour of the day. Earlier plans for a Hangzhou-Shanghai maglev train, which would have covered a distance of about 200 km, seem to have been cancelled, and a conventional whelled high-speed train is presently in operation between the two cities....

Henri
Posted by mhenriday
27th Nov
+1 Vote
+ -
110 mph trains in the U.S.
Why even bother to mention trains in the U.S.? Other than subways in metro areas, most Americans don't use trains to get from one city to the next. Until there is massive train infrastructure investment in this country along with a public relations campaign to convince Americans to use bullet trains, the interstate highway system will continue to be the first choice. People here are not yet convinced that trains are faster, more convenient, or more reliable than the automobile.
Posted by wally_altoona
27th Nov
+1 Vote
+ -
225 mph trains in the U S
Trains like the Acela (Boston-NY-Washington) get a pretty good ridership.

But across the rest of planet Earth, its not the "automobile" that gets wiped out by trains - its the plane.

Trains take 80% of each air market when they get a city centre to city centre journey time under 3hrs and win 100% of the air market (yes the airlines GIVE UP FLYING) when journey times get under 2 hrs - eg Paris-Brussels, Frankfurt-Cologne or Paris-Lyon.

Americans really are humans like everybody else.
They will learn too the use the train when the little old US of A finally gets some..... happy

As for Maglev, please note that Japan will take AGES to build it (as 60% of the line will be put in tunnel) it will be FAR more expensive than conventional rail and Maglev cannot easily get to city centres as it cannot run on existing tracks.

Maglev thus loses the speed advantage, as you have to change train to reach the city centre.
Posted by JohnJefkins
27th Nov
+2 Votes
+ -
Keep in mind that Amtrack hit record ridership last year.
Turns out that the higher gas prices of the last few years have demonstrated the benefits of riding the train in several areas. High-speed corridors may be expensive, but the longer we wait, the more it will cost.

Oh, and before you go making the "city center" argument, remember that even airports are being forced farther away from that "city center" location; Denver International is almost 50 miles away from Denver itself and that doesn't seem to have hurt air traffic into Denver in the least. It could be quite possible to have a maglev use the same terminals as the airlines to make the transition to local rail much easier. As you say, trying to convert the existing infrastructure would not only be impractical, but more expensive as well.

On the other hand, you might note that there are thousands of miles of abandoned railway rights of way across the US that could be repurposed to maglev/high-speed rail at a relative cost savings due to eminent domain laws.
Posted by DWFields
Updated - 27th Nov
0 Votes
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RE: Amtrack - DIA Distance
From the Center of Denver - Broadway and Colfax it's 27 miles to DIA
Posted by GregGold
29th Nov
0 Votes
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City Center of Airport Hub?
I have flown into and out of the new Denver airport dozens of times over the years - but never once to actually go into Denver. It's function as a United hub is what took me there - nothing else.
As for using that facility as an HSR station as well - it is certainly possible, but why? Airports are already built; the airline industry is well established. Using those I can get almost anywhere in the country within 24 hours, or to most cities within 12 hours. So where is the travel gap that demands that $$Billions be spent to build HSR? What problem is it solving?
In California the Gov is pushing hard for a very expensive HSR line between LA (now - well north of LA) and San Francisco. But there is not even a regular passenger line that exists between those 2 cities. Why not? Maybe because (1) of the mountains in between it was not practical or (2) there was never any real passenger demand for that service. (look at the Amtrak web site - to make that trip now involves an 8 hour bus ride in combination with several different train transfers.) So where is the HSR ridership supposed to come from?
Posted by HappiHenri
30th Dec
+3 Votes
+ -
Not if the price of a ticket is several times that of flying
It's currently estimated that just to cover the bonds, a one-way ticket on California's proposed LA-SF train will have to be over $400. Southwest can do pretty much the same thing in half the time for $100.
Posted by JohnMcGrew@...
27th Nov
0 Votes
+ -
Not forever
The cost of fuel for those airplanes will continue to go up much faster than the cost of electric energy for the train. Also, consider the level of subsidization of air travel, the airports and air traffic control system all cost plenty to build and maintain.
Posted by riverat1
27th Nov
+1 Vote
+ -
Air travel isn't nearly as subsidized as HSR will have to be...
...in order to coax people to climb aboard.

And air travel isn't nearly as subsidized as you seem to think. Ticket fees and fuel taxes fund a better part of the infrastructure.

Each ticket on HSR on the other hand, will have to be subsidized at least 50% in order to be competitive, much less palatable to consumers. Wouldn't the airlines love to get that kind of subsidy.
Posted by JohnMcGrew@...
Updated - 28th Nov
+4 Votes
+ -
The Fallacy of Energy Efficiency in High Speed Rail
High Speed Rail is one of the least efficient means of moving people long distances.

The Economics, Physics and Engineering make no sense except in the mind of a centrally funded bureaucrat who has the power to force whatever he/she wishes on the general public.

Let us look at some hard facts:

ENERGY is POWER * TIME
POWER is FORCE * VELOCITY

A train travelling a speed 2v takes 8 times the power and 4 times the energy of a train travelling at speed v

A train travelling at speed 3v takes 27 times the power and 9 times the energy of a train travelling at speed v.

Even the largest capacity trains generally carry only 400 passengers. The ticket prices to make the system break-even would have to be multiples of what a plane fare would cost.

The only way most train systems work is with subsidy, distorting the market and preventing viable, sustainable modes of transport from coming into being.

I am in no way saying that trains cannot work in all cases, but at the energy costs of moving at faster than 125 - 150mph, the numbers simply do not add up.

Let us not even consider the prohibitve cost of construction, land rights use and tunnelling for these boondoggles in the first place.

Very little about High Speed Rail makes sense in the world of economics. They are vanity projects for political demagogues first, last and foremost.
Posted by DRTGuy
27th Nov
0 Votes
+ -
Don't Forget about security Costs Too
One thing not considered very often in the HSR discussion is the cost of securing the entire line. Since it is sensitive to even minor damage the entire HSR line must be somehow secured against those who would do harm to it. At least with air travel you only have to secure the airports, but with HSR every inch of the line is vulnerable. How much will that bit cost?
Posted by HappiHenri
30th Dec
+2 Votes
+ -
Move SFO and OAK over to SF's Downtown
Here in the Bay Area it's politics versus smart anything, including the so-called "Smart Growth" principles touted by our regional agencies but never enforced because we live on buzzwords around here (or, more accurately, buzzphrases) to liven our otherwise moribund, top-down transportation and land use dialogue.

Still, HSR to the Bay Area may even happen after all the litigation brought by Peninsula cities (whose downtowns will be destroyed) is dismissed by Supreme Court justices Supremicists after all! who hold that eminent domain trumps commonsense every time, as per their totally askew New London rationalizing.

And, instead of a Grand Central station at Oakland's Coliseum, the obvious hub of Bay Area intermodality where BART can already whisk folks to San Francisco's Embarcadero in only a few minutes, additional billions of lard from DC and maybe another decade or so of our inconsequential, non-policymaker lifetimes will be spent instead to ensure that you or more likely your grandchildren can dismount in San Francisco's financial district, an enthralling experience that by then will likely be akin to visiting the ruins in Rome, another goofball empire that had a difficult time holding onto reality.

If all the money that it'll cost to bring HSR through the Bay Area were spent instead on getting to the Bay Area and improving BART as the main feeder, the expense could be justified. But guess what, Smart Planet people; you need smart governance to effect smart systems, and that's supremely unlikely to happen around here...
Posted by Steve Lowe Oakland
27th Nov
0 Votes
+ -
Disney Monorail
For the past 50 years or so, Disney has provided a real world example of a very efficient, and economical transportation model in their monorail system at each of their theme parks. Its true that the size of the rail lines are rather limited, but the efficiency of moving people from place to place has been very cost effective. Why haven't local and long distance transportation systems used this model, since it has served the Disney organization very well for many years. I suspect the answer is the added cost of compliance with various government regulations that would increase the cost to an uneconomical point. HSR and maglev would seem to add a level of complexity and cost that would make the future of railed transportation systems in the US something to avoid constructing. Perhaps the future of US transportation is rooted in our past.
Posted by dcr100@...
27th Nov
0 Votes
+ -
Apples & Oranges
Comparing Disney's very short, very slow speed monorail transportation system to a long distance high speed rail system is comparing apples to oranges, The only thing they have in common is that they are train-type people movers. Disney's system moves people very short distances at very slow speeds, so it's passengers are only on board a few minutes. An HSR system would have to move a lot of people long distances at a high rate of speed, and passengers would have to be on board for as long as several hours - so you need rest rooms, food service, comfortable seats, as well as reliability, safety and security. To produce that in a an HSR requires much different engineering at much higher construction costs.
Posted by HappiHenri
31st Dec
0 Votes
+ -
Maglev costs
I am curious to learn the energy costs to operate maglev rail technology in real money. Is the rail system a money maker or loser? I see a lot of loose speculation this way or that, but what are the hard facts?
Posted by tzintzuntzan
Updated - 27th Nov
0 Votes
+ -
what goes around . . . including carousels
in mid century we abandoned trolleys for buses with a great deal of subsidization from g m. at the same time,we abandoned much of our rail system that went out like arteries throughout the country. we were in love with the magic of flight and the romance of fly-by-the-seat-of-you-pants adventurers. both possibly good moves for their time.
now, some progressives around the nation see the benefit of trolleys and have moved on that insight; will rails be next?
if we decide to go back to the future to some degree, it will require an enormous amount of start-up paid for by you and me because only a government could afford it. wacha think?
Posted by Sunon@...
28th Nov
0 Votes
+ -
What do I think?
I think that mass transit will work well where it works well, but will never be able to fully compete with the point-to-point convenience of an automobile.
Posted by JohnMcGrew@...
29th Nov
0 Votes
+ -
Convenience of automobile
Yes, the private automobile ride is convenient, but that is not the only criterion. When you factor in the economic, environmental and political benefits of mass transit, it's the car that can't compete. No way can this planet sustain billions of private cars, no matter how they are powered.
Also, why can't mass transit provide point-to-point transportation? My company, among others, is working to develop just this mode of convenient, flexible affordable getting around town.
Posted by bbnoonan
29th Nov
+1 Vote
+ -
I hate to tell you this...
...but the "economic, environmental and political benefits of mass transit" cannot be assumed as mass transit advocates wish we would. In fact, most forms are only beneficial in "political" terms, and not at all in "economic" and "environmental" terms.

HSR is a perfect example. HSR advocates like to extrapolate conventional rail fuel-to-tonnage efficiencies to HSR, when no such correlation exists. (HSR is far less efficient that almost every other mode of ground transportation)

But in many systems, even personal automobiles are more efficient in city buses when you consider that on a seat-mile basis, the average city bus carries less than 3 passengers. That's a load factor of less than 10%. (My SUV at it's worst is at 25%, and my commuter car is at its worst at 50%) A fleet of buses running at 100% capacity all the time would certainly be more efficient in "economic, environmental and political" terms. But a fleet running at less than 50% would not. A bus with 2 or 3 passengers on it consumes far more resources than a passenger car with a single occupant. And very few fleets even run at more than 30% all of the time.
Posted by JohnMcGrew@...
Updated - 29th Nov
0 Votes
+ -
How would we get to the train station without cars?
In California they keep pushing for the S.F -- LA HSR, except that with each proposal the costs keep going up. So the latest proposal has the LA station well north of LA and it's northern mountains. I live south of LA - how am I supposed to get to this new station some 80 miles away from me without another form of transportation - such as a car? (assuming I would want to do that since the airport I use is only 25 miles away).
The real answer is that there is no one solution to our transportation needs. But there are many alternatives that can fill various geographical and population variances that can work together to provide a sensible and cost effective transportation network. For example - some like to push EVs (Electric Vehicles) as the answer to personal transportation. But they don't work well for people with longer commutes or who live in very hot or cold climates. But they do work for some- just not for everyone. Trains, subways and taxis work for me when traveling into dense city centers - where I really do not want to drive my own car anyway. Air travel is amazing in moving me long distances very quickly at a reasonable price, but I would never fly to make a trip only 50 miles away.
You get the point. People will always need personal transportation machines to provide flexibility and ability to access other forms of transportation. Has always been that way - always will.
Posted by HappiHenri
31st Dec
0 Votes
+ -
Super Express Transportation
Let's leave all correct calculations,cost factor,decisions, to the experts.Twitter should have their opinions and views posted on every article,so that the reader doesn't get tossed for a ride!
Posted by vmatthews65@...
4th Dec
0 Votes
+ -
WOW! 310 miles an hour
This means around 5 miles a minute
Hope this gets off the test tracks soon and we get it here in the UK
Michelle
bestbuycafe.com
Posted by bestbuycafe.com
13th Dec
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