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Japan's L-Zero Maglev Train Reaches 310 mph In Trials
coolnumbr12 writes with this excerpt from IBTimes: "Japan's magnetic-levitation train is still more than decade away from completion, but the L-Zero recently proved that it really is the world's fastest train. On a 15-mile stretch of test track, the L-Zero reached speeds of 310 miles per hour. After the successful trials, Central Japan Railway Co. is going ahead with a 5.1 trillion yen ($52 billion) plan to build a 177-mile maglev line between Tokyo and Nagoya. CJR says the trip will take just 40 minutes on the L-Zero." There are other fast trains in the world, but the L-Zero edges out the others on this list.
...an obvious nickname?
Ezekiel 23:20
A cow at that speed...
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
If every kilometer of it's tracks is about as costly as the German's maglev, what is the economic justification? China balked at the cost of a Shanghai-Beijing maglev line and built a wheeled system instead. And nobody has built a maglev after the Shanghai's airport to city center line.
It is weird i don't see any USA or Russian trains, they both got a vast country and a knack of looking for grandour.
How come that much smaller countries like Taiwan got faster trains, heh.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
That tells me nothing more than "pretty fast". You're on the internet, use the fucking metric system.
TFA is a cut-n-paste from a badly-written and poorly-researched Wired article some staffer wrote to fill in a blank space on the website last week.
The Japanese maglev trains (there are two parallel tracks) have been running consistently at 500km/h (310 mph in old money) for over a decade and more in testing. Its actual record speed is 580km/h (about 360mph). In addition the test track is 40km long, not 26km as stated in the article; it was extended a few years back. Etc., etc.
What are they using to protect the track against earthquakes? I'd hate to be speeding along at those speeds and have the track shift/vanish from under me.. or even the "mag" suddenly cut out for that matter.
Just curious.
As an aside, this is truly amazing technology. In case you're interested, look up how the acceleration and braking is controlled for a smooth ride. It's ethernet all the way down the trains for very small on the fly adjustments for ride smoothness.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
They should've asked Elon Musk to design a Hyperloop transport system for them. It would've saved them billions.
357.2 mph good job the French: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV_world_speed_record
Pls correct article bad sources there
It's ~498km/h.
Given China's history of theft, it won't be long until we see a design that is a knock-off of the Japanese design with some other bits thrown in.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Is that faster than Superman?
I appreciate all the responses, they are well informed and made me smarter :) I was too lazy to research myself and appreciate the additional insight. Your comments are the main reason I keep coming back to slashdot and participating in discussions.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
While the speed is all well and good, I have to wonder how much more energy this consumes than the current technology(or perhaps it's more efficient?) With the proliferation of mobile internet technology, I don't really see a whole lot of advantage in shaving off a few minutes on my travel time if it makes the ticket much more expensive(due to increased energy costs). I can get almost as much work/play done on the train as I can on the ground...
Also, from TFA:
Despite the falling national population, Tokyo continues to grow. Japan is hoping that the L-Zero maglev train will persuade millions of people to fly and drive less.
People would take the train more and fly/drive less if JR weren't stupidly inflexible about ticket prices. Unlike planes(and high speed trains in places like Europe for that matter), there is basically 0 flexibility in their prices. Going during prime hours costs the same as going early in the morning or on weekends etc. The reason people fly instead of taking the trains is simple, the trains are often times more expensive. It's already faster to take the train in most cases(esp. if you are going from Tokyo to Nagoya), but since the train is often times 2x as expensive as flying, even when the train is almost empty, I'm willing to put up with the extra time required to fly. So maybe instead of pouring massive amounts of money into faster trains, they should maybe think about hiring a couple of good logisticians who can actually work out a pricing system that actually takes advantage of these newfangled devices called "computers" to dynamically adjust prices to make JR more money AND give better customer satisfaction...... Meh, knowing JR, that's just a pipe dream. Bring on the maglevs!
Monstar L
TGV holds the world record for wheeled trains, but even their 2007 record speed was a few kph slower than the record attempt of the maglev mentioned here in 2003.
The Japanese do things differently than the western nations do.
And some of those differences can result in tragedy because
respect for "elders" or "superiors" is given precedence over
whether things have really been done properly or not.
At least if they fuck up a high speed train the rest of the world
won't be as likely to suffer the consequences as in the case of
Fukushima, where the sheer idiocy of building a nuclear power
plant so close to the coast which is known to be subject to severe
flooding boggles the mind of anyone with any common sense.
-
What's a news item like this without video?
Here is one: L0 going 500 km/h
(views from inside the train earlier in the video)
The problem with that is that Japan improved itself and makes higher quality electronics as well as high-quality golfcarts that can be licensed for road use.
China on the other hand, relies on its status of being a supplier of easily-controlled labor and regularly steals designs (another monorail) or even entire companies (such as the military-backed-and-run Huawei - who stole Nortel - as well as a government-run company-in-name-only Lenovo - which stole IBM PCD by deception)
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When was the last time the Fukushima site was hit by flooding of that level?
You should start a kickstarter campaign for a huge dildo. I am sure many will be glad to send you some money so yo can spend more time ripping yous ass appart and leaving us all discuss like adults.
High speed rail is only economical for passenger travel, and not freight. Freight is a large consumer of ground transportation. Air freight, by mass, is about 0.1% of ground freight. The French tried HSR freight. It wasn't attractive enough. On speed, high speed rail is only 3 times faster than car, and there is still the last mile problem.
So, high speed rail is in the uncomfortable in between of road, and airplane. I personally think travel between 2 cities by air has to be in the top 50 in the world, to justify a high speed rail line.
Energy consumption goes up quickly with speed. That kills off the energy efficiency advantage of rail over air. Airplanes cheat by going high in the atmosphere, where air density is a 1/3, or 1/4 of sea level. If you are going slower, cheaper, old fashioned steel rail works. So, I have trouble seeing the use of tubeless maglev.
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf on page 11-12 should give some background on heights and the site ie they knew and still built the site lower down.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Only the US-Tards use MPH and the rest of the world is confused.
if something is not profitable, then the net benefit to society is negative.
Counterexample: Wikipedia. It's a non-profit, based entirely on user contributed material and user curating of said material. Even in opinion at , Wikipedia was considered to be generating a consumer surplus. But the very notion of consumer surplus is missing from your analysis.
As another example, having accessible works in the public domain is a net benefit to society, even if there is no profit to be made from them. No doubt, having any works in the public domain is an economic catastrophe in such a narrow view as the one you presented.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The article is slightly confusing because, in some places, it cites the maximum speed in testing during development (where the world records are set) but appears to be ranking in order of maximum speed in service. In some cases the significance of the cited speed is not clear, e.g. "TGV Réseau 236 mph capability".
World record speeds are interesting but not particularly useful for passengers. The TGV that holds the world speed record for a conventional (wheeled) train operated under conditions that do not occur in normal use: it had larger wheels fitted and the overhead catenary had a higher voltage and a higher tension (to ensure that waves resulting from displacement due to the pantograph travelled faster than the train). An impressive feat, all the same.
The French TGV did 357mph in 2007, six years ago. Interestingly, it was not a mag-lev prototype, it was a modified production train on a standard TGV track.
How much energy is expended per passenger-km compared to an efficient aircraft?
Francisco Jose Garzon. he's headed that way, just as soon as he gets past the difficulties in spain
News for nerds and there is MPH. What is up with that?