Japanese Maglev Train Hits 500kph

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.

Comments

510kph is airliner speed?

[exabrial]

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

Re:510kph is airliner speed?

[fnj]

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.

Re:240km/hr?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.