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Japanese Maglev Train Hits 500kph

Posted by timothy on from the for-amtrak-that-takes-negligence dept.

An anonymous reader writes Japan has now put 100 passengers on a Maglev train doing over 500kph. That's well over twice as fast as the fastest U.S. train can manage, and that only manages 240kph on small sections of its route. The Japanese Shinkansen is now running over 7 times times as fast as the average U.S. express passenger train. 500kph is moving towards the average speed of an airliner. Add the convenience of no boarding issues, and city-centre to city-centre travel, and the case for trains as mass-transport begins to look stronger.

6 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. 510kph is airliner speed? by exabrial · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not to be "that guy" but I thought airliners cruised about 600ish mph... which is about 1000kph.

    1. Re:510kph is airliner speed? by fnj · · Score: 5, Informative

      777 cruise speed is 900 km/h, but the actual average speed from embarking to debarking - "block speed" - which includes loading, waiting for takeoff clearance, taxiing, takeoff, climbout, a percentage of adverse winds during cruise, waiting for landing clearance, landing, taxiing, and unloading - is a good deal lower.

      A block speed of 700 km/h, particularly over routes that are not very long, and match train route lengths, would not be too far off the mark. That's a lot closer to a train with a block speed not far short of 500 km/h, than is a naive comparison of 500 km/h to 1000 km/h.

      A train's block speed is also less than its "cruising" speed, but many of the factors that work against airliners are either absent or of reduced magnitude.

    2. Re:510kph is airliner speed? by ilguido · · Score: 4, Informative

      Perhaps because the Hokkaido Shinkansen will open in 2016.

  2. kph? by manu0601 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is nice to pick international system units, however it would be better to do it right. This should be km/h, not kph.

  3. Re:240km/hr? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Comparing average densities is absolutely and utterly pointless. Noone suggests to build a Lincoln-Cheyenne maglev train. What about looking at dense regions rather? The US North-East megalopolis has a density of 359.6 people/km with over 50 million inhabitants total. More than dense enough for a maglev. Or even just conventional high speed trains.

  4. Re: Is it wrong to wish for it to crash? by radarskiy · · Score: 4, Informative

    "If one of these things crashes at full speed, it is unlikely that anyone survives"

    Why do you think this?

    Crashes at up to 300kph in Japan and France have resulted in 0 fatalities. The worst "high-speed" crash was Eschede with a 50% fatality rate at "only" 200 kph because it went sideways into a bridge piling after derailing onto both sides of the switch and the bridge collapsed on top of it. As sxpert notes, for that to happen with this track design would require also lifting the train several feet to get it out of its trench before you could get it turned far enough to take out a bridge. The proximate failure at Eschede, where snagging the points resulted in the leading and trailing trucks of a car to leave a switch on separate tracks, is physically impossible with this maglev's track design..