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Japan to Launch Maglev Trains by 2025
SpeedyTrain writes with a link to a story on the Mainichi Daily News site about the future of mass transit in Japan. Despite problems with Maglev technology in test-bed scenarios around the world, Japan has committed to building a line between Tokyo and Nagoya by 2025. The experimental system will allow trains to run at up to 310 miles an hour. "The new magnetically levitated, or "maglev," trains would slash the 100-minute travel time down the country's busiest transportation corridor and are envisioned as a successor for Japan's iconic bullet trains, or shinkansen, first introduced to the world in 1964 ... [a] spokeswoman declined to give an estimate for the cost of linking the capital with the Nagoya area about 269 kilometers (168 miles) to the west. But Kyodo News agency said the whole project would cost about 9 trillion yen (US$76.3 billion) and be divided between the company and the central and local governments."
No kidding. Japan already has some maglevs, including a high speed test prototype, and a "slow" one called Linimo which is already in Nagoya. Linimo is already being used for public transport, and I can tell you it works just fine, because I rode on it numerous times. I doubt it was cost-effective to build, but I'm glad that some nation is stepping forward to push the technology, as that's the only way it will become practical.
Per car in the Nozomi (the express-est of the express bullet trains), there's something like 15 rows of seats with 5 seats per row with 16 cars per train. The two Green Cars (first class, sort of) are a little more spacious - 4 seats per row, but not much more.
The route I presume will be from Tokyo/Yokohama to Nagoya which along the same shinkansen route that continues on to Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, goes underwater and ends up in Hakata in Kyushu. Most of the passengers go from Tokyo to Osaka, but I understand why they're not doing the Maglev train all the way to Osaka yet, it's fairly flat up until Nagoya, then there are a lot of hills between Nagoya and Osaka.
I love the trains in Japan. I'm sure they will do this one just as well as they did the shinkansen.
You got me curious, so I did a little math.
Cost of the war so far (not counting amount we'll waste before this blunder is done with): $420B.
Cost of superconducting maglev track per mile in the US for long distances: $15-20M. Let's say 20M.
Miles we could build: 21,000
Distance across continental America, east to west: ~2500 mi
Distance across continental America, north to south: ~1250 mi
For that money, we could build ~5 east-west cross-country routes and ~7 north-south routes, or 4 and 9, or whatever. Another way to put it: we could add almost half of our entire length of interstate highways in superconducting maglev. Other methods, like inductrac, could be much cheaper and cover more miles.
Or, we could use the money to kill a bunch of brown people overseas for no good reason. Either way works, I suppose.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
All of the above.
Tokyo growing further... hard to picture. If you've ever been there, the city just seems to go on and on forever. Check out the satellite view -- look at how it stretches its tendrils across the country. To give a sense of how zoomed out that is, here's the state of Connecticut at the same zoom level.
In Tokyo, I remember never having a sense of where in the city I was. You just sort of disappear into the subways and reappear in a different setting.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
The planned route is quite different than the current shinkansen. It would run from Tokyo west to Kofu, through Nagano and Gifu prefectures. Much of the route is mountainous so there would be numerous tunnels. You'll find a proposed route at www.linear-chuo-exp-cpf.gr.jp. The site is in Japanese but even if you can't read Japanese, there are many illustrations.
Never underestimate the Japanese. If they set a firm goal that is obtainable then watch out. In the past when they set a goal for themselves they usually achieve it. 20 years is plenty of time to get the technology figured out. The interesting thing will be how they pull it off.
The technology is actually already figured out.
And apart from some accidents caused by human errors it works fine and already is used commercially in Shanghai.