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Japan Tests New Bullet Train
dmolavi writes "
Japan's largest railway company began a test run for a new bullet train that it eventually aims to operate at a record-breaking 223 miles per hour -- faster than many propeller airplanes -- according to recent news reports.
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Er, they don't pollute the environment anything like as much? They take you from city centre to city centre, hence are much quicker over all?
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
These trains create far less pollution than flying. But that is because they also you far less fuel, and the fuel they do use burns far more efficiently than jet fuel. The lower fuel consumtion leads to them being far cheaper, as well. In some areas of Japan you can get a unlimited-use monthly train pass for the equivalent of US$120. That's the cost of a one-way plane ticket between very close destinations.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Try getting around the UK by train. It's about the equivalent of Sri Lanka in that respect, only not as cheerful.
It's really France and Germany who are of just the right size for train travel and with lots of money to put into it (and, in Germany at least, an unwillingness to cover the entire country in tarmac as the UK is doing).
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Saying that the 200+mph speed is 'faster then many propeller planes' is an awfully strange comparison. Most single engine general aviation aircraft (eg, Cessnas, Pipers, etc) typically cruise around 100-120mph, so that comparison applies to some of the existing bullet trains already.
If, on the other hand, the submitter is comparing it to Turboprop commuter airplanes (to suggest that the train is faster then the plane you might otherwise use), then those typically have cruise speeds of 250-350mph, so...
Finally, I'm guessing we can appreciate the cruise speed on its own merits. There's probably no need to give the unladen speed of the next flying whatchamacality in 'mpa' (many propeller airplanes). "Ah yes, the Rotamo air car flies at 1.5mpa!" It'll be the new LoC measurement for speed.
It can stop quite quickly. If you had read the article, you would have seen the bit about the retractable "cat ears" fin breaks that are extended to provide air resistance. Combined with the latest in pneumatic brakes, it is quite possible to stop these trains within very short distances.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
What's the advantage of super-fast trains over airplanes?
In many places in the world, the infrastructure for trains is already in place. Tracks are laid, stations are ready, power lines are set up, railway crossings are set up, and so on.
OTOH airport facilities may not be available, and I'm guessing that in Japan the space required to construct new small-town airports would be fairly tough to find. This is probably why they prefer speeding up their trains. Air travel may not be easily possible at all.
StrayByte.Net
Train travel tends to be slightly cheaper than planes, but a whole lot safer and more convenient. For visitors, it is definitely your cheapest option to travel by train because you can buy an all-purpose train pass to travel on any lines run by Japan Rail which is basically a monopoly. Even a cross-country train can generally be caught every hour while airplane schedules in Japan are far less convenient for most locations.
The german ICE can do this speed since 2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE
There has never been a fatality (in 40+ years) due to accident on a Shinkansen (bullet train.)
They are also much cheaper than flying and rail stations tend to be right downtown.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
It's much cheaper because it can go directly from one downtown to another, whereas most airports are located somewhat far away from cities.
On top of this, boarding is a lot lot faster (no need to be there 1 hour before departure).
Much better energy efficiency per passenger*mile travelled.
More flexible scheduling in peak hours and seasons.
More security. France's TGV high speed train network has moved hundreds of millions of passengers since the early 80s and not a single person lost her life in an accident, even though trains went off track at full speed (180+ mph) on one or two occasions.
More comfort. No more going to and from remote airports. No more stripping for the security. No more waiting for boarding or for checking in your luggage. Infinitely more leg room. Affordable first class with even more room. A restaurant-bar car in every train. Possibility to use your cellphone at any time.
No-one has ever died in a bullet-train accident. In fact, there have been no derailments in 40 years of service -- except one last year when an earthquake struck exactly below a speeding train (in Niigata prefecture). The train jumped the tracks at 200kph, but no-one was injured.
Depends on where you live.
I live in NJ and trains cover a large portion of my area. On the Eastern coast of the US (particularly north east) there are a lot of rails you can take. Unfortunately I've rarely had to venture out West so I don't know much about that.
Case-in-point, Amtrack covers a lot of New York and new Jersey, and I use it whenever I have to go to New York City. It spans around a lot so you can get to many places (nice suburbs) besides the major hubs (NYC, Hoboken, etc).
Then there are the rails that go up the coast. I take the train whenever I go to our Boston site because it's cheaper and less of a hassle than flying. I could take the same train and go down to Washington DC as well.
Personally, I take the Acela Express whenever I have to travel along the coast. It's nowhere near a Europe or Japan class high-speed train, but it's pretty fast. However the northern tracks it runs on are so crummy it almost never reaches full speed (you have to go down to DC for that).
One of the reasons my family moved where they did was because we're 2 blocks away from the town train station, which is 2 stops away from an intersecting hub. It's perfect for commuting. Alas, I don't work conveniently close to any train stations so I drive to work. But when I went to college (and lived at home for 2 years) I took the train every day.
There are two problems with this in the US. Problem number 1, is that our passenger train system, Amtrak, does not own its own tracks. It is forced to "borrow" time on freight tracks, meaning it often sits and waits while freight trains go by. There is one train route that goes from LA to seattle, (i think there are actually 2-3 trains that run that route). Most of the tracks are through rural areas, just one track, not two. This means that train has to pull over on side spurs and let other trains by that are coming the other direction. The other problem is a politcial one. Amtrak seems to want to stop at any city that has over 500 people living in it. From my city, (Klamath Falls, Right on the oregon/California boarder) it takes me 4-5 hours to drive to Portland, Amtrak takes 9 hours, mostly because it has something like 6 stops, at about 30 minutes a stop. If Amtrak could offer "expres" trains on the west coast, such as only hitting the big cities, like LA, San Fransicso, Portland, and Seattle, it would be much, much nicer.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Derailment usually isn't a problem for bullet trains unless the rails themselves fail: they are built as a single unit, not as separate parts, which means that the whole train won't be endangered if a wagon gets offtrack.
Happened a few times on the TGV (unforeseen shock, some wheels of a wagon getting offtrack) and wasn't even noticed.
And yes, you need special tracks to run high speed, even though they're usually able to use regular tracks, they're just much slower using them.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Bullet trains require something Amtrak will never have: lots of straight, well-built track to get up to that speed.
Besides, where is Amtrak going to get that money? They're struggling to maintain what they already have... What you're talking about is a HUGE investment.
The Acelas on the Northeast Corridor (one of the most important pieces of track Amtrak owns) were intended to provide higher-speed trains on conventional track by leaning into the turns. They generally do provide faster service when they're running, but of course the Acelas haven't been without their problems.
I think a major problem with Amtrak is the rail system is rather old and out-dated. They don't have the money to operate let alone to upgrade.
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
Most of Amtrak operates on shared tracks with freight trains.
These tracks are not built to handle high-speed trains. Also, this shared use favors the freight trains; Amtrak trains have to move over if a freight train is coming. This means that if a freight train is leaving a station 1 hour ahead of the Amtrak's current position, and there's a pullover spot right there but no others for the rest of that 1 hour stretch, the Amtrak must get out of the way and wait for an hour at a dead stop, until the freight train goes by.
I once used Amtrak to travel from Kansas City to St. Louis. That train continues on to Chicago, and the return train does the opposite: Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City. KC->St. Louis took me over 6 hours. It'd have been a little more than twice as fast just to drive the damn thing. On the return trip, the train from Chicago was a little less than two hours late arriving at the St. Louis station. We had about another 1.5-2 hours worth of delays again from St. Louis to Kansas City, so that one was late as hell, too.
Amtrak sucks the devil's ass. I'll never use them again.
The northeast corridor (DC to Boston) is one of Amtrak's few profitable routes. They did have a high speed Acela train that could go 100mph on good sections of track, but it was pulled from service after they found cracks in the brakes. It might be back in service by this summer.
last Autumn, there were several earthquakes in the Chuetsu area on the back-side of Honshu. The largest of these earthquakes caused a crash for the bullet train, which rocked off its tracks and scraped along for 2 kilometers. No one was seriously injured, but that is really out of blind luck-- the train happened to be on a raised track, with cement walls on either side-- other places the track has only chain-link fence separating it from other trains or open fields.
In short, JR dodged a disaster. They don't want to press their luck. If a train could rapidly decelerate, then perhaps the risk of a crash could be reduced.
Then again, maybe someone watched Totoro once too many times.
davejenkins.com |
There's a 2-year old article on Amtrak at the Christian Science Monitor's site that discusses this question in depth.
Have you factored in the cost of transportation to/from city centers? Time it takes to get to their respective airports?
Haneda is at best, from Otemachi, 45 min train ride. Ditto for Osaka International to the business centers. Taking the Shinkansen, however, you're taking the train from either Tokyo station or Shinagawa, and you're dropped off at Shin-Osaka, which is a stone's throw from downtown.
Plus you don't have to go through all the hassles associated with air travel.
It's actually a little more interesting than that. Amtrack owns (almost?) no track - they run pretty much entirely on track owned by the standard commercial railroads. Building new track is almost impossible, because of the right of way requirements (trains aren't sexy any more so you can't get the government to sieze it for you via emminent domain). The guys who actually own the right of way and the tracks are commercial railroads, who don't (and can't) provide passenger service and have no interest in laying out millions to upgrade track. Amtrack is legally prohibited from carrying signifigant freight, and doesn't have the passenger base to fund track improvements, even if the track owners were willing to upgrade (a lot of commercial rail guys hate Amtrack and would refuse to upgrade just on principle). Passenger rail in the US is pretty much screwed and has been since we made the decision to go with highways instead - it would take major Federal funding and interest to get it to any reasonable level, and theres just not the citizen-level demand for it.
At the risk of getting flamed, The keyword is "Japan's largest railway company began a test run for a new bullet train". In America the pattern is always the same. Take NY City's subway system first
1) private companies built 100's of miles of track
2) New York set price limits to "keep the fare reasonable"
3) the companies go bankrupt
4) the city takes over the system
5) no major improvments for the next 50 years
6) people start paying much more for taxis and express busses so they can get to work
When the subway was private 26 major lines were built, since then practically nothing. The only thing they have left is advertisements bragging that their system is 100 years old. It's the same story for Amtrack.
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
Despite the -1 moderation, parent is (at least partially) correct. From wikipedia, there have been no fatalities caused by operational incidents such as collisions or derailments on the Shinkansen. There have however been suicides, and incidents where people have been caught in doors and injured.
I may or may not be correct on this, but other railway networks across the globe, despite horrific crashes, are still safer than transport by road in terms of volume of passengers carried.
Nice weather for penguins...
By the time the test ends in early 2008, the operator hopes to hit the maximum speed of 250 mph -- faster than the train will travel during regular operation.
French company Alstom SA's TGV, or Train a Grande Vitesse, is currently the world's fastest train, operating at a top speed of 218 mph.
Current record for the TGV is 320mph
1) private companies built 100's of miles of track
The city of New York and the State of New York paid for all of the miles of NYC subway. They contracted construction and operations to the IRT and later the BMT but always had ownership of the lines.
2) New York set price limits to "keep the fare reasonable"
NYC always had control over the fare prices. These were included in the contracts.
3) the companies go bankrupt
There were many reasons for this, fares being part of them, but also the fact that the city had 2 competing systems for a number of decades.
4) the city takes over the system
5) no major improvments for the next 50 years
During this time, much money and energy went into NYC roads. This was mostly due to a cultural change starting in the 60s including urban renewal and the rise of the automobile. While the subways stayed the same, NYC built airports, more bridges, tunnels, and the Cross-Bronx expressway, etc were built. These were huge projects.
I would also argue that they are once again starting to make improvements. One could call the airshuttle a major improvement.
6) people start paying much more for taxis and express busses so they can get to work
Huh? More people are now using NYC rapid transit than almost anytime in recent history.
I thought we called them carriages, unless of course you're talking about the bogies under the carriage.
Record-breaking?! I rode the maglev train from Shanghai http://www.shairport.com/en/airline02_d.jsp to the airport. It accelerates for an awe-inspiring 3 minutes, to 432 km/h http://flickr.com/photos/25577117@N00/21992900/ then after about 1 minute it decelerates for the final 3 minutes. Less than 8 minutes for what is nearly an hour drive in traffic (30 km).
Of course there are no tunnels, it's brand new maglev track, etc, so not comparable to trains on traditional track. Still, an unbeatable experience.
The shinkansen has been running since 1-oct-1964, and in that time it has had one derailment(only minor, no injuries) and although it was due to an earthquake, since 1964 Japan has had a number of large earthquakes.
The track is beautifully put together and the ride supurb, unlike here in Australia where the track width varies upto a quarter of an inch.