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."

Comments

Spin

[fiannaFailMan]

Despite problems with Maglev technology in test-bed scenarios around the world,...

Nice little bit of spin there. Was there any technology ever devised that didn't have problems in testing?

Not using Inductrack?!

[KonoWatakushi]

While the article is scarce on technical details, that is an immense sum of money. (Perhaps, in part, due to the landscape?) If the numbers at Wikipedia are correct, it is seven times the cost per unit length of the Shanghai TransRapid track. It would seem unimaginable for an Inductrack system to cost this much though.

So, I have to ask, why? Inductrack is a brilliant design, and would make Maglev's much cheaper and better in just about every way. Inductrack is a completely passive levitation system, which requires no electromagnets or control circuits to maintain stable levitation. You can't buy a finished system today, but the theory is proven, and it would almost certainly be a more sensible investment.

Inductrack is a direct extension of ideas which made possible the passive magnetic bearings in earlier Flywheel Energy Storage systems. Basically, it uses a linear Halbach Array instead of a cylindrical one. Very cool technology, all around.

Re:Terrorism targets?

[ghoul]

The reason the Japanese can concentrate on development without worrying about security is that they dont go into other countries and piss off a bunch of other people. Do you really think if the US military was not deployed in 150 countries all around the world Americans would still have to worry about terrorism? I dont think so. So a bunch of Muslims want to kill a bunch of Jews. What do we care. If America would just get out of the middle east and stop supporting Israel with money and arms I am sure the Mullahs would be too busy blowing up Israelis to care about blowing anything American up. Terrorism is just the cost you pay for having imperialist foreign policies. The Japanese learnt the hard way that an Imperialist foreign policy is not good. Unfortunately or fortunately America has not lost a war fought on its own soil in almost 2 centuries (the last war America lost was when the Canadians whooped Americas ass in 1812) so for Americans war is just a game and they keep supporting imperialist policies. Given the overwhelming strength of the US army terrorism is pretty much the only way the other side can fight back. It is kind of like how the founding fathers had to use terrorism to gain independence as there was no way they could stand up to the might of the British army.