Maglev Train Exceeds 600km/h For World Record

nojayuk writes: An experimental Japanese magnetic levitation train has reached a speed of 603 km/h, breaking the world speed record the same train set last week of 590 km/h. "Central Japan Railway (JR Central), which owns the trains, wants to introduce the service between Tokyo and the central city of Nagoya by 2027. The 280km journey would take only about 40 minutes, less than half the current time. However, passengers will not get to experience the maglev's record-breaking speeds because the company said its trains will operate at a maximum of 505km/h. In comparison, the fastest operating speed of a Japanese shinkansen, or "bullet train" is is 320km/h. ... Construction costs are estimated at nearly $100bn (£67bn) just for the stretch to Nagoya, with more than 80% of the route expected to go through costly tunnels, AFP news agency reports."

Comments

So did

[Anonymous Coward]

This post

Re:So did

[Anonymous Coward]

That was actually pretty funny, my AC brethren, well played.

Re:So did

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't brave to declare it a first post, however.

Great engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

California should outsource their water engineering needs to the Japanese.

$100 billion for 150 miles?

[alen]

that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs. and it would still be half the speed of your average airliner

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[spiritplumber]

For 5% of the fuel cost? And no security theater? And no $100 taxi ride either way? I'll take it.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[alen]

and magic fairies to pull it all the way

Re: $100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know right? 100 billion to cut 40 mins of the trip? There's only like 10 million people even in Tokyo. That's 10,000 per person... how is this project viable? Unless a mag lev train has like 0 operating costs the intrest alone on this project can't possibly make it worthwhile.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[CastrTroy]

Not if you count the time getting through security. For me, this is one of the biggest comforts of riding a train. I use it for short city to city trips. Show up 20 minutes before scheduled departure to make sure you aren't late, walk on, walk off. Most train stations are in the middle of the city while airports tend to be on the edge of the city, which, depending on where you are going, can often add even more travel time to travelling by air. Also, sometimes minimal travel time isn't the biggest concern.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[jgtg32a]

Why do you assume no security theater?

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[aseth]

So, less than one Iraq War then?

Sounds pretty good.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Carewolf]

that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs. and it would still be half the speed of your average airliner

Only if the entire distance is a mountain chain and 600km/h is 3/4 of the speed of a modern airliner (not average, any).

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Fire_Wraith]

Japan tends to be more sane about this sort of thing. Heck, they had someone nerve-gas their subway, but it's still the same as before. Here in the USA we'd have politicians demanding mandatory strip-searches on anyone trying to use mass transit faster than you can say TSA.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[afidel]

600km/h is 3/4 of the speed of a modern airliner (

No, it's 2/3rds, Boeing 777 cruise speed is 905km/h, 747-400, 787, and A380 are slightly faster, A340 is slightly slower.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs.

Yeah, we could pay for a few years of another pointless war with that much money.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Carewolf]

600km/h is 3/4 of the speed of a modern airliner (

No, it's 2/3rds, Boeing 777 cruise speed is 905km/h, 747-400, 787, and A380 are slightly faster, A340 is slightly slower.

Well, depends on whether the airline is in the jet stream or not. Anyway, it is certainly not half, 1200km/h is faster than the speed of sound.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[DutchUncle]

Trains don't have security theater yet because of the lower perceived potential impact - you can't crash a train into something, for example. This is, of course, an display of lack of imagination. Living near NYC, I am all too familiar with a multitude of bridge and tunnel crossings. Damaging a train - even a local subway train, not a commuter or long-distance route - in the middle of any one of those would cause serious headaches, if not major consequential damage. The real point is that an ultra-speed line operating the Boston-NYC-Washington corridor, or any other section of the major city routes, would become a much more attractive target because of (1) its very newness and shiny-ness, and (2) the higher possibility of doing consequential damage by damaging a train at higher speed. One must assume, then, that some degree of security theater will be imposed on the new rail system.

One must also assume that since the new tracks will have to be totally new, they will have an excuse not to follow existing tracks into the old center city stations along highly expensive rights-of-way, but will instead stop at new stations outside of cities . . . maybe at airports, to take advantage of at least *some* infrastructure. This would be OK if there were better local connections, except in the US many airports have no connections to their cities; the three New York City area airports, for example, despite being in one of the best mass transit centers in the country, were never fully connected to the existing local commuter train lines. And bus service is laughable.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Fire_Wraith]

That assumes the entire cost scales equally, but I suspect the major cost is the development of the technology and the building of the train itself, the track and associated infrastructure is probably a lot less. I expect adding further track/destinations/etc, such as a line from Nagoya to Osaka, would be a lot less expensive.

Something like this would be amazing to have in the Northeast Corridor - heck, we're spending $117 billion just to increase the speed there to 350km/h. At 500km/h it would take an hour to get to New York, which would be just as fast as flying, without the insanity and the hassle.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[sonicmerlin]

This strikes me as just more government corruption and corporate welfare. I can't imagine this makes financial sense. When they're taking down nuclear reactors across Japan you'd think they would want to spend this money on wind turbines or solar plants.

Re: $100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

70 million in tokyo

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's this thing called population density, and Japan has it.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[MightyYar]

Trains don't have security because it would be trivial to attack them without being on them. Short of acquiring a fighter jet or missile, this is not the case with aircraft. Why bother blowing yourself up on a train when you can do whatever you want to it from anywhere along it's permanent track? Dumbasses demonstrate this tactic all the time by stopping on grade crossings.

As for the NYC airports, only Laguardia is isolated from rail. JFK is linked to Jamaica, which is served by both subway and LIRR. Newark is served by Amtrak and NJ Transit along the NE Corridor line.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[rubycodez]

"Can't crash a train into anything"...hahaha, you've never heard of the Chicago CTA

sleeping operator makes CTA train crash into and up escalator: http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Pothead tries to push train ahead out of the way: http://www.chicago-l.org/misha...
CTA "ghost train" with no operator goes for a ride and crashes, multiple fail-safes not working: http://patch.com/illinois/oakp...

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Guy Harris]

Trains don't have security theater yet because of the lower perceived potential impact - you can't crash a train into something, for example. This is, of course, an display of lack of imagination.

Yup.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[sexconker]

5% of the fuel cost? Maybe if it's an express route with no stops (which will never happen - every town you want to build through or near demands a stop).
No security theater? You wish. The TSA would descend upon it faster than flies on shit.
You still need to get to the train station just as you need to get to the airport. If train stations are more common than airports then you're going to be subjected to stop after stop on your journey. If they're as or less common then it's the same problem as getting to an airport.

Re: $100 billion for 150 miles?

[rogoshen1]

could be a bit of a 'make work' program or to maintain the ability for Japanese companies to complete projects like this?

Sure they spend 100B, but as a form of welfare or pork barrel spending, it sure beats smart bombs and cruise missiles right?

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Short of acquiring a fighter jet or missile, this is not the case with aircraft.

Yet, despite that hurdle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents

A not insignificant number of those were done by someone other than the (official) military.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[tlambert]

that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs.

Yeah, we could pay for a few years of another pointless war with that much money.

And for that, instead of a useless war on terror, we get a useless train which no one wants to ride because the security theater and speed make it more of a PITA than the airline. It might be a fun vacation trip exactly once, particularly if they are maintaining the "free train rides if you blog about how great it was, even if it wasn't". Maybe twice, if you take the ride back as well.

High sped trains in the U.S. usually aren't.

https://systemicfailure.wordpr...

http://chi.streetsblog.org/201...

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[AmiMoJo]

Also, Japan is the world leader in high speed rail. They can sell the technology all around the world. The UK's current high-ish speed rail is going to use Japanese trains, for example.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs. and it would still be half the speed of your average airliner

But how much volume?

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still need to get to the train station just as you need to get to the airport. If train stations are more common than airports then you're going to be subjected to stop after stop on your journey. If they're as or less common then it's the same problem as getting to an airport.

In the last three major cities I lived in, the airports had restricted public transit options, with an extra taxi fee, and a lot of push back from the taxi companies whenever there were proposals of improving public transit access (e.g. extending train line instead of relying on buses). The train stations did not have this issue, and it helps that train stations tend to be smaller than airports and more centrally located. So even if taking a taxi, it still ended up being a lot cheaper.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fortunate that funding for this sort of project would largely come from states and not the federal government. (See the California high-speed rail project.)

I mean, it's not like California is in debt for reasons completely unrelated to the Iraq War, right?

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[houghi]

An hour to get to New York Manhattan. Not just the airport. You must look at the door to door time it takes.
  What is the time you leave home? What is the time you arrive at your destination? e.g. if would go to Paris, when I look at flying time, it would take 55 minutes with a plane from Brussels to Paris.
By train it would take 1:31.

However I do not live at the station nor at the airport. And those will not be my destination. Say I would go from my home in Leuven to the Eifel tower.
Flight:
Taxi to the airport : 20 minutes (If there is traffic, make that an hour)
Time before departure : 1 hour
Flight 55 minutes.
Getting out of the airport : 15 minutes
Taxi to the eifeltower: 36 minutes
Total time: 3h06 without any trafic. With trafic, add 1 hour easily.

Train: Walk to the station 5 minutes
Train from Leuven to Brussels, change to train to Paris and arriva in Paris: 2:00
Bublic transport to Eifetower : 35 minutes
Total time:2:40

So even now the train is already faster. And these trains "only" drive at 320. I also have taken a taxi, instead of parking and loosing extra time for that and picking up a rental car.

To compare: by car it is 3 hours and 20 minutes. Yes, I am aware that other people do not live 5 minutes walking away fron the train station. Yes, YMMV. The thing is that you need to look at door to door times. I have not even looked at prices. Lowest price I saw to Paris was 29EUR (31.13USD)

And if you are interested, I could be in London in 3h30

Websites I used are:
www.b-europe.com
Google Maps in Classic layout
Google Flights

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Archangel Michael]

California HSR is a joke. The cost of the project is already exceeding what was promised to the voters of the bond. Which means, it won't be nearly done for the price promised to tax payers by the liberal democrats who want the thing. Not only that, the estimated cost of tickets has already exceeded the cost of airline tickets for the same trip, and are considerably more than gas / mileage in a car.

It would be cheaper to give every California family a Tesla and build electric charging stations in every town.

But, actual costs aren't the issue, or so liberals love to tell us. I have no idea why liberals love trains so much, they are just another mode of transportation.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Harlequin80]

In Japan the Shinkansen stations are connected to or part of a larger general network station. The idea is that they connect hub stations to each other, not that the shinkansens are a stand alone station for the location.

As for security. You walk to them and get on. I was there 3 weeks ago with my family towing suitcases. No one even looked twice at us. The trains are wider than an aircraft and the seats much more comfortable. You also have the choice between allocated and non allocated seating.

Because there is no security, baggage check/reclaim, early boarding time and the stations are in main areas they end up being faster than flying in short distance travel. Finally because they are well connected stations already you catch the tube to the shinkansen alleviating any parking issues.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[AmiMoJo]

It's worth noting that this is just the starting speed. The train, the Type L0, is supposed to run up to around 900km/h after some time. They are taking it slowly in order to maintain a high level of safety, slowly increasing speeds over a number of years. The other big concern is noise, particularly from exiting tunnels, but hopefully that can be solved.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare to the Boeing 737-800, which is by far the most common aircraft used in commercial aviation in cross-US flights. It has a cruising speed of 828km/h. It carries 189 passengers, each crammed into a 44cm-wide seat.

By comparison this train, with the disadvantage of taking 4/3 the same amount of time to travel a given distance (at 3/4 the speed), you can be on a train with freedom to move around, buy a drink, plug in your devices, use the wi-fi, relax, enjoy some leg room, and generally have an all-around pleasant traveling experience. And I bet tickets would be cheaper due to the fact that capacity can be increased simply by hooking up another passenger car.

This thing is the airlines' worst nightmare.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[afidel]

Very cool, then it should be able to smoke a plane in destination to destination times, between crowded takeoff slots and the fact that trains can do city center to city center it's no contest. The cost is obviously astronomical because of the tunneling, but I'm not sure an artificial island expansion to add air capacity would be that much cheaper, Kansai was $20B and Chbu was $7B, add in inflation and more expensive raw material costs and you're looking at probably half the cost of the train route.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And no security theater?"

The TSA is at Amtrak. They've already had their hands on buses, ferries, etc.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Dutch Gun]

The number of people traveling on all US flights in total is about 1.75 million daily. By contrast, the Tokyo subway system alone carries over 8 million passengers daily, while the greater Tokyo railway system carries 40 million passengers every day, using nearly 900 stations to embark and disembark. The simple fact is that there's no practical way to do any sort of security screening for mass transit on that scale anyhow, even had they wished to.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[danbob999]

You loose less time with a 600 km/h train than a 828 km/h plane because of many other factors including takeoff, landing, congestion, cancellation, security, missed connections and 1h taxi ride to airport stuck in traffic. Even at 500 km/h, this train will be much faster than any air transport overall, on distances up to at least 2000 km.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we already have passenger trains and the security is no big deal.

Re: $100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know right? 100 billion to cut 40 mins of the trip? There's only like 10 million people even in Tokyo. That's 10,000 per person... how is this project viable?

Generously assuming for the sake of argument that your numbers are accurate, your $10,000 per person can easily be $500 per person per year for twenty years, which is EASILY worth it when you consider how much more commerce will happen when travel times are cut in half.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that once trains become sizeable profit centers that the legroom you speak of will be so easy to come by? It will be a race to the bottom like every other industry. Someone will offer the "budget train" that crams 500 people into a each bogey (NY to LA for $100) and you will be right back where you started.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[PopeRatzo]

For me, this is one of the biggest comforts of riding a train. I use it for short city to city trips.

Not just city to city, but city center to city center. I can't tell you how frustrated I get when I take a 1.5 hour flight that requires 1.5 hours to get to the departure airport and 1.5 hours to get from the arrival airport to downtown.

Plus, on a train I don't feel like I'm being jammed into a can with a bunch of smelly sardines. Headroom is such a pleasure on a 4 hour trip. And any trip up to 4-5 hours is just as fast or faster done on a train.

Full disclosure: I grew up in a railroad family. My grandfather was an engineer and fireman (that's what they called the guys who originally shoveled coal into the boilers on the steam trains and then kept the diesel engines running, later) for the Rock Island and my dad was a machinist for the R.R. I have a full set of china from the dining car of the Golden Rocket and I'm drinking out of a heavy china mug from the original Golden Chief. I dig the railroad. My wife and I took our honeymoon on the trans-Canadian railroad in a luxurious railway cabin, and when you've had sex in a gently rocking sleeping car, the "mile-high club" doesn't really seem all that impressive.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[PopeRatzo]

So, less than one Iraq War then?

Less than one month of the Iraq War.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

This strikes me as just more government corruption and corporate welfare.

JR Central is actually a for-profit company (one of seven in the JR Group), and has stated it plans to complete the Chuo maglev project without government financing.

I can't imagine this makes financial sense.

It does if you run the numbers, though. Annual ridership in 2012 for the Tokaido line that runs roughly along the same route as this new maglev line was approximately 143 million passengers. If JR Central wanted to recoup TFA's estimate of $100 billion USD in ten years (which is not unusual period for infrastructure that will last upwards of five times that), that comes out to a fare price of ~$70 USD.

Checking the estimated construction schedule and costs for the Chuo maglev line, it seems as of 2011 JR Central expected construction costs to be ~9 trillion yen (~$75.2 billion USD, according to Google), and fare prices to be within 700 yen (~$5.85 USD) of current Tokaido line prices for Nagoya/Tokyo. The current cost of a one-way Nagoya/Tokyo Nozomi shinkansen ticket is 11090 yen (~$92.66 USD), so that means they're expecting fare prices to be ~$98.51 USD for the maglev. Since that's higher than my earlier ballpark figure of $70, we can use these more accurate estimates to infer that they actually intend to recoup their investment in ~5.34 years. I think we can agree that's a pretty good payback period for a new rail line.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[nojayuk]

In Japan the Shinkansen stations are connected to or part of a larger general network station.

Actually no. Many shinkansen stations are adjacent to mainline railway stations in Japan but not all of them. Shinkansens run on their own separate railtracks on a separate network to the mainline trains. They have to, they're standard gauge (4ft 8 1/2 inches) whereas Japan's regular rail network is nearly all a smaller gauge, 3ft 6 inches.

Shinkansen stations such as Shin-Onomichi and Shin-Karashiki serve smaller cities and are some distance from the town centres and their regular railway stations as it would have been inconvenient to route the shinkansen track into those city centres.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Harlequin80]

Thanks. I was under the impression they had connected a local line to all the Shinkansen stations. They have in Shin-Karashiki but from what I can see Shin-Onomichi doesn't have a connection to the local lines.

Of-course you do have to change platforms at a minimum and in some of Japan's stations that can mean a hell of a walk, they are that huge.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[angel'o'sphere]

I would not say that. The french TGV and the german ICE are similar fast.
It is more a question of the rails how fast you can go than the train.

However the mag lev record is impressive as the german "trans rapid" only made something around 450 km/h.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[nojayuk]

Yep. The first time I tried to visit Kurashiki (mistyped the name in my original post, sorry), I got out at the shinkansen station and started walking towards what I though was the town centre (it's a tourist attraction, an old-style Japanese town with canals and such). Six hours later, hopelessly lost, footsore and out of water I got a taxi back to the shinkansen station and went back to my hotel in Onomichi. Second time I visited I got on the local train to Kurashiki proper from Shin-Kurashiki.

Shin-Onomichi is up in the hills behind the town itself whereas the JR station is pretty much on the waterfront down by the shore. I'll be there in a few weeks celebrating my birthday with Onomichi-style ramen but I usually get a local-line train to Onomichi from the Fukayama or Mihara shinkansen stations, depending on which direction I'm travelling in.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[sexconker]

As pointed out, you're wrong about how they're connected.
As for security, you're forgetting that the USA is not Japan.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[danbob999]

Trans rapid is in operation in Shanghai and acheive 430 km/h on every run, moving actual people to a real destination.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[serviscope_minor]

Trains don't have security because it would be trivial to attack them without being on them. Short of acquiring a fighter jet or missile, this is not the case with aircraft. Why bother blowing yourself up on a train when you can do whatever you want to it from anywhere along it's permanent track? Dumbasses demonstrate this tactic all the time by stopping on grade crossings.

Attacking well made trains to do more than greatly inconvenince them is very hard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

some of those trains derailed at full speed (180mph) with nothing more than a few slight injuries.

TGV trains are built to high safety standards. The trains are actually very stiff so if they derail, they simply carry on forward along the ground tearing it up and losing speed somewhat gradually without folding up. Even Carlos the Jackal tried to bomb the TGV and succeeded in killing only 2 people.

While trains heavily delayed due to attackes seriously annoy people, the lack of grisly deaths makes the entire thing rather pointless for terrorists.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[haruchai]

Elon Musk's Hyperloop is starting to look like a bargain, if it's technically feasible.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[MightyYar]

Right, so one of those was an on-board bombing which killed a whopping 2 people. That is exactly my point: you could kill 2 people without smuggling something on board. You brought the TGV into the discussion, and I'm not very familiar with the system. I'm sure a determined terrorist could find a way to kill more than 2 people, but I could just be ignorant. Certainly it would not be hard in the US with typical commuter rail, Amtrak, or subways.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[mjwx]

that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs. and it would still be half the speed of your average airliner

Only if the entire distance is a mountain chain and 600km/h is 3/4 of the speed of a modern airliner (not average, any).

Remember that the 600 KPH of this train is its top attained speed, not it's average speed. TGV trains in France often reach 320 KPH (200 MPH) but this is for short periods and the average is much lower for sections of track that only support lower speeds (120 KPH and below).

Trains are great for getting around in densely populated countries like England and France but not for long distance travel. If I had to go from London to Paris, I'd take the TVG as it would be faster (Flight time is 1:05, Eurostar is 2:20-3:00 depending on stops), if I had to go from London to Berne I'd fly as its 1:40 by plane but 8:20 by train. Even with all the mucking about at the airport, flying is faster (if it takes you 1.5 hours to leave an airport, you're doing it wrong, doubly so when travelling in the Eurozone). One of the big problems with long distance rail travel is the fact you need to change trains.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, this is one of the biggest comforts of riding a train. I use it for short city to city trips.

Not just city to city, but city center to city center. I can't tell you how frustrated I get when I take a 1.5 hour flight that requires 1.5 hours to get to the departure airport and 1.5 hours to get from the arrival airport to downtown.

Plus, on a train I don't feel like I'm being jammed into a can with a bunch of smelly sardines. Headroom is such a pleasure on a 4 hour trip. And any trip up to 4-5 hours is just as fast or faster done on a train.

Full disclosure: I grew up in a railroad family. My grandfather was an engineer and fireman (that's what they called the guys who originally shoveled coal into the boilers on the steam trains and then kept the diesel engines running, later) for the Rock Island and my dad was a machinist for the R.R. I have a full set of china from the dining car of the Golden Rocket and I'm drinking out of a heavy china mug from the original Golden Chief. I dig the railroad. My wife and I took our honeymoon on the trans-Canadian railroad in a luxurious railway cabin, and when you've had sex in a gently rocking sleeping car, the "mile-high club" doesn't really seem all that impressive.

So as it turns out... you do in fact fuck your wife?

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[DutchUncle]

The point of the most famous airline attacks was not to destroy the plane, but to use the plane to destroy something much bigger. Destroying a train track would certainly kill a bunch of people, but getting a few suitcases of explosives ON the train and blowing them up under the middle of the Hudson River might well damage the tunnel for years of work. There are multiple bridges from Manhattan over the East River which carry either rails only or rails & road, all of which are old and any of which would cause a significant dent in traffic.

Newark Airport has been open since the 1920s; the monorail to the train station was only added in 2000. JFK opened in 1948 as Idlewild; the AirTrain connection to Jamaica only opened in 2003. The taxi and transport industry had lobbied against easy train connections from the early days. I compare and contrast with the European airports I have passed through incorporating train stations directly underneath the terminals.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[MightyYar]

I can't even imagine how much explosive you would need to damage the tunnels from INSIDE a train. Maybe if you could get some incendiary device on a diesel train, but diesels don't run into NYC. Actually that isn't quite true - NJ Transit runs some dual-mode trains now. Still seems like a long shot.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Harlequin80]

Have fun! I did Tokyo, Nagano, Takiyama and Kyoto this time (4th visit to Japan). The snow monkeys near Nagano were very cool. The closest I have come to Onomichi and Fukayama is passing through them on the Shinkansen on the way to Hiroshima. One day we have the dream of owning a holiday house in Hiroshima we loved it that much.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[haruchai]

I have no idea why conservatives love cars & trucks so much, they are just another mode of transportation.

Fixed that for you.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[PopeRatzo]

So as it turns out... you do in fact fuck your wife?

Given that my 24 year-old daughter has my eyes and her mother's beauty and brains, yes, but just once and it was a long time ago.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[haruchai]

Right back where we started?
  That's called a round-trip - and I'd be happy to take on a fast train.
On a plane, not so much.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[demonlapin]

Why do you think you're going to be able to skip the taxi ride? You're not going to pull into Penn Station unless this thing can seamlessly convert onto standard rolling stock. And what would you do in LA without a car?

Re: $100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots that transform into various and sundry security apparatus, with tentacles. Oh, yes. So many tentacles.

You know they're working on it.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Ryanrule]

ah, protestant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[DutchUncle]

Remember, there are only two tunnels, and they're over 100 years old, and one of them got flooded with salt water during Hurricane Sandy, and people are already talking about how to shut them down for refurbishing. Besides, I figure explosion in the tunnels is a much better engineering bet than in the open on a bridge; there's got to be some bonus for the confined space. How about smashing a window and triggering the explosive between the train and the tunnel wall if there's enough clearance? Though obviously the preferred direction is "up", because that's where the water is, which is much more interesting than just blocking and damaging the tracks and tunnel and wiring and electrification . . . Ooh, right, gotta get that 480 volts involved somehow.

Civilization only works because most people, most of the time, are civilized. And that's even counting the people stealing cables and pipes out of the walls for the scrap metal. Most people don't see any profit for themselves in random destruction, beyond maybe the immediate lulz. But in the never-ending battle between order and chaos, chaos has by far the easier victory conditions.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[DutchUncle]

It's not about the damn train, or even the people on it. It's about screwing up transportation for many thousands of people, if not millions, for the multiple years that repairs would take. It's about making millions of people in the region, and more around the world, feel constantly endangered. It's about setting fire to our social contract.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Gavagai80]

All the liberal democrats I know in California, including myself, voted against the high speed rail. SF and LA voted for it. It'd be useless to the rest of us even if it could be built on schedule and budget.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple years? Nazies used a few weeks at most, during the Norwegian Occupation, to repair blown up rail ways.
The saboteurs would plant charges, so it would take the most time possible to repair the railways.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Jack Griffin]

Because Japan already has fast trains and they don't need it.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Jack Griffin]

Depends if time or stress is more important to you. When I'm on holiday I have time, and I don't want stress, so an 8 hour train journey still wins. I just book the sleeper and save the costs for one less night in a hotel.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Jack Griffin]

that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs.

Yeah, we could pay for a few years of another pointless war with that much money.

And for that, instead of a useless war on terror, we get a useless train which no one wants to ride because the security theater and speed make it more of a PITA than the airline.

"No-one" is a bit of an exaggeration. 30 million people pay to go on Amtrak each year, so there's at least 30 million people who would want to ride a brand new high speed rail. And that's about 29,999,997 more people that wanted the Iraq war.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[AmiMoJo]

Many of them are part of general rail stations though, and it's incredibly convenient. They take you right into the centre of town and if needs be you can get right on to another train. It's so much easier than using an airport.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[nojayuk]

I love Onomichi, it's a little port town nowhere in particular but it's a great relief from the concrete of Tokyo and Osaka. They film TV shows and movies there quite often when the producers need a town away from the big cities as a backdrop and it's even appeared in anime -- the series "Kamichu!" was set there. It has quite a few old rather run-down temples and shrines, not manicured and all shiny like Kyoto's ones. There are few if any foreign tourists too since no-one's outside Japan has ever heard of it.

Onomichi got a shinkansen station mostly because of local politics and pork-barreling when the Sanyo line was being laid out but it only gets a Kodama stopping service, the quicker Hikari and Nozomi trains just barrel through on their way to Hiroshima or Osaka.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Show up 20 minutes before? What is this, an airplane? I try to leave my home 15 minutes before, to have time to walk to the station, which takes about 10 minutes. That leaves enough time to get a ticket and get on the train.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just inconvenient to route the trains through the city centers. It would also be completely inefficient to do so! Because high-speed trains usually require straight tracks for higher speeds, stations may be in more optimal locations for its route.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[nojayuk]

It's sort of self-fulfilling that the bigger cities like Osaka, Hiroshima etc. have shinkensen stations near their centres because all the trains stop there. Since they slow down a lot before they stop the tracks can curve more than out in the countryside where the top speeds are achieved and straight-line no-grade track is required.

That's not to say the shinkansens slow down to an Amtrak crawl entering the big cities. The shinkansen tracks have blast walls where they pass through built-up areas as they're still going at over 150km/h and they'd blow out windows and knock over small children from the shockwave otherwise.

Other shinkansen stations have a pass-through track between the platforms where the expresses like the Nozomi run while the slower Hikari and Kodamas wait to let them pass. Many of those stations are some distance from the city centres. It's kind of fun to see the expresses blast through the stations at speed...

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[angel'o'sphere]

I know! What do you want to say with that?

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[danbob999]

there is a difference about a record on a test track and a real maximum speed in operation

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[albacrankie]

The shinkansen station may have been built because of pork-barrel politics, but Onomichi is not such a dead end. Shipbuilding used to be a major industry, especially on the nearby island of Innoshima. These days, it sits at an important transport junction where the Nishi Seto Expressway crosses from Honshu to Shikoku. I once spent three works in a company training center on the island of Mukaijima, immediately across the water from Onomichi. This was about 30 years ago. I remember taking the cable-pulled ferry across the water and then queuing for ramen. At that time, they had started building the bridges that would connect Honshu and Shikoku. I got to drive across about seven years ago.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[nojayuk]

The Nishi Seto expressway doesn't stop in Onomichi, it just dives off the mainland to Mukaishima and beyond via the bridges and doesn't bring much to Onomichi itself apart from bicycle rentals for tourists. Mihara just along the coast is a much more active ferry port with regular sailings to various islands, and that's why Mihara gets Hikari shinkansens whereas Onomichi only gets the stopping Kodama service. Mihara's shinkansen station is integrated with the local JR line station down by the docks, a short walk to the ferry port. I use the Mihara station to get to and from Hiroshima when I'm staying in Onomichi (as I will be again in a few weeks time).

The Onomichi ferries are still in operation. 100 yen to cross the Pacific, what a bargain!

The company you mentioned, was that the Hitachi-Zosen shipyard on Mukaijima next to the bridges? I've been told it used POW slave labour during WWII.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[serviscope_minor]

I'm sure a determined terrorist could find a way to kill more than 2 people, but I could just be ignorant.

I think Carlos the Jackal was pretty determined.

The TGV has come off the rails at full speed: that's 180MPH with a few minor injuries as a result. The worst accident is when the TGV whacked into an 80 tonne special transport stranded on a level crossing. That kind of thing is beyond the reach of even determined terrorists since one neesd special police permission and cooperation to move such an immense vehicle on the roads.

Yeah anyway, other trains are certainly worse, but for a well designed train it's actually very hard to cause significant damage. A fully loaded high speed train weigs nearly 800 tons and goes at nearly 200 MPH. That's an incredible amount of stored energy and the trains are designed to dissipate it as safely as possible if anything goes wrong.

It's hard for people not in heavy industry to muster similar amounts of energy with which to do damage to the train.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[albacrankie]

Yes. It was Hitachi-Zosen. I'm guessing the training center is no longer there. It was a bit of ghost building at the time, and the company was suffering severe problems. I've read about the POWs. I doubt the fact that the company was founded by a man from Belfast made them feel any better. I'm glad the ferry is still running.

I have in-laws on the Shikoku side, and so Onomichi is the first symbol of civilization for them. :-) Sadly, I heard the opening of the expressway led to the closing of the Hiroshima-Imabari passenger ferry (sea bus?). That was one great boat trip.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[MightyYar]

I think Carlos the Jackal was pretty determined.

Yes, and he killed more than 2 people :)

I've never put my mind to it (nor do I intend to), but it seems like some well-timed damage to a rail on a curve would cause some problems for even the best-designed train.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[MightyYar]

I think you underestimate the strength of those tunnels, but that is kind of a tangent.

I agree that it would be easy to disrupt the economics that underpin society. Look at all of those unguarded electrical poles. Most highways could be completely clogged with just 3 or 4 coordinated drivers simply parking and walking away. The fact that we have so few people actively engaged in such behavior tells you just how rare the motivation to carry out such things is - or how ineffective it is to simply piss people off rather than to terrorize them.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[serviscope_minor]

Yes, and he killed more than 2 people :)

Not on the TGV bombing :)

I've never put my mind to it (nor do I intend to), but it seems like some well-timed damage to a rail on a curve would cause some problems for even the best-designed train.

Bear in mind, the high speed trains go round very, VERY shallow curves. And derailing is not all that dangerous as the inter-car couplings are very stiff so you don't get the folding up that causes such a mess in other types of train crash.

The worse accidents tend to be on lower speed trains since they're not built to nearly the same standards as high speed ones.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? There are 38.8 million people in California, assuming average family size of 4, that's 9.5 million families. If we give them each a $80,000 Tesla the cost comes out to $760 billion. And that's without the charging stations...or the cost of the roads to drive on. And oh yeah, they won't be able to drive as fast as the train can go.

I appreciate some hyperbole, but you need to at least understand the actual values involved first!

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[angel'o'sphere]

Only the number :D otherwise there is no difference.
To bad we never build a real one at home. Hamburg - Berlin or Berlin - Munich or Hamburg - Munich would have been great opportunities.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[danbob999]

I am sure the transrapid could go much faster than 430 km/h on a test track. And we already know that the 600 km/h japanese train will have a top speed of 500 km/h in 2027. 430 km/h today sounds a lot more impressive to me than 500 km/h in a few years.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not hard - just hijack a freight train and have it pass a red at exactly the wrong time. Train collisions have been known to kill hundreds.

It just seems that we are lucky in that terrorists generally lack imagination and knowledge. In the rare case they don't, you get a 9/11 event.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Archangel Michael]

I don't love cars or trucks or trains or planes. I'm pragmatic like that. Right now, the cost of driving is cheaper (more pragmatic) than any other for of travel, up to about 500 miles, and depending on how many passengers are with me.

If I have to take a train, I have to take a taxi or park in $$ parking lot to get to the station, plus rent a car / taxi at the destination. Same with Airplanes. It isn't about love of cars, it is about cost of transportation.

Trains, especially HSR is a losing proposition, at current costs. It is better to build local trains to airports. I would love to be able to get on a train, to the nearest airport to fly the 500 miles. I would hope a train ride would be less expensive than parking in long term.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Archangel Michael]

Okay a bit of Hyperbole, One in ten families could have a Tesla (current Estimated cost is approaching 70 Billion). Cost of Tesla is currently 71,000 (RWD, 60KWH battery), 674.5 billion /9.5

And we haven't even begun calculating the cost to ride ... that is just to get the damn thing built.

And we haven't even begun calculating the subsidies when ridership peaks at less than estimated.

The best estimations for the cost have all been way off, a bit like my hyperbole, wouldn't you say? (9 billion bond now will cost 70 billion to build).

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Harlequin80]

One of my favourite places to visit is Yamagata and near to it Yamadera. There is an amazing shrine / temple complex at Yamadera that no tourists seem to ever go there. When we went there the owner of the cafe we stopped at was so excited to give us his english menu as it was the first time he had used it since he made it 5 years earlier.

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[angel'o'sphere]

Ofc it is impressive :D
Considering that they go from center of the city to the center of another without need to commute to an "airport" and need to be early ...

Re:$100 billion for 150 miles?

[Firethorn]

The other big concern is noise, particularly from exiting tunnels, but hopefully that can be solved.

They should be able to adopt at least some of the research and techniques used in firearm mufflers.

money?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Construction costs are estimated at nearly $100bn"

Japan is one of the most bankrupt countries on Earth but up is down and left is right so I guess poor is rich.

Re:money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares if your in debt up to your gills? You've got a bitchin' train.
What do stupid gaijan have? Flaming tank cars exploding in their backyards?

Re:money?

[epiphani]

Definitely true. Not a problem to be ignored.

On the other hand, Japan has some of the best public infrastructure in the world. I wonder what the US infrastructure would look like if it could divert 50% of the military spending to infrastructure.

Re:money?

[galabar]

The example is right there: with US military protection, Japan can divert most military spending to infrastructure.

Re:money?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with a good train system? Sure beats what we have here in Austin which is virtually nothing (well, unless you live in the neighborhood or two that has the votes, and then you get a light rail system... otherwise you are going to be using your car or spending 2-3 hours each way trying to hop a poorly planned bus system.)

Imagine if California, the East Coast, or Texas could do a light rail train like that. San Diego to SF in less time than it takes to get from one exit in the bay area to another on the main highways.

Here in Texas, it would connect Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, perhaps add Houston as well.

My question is... what's wrong with mobility? If one can hit a night club in Dallas, then be back in Austin in less than the time it takes to hail a cab in either city, is this bad? Austin has zero parks to speak of (Zilker is not worth the time to spend for a taxi there/back, and there is no parking to be had at any time of day), so being able to hit Bear Creek Park in Houston or the San Antonio Zoo in about 30 minutes would be a boon for Austinites.

A fast train would be far more useful to the average prole than another worthless military engagement overseas. It would be a pain to bore into the ground (since Texas is all limestone), but eventually it will have to be done, sooner or later.

Re:money?

[sonicmerlin]

Protection from who? Who would dare attack a nuclear capable country? Do you always tell yourself we're protecting the world to make yourself feel better about the US spending almost a trillion dollars a year on our military?

Re:money?

[rubycodez]

No, your definition of "bankrupt" is mistaken; you made it up

Re:money?

[galabar]

You're kidding, right?

http://rt.com/news/194424-usa-...
http://www.cfr.org/japan/sino-...

Today, Japan's nuclear energy infrastructure makes it eminently capable of constructing nuclear weapons at will. The de-militarization of Japan and the protection of the United States' nuclear umbrella have led to a strong policy of non-weaponization of nuclear technology, but in the face of nuclear weapons testing by North Korea, some politicians and former military officials in Japan are calling for a reversal of this policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Re:money?

[losfromla]

The Mafia provides protection too...

Re:money?

[tlambert]

Definitely true. Not a problem to be ignored.

On the other hand, Japan has some of the best public infrastructure in the world. I wonder what the US infrastructure would look like if it could divert 50% of the military spending to infrastructure.

It'd look like the Works Progress Administration from the New Deal era following the great depression of course, but with minimum bidder, rather than an actual attempt to guarantee jobs for people who would otherwise starve to death, because a WPA infrastructure project can be restarted over and over again every 10-15 years and create more blue collar jobs than it would if the building, roads, and dams were built to last 75 years instead of just 15.

In other words, big government boondoggle to create ditch digging jobs for people not qualified for other jobs.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americ...

Re:money?

[Nukenbar]

Live in NYC, and just got back from Tokyo.

The train system in the Northeast is a joke compared to anywhere in Europe and a hilarious joke compared to Japan.

Re:money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the magic "high speed rail would be great" when most people who are paying for this will still have to drive an hour into town, park, take the train, both ways, pay for parking and then drive an hour back to their home. It will work for people who live in urban cores and those on the few mass transit lines, but when I'm in the boston area, I still have to drive 30 minutes from MITRE to the subway stop and pay for parking to go see the Sox. Same thing in the DC area, drive 5 minutes (15 with traffic) from the hotel near the facility to a metro stop with no parking so I can take the metro around. NYC no issues (Except for getting to/from airports) and Chicago works for getting to McCormick place, but most of our other big cities are from ass; you can only take it from the urban core to the airport. That's the problem that has to be fixed first.

Re:money?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with a good train system?

The US already has a great train system. We just use it for freight. We have the cheapest, fastest, most fuel-efficient freight-rail network in the world, by a significant margin.

The real problem is that freight and passenger rail don't mix. The speeds and lengths are simply incompatible.

Re:money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed it does, and with often at less cost and less violence than the police.

Who would you rather have around, Tony Soprano, or your local police leader?

Re:money?

[angel'o'sphere]

From what exactly is the US protecting the world?

Ah, they fear other nations in the world will gather/have/spent/control the rest of the oil? Or what was at your mind?

The USA is protecting Europe from the Russians? That was perhaps true till 1955. From the Chinese? You are joking? Aren't you? From Arabia ... wow ... sorry, comes nearly nothing to my mind from which the USA could protect me/us ...

But it is funny that you have this delusions :D

Re:money?

[Jack Griffin]

America! Fuck Yeah! Coming again to save the mother fucking day yeah!
And I thought that movie was fiction...

Current level of Japanese debt?

[galabar]

Is this adviseable given the current level of Japanese debt? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... If this were a completely private venture funded by actually revenue and leading to efficiency increases proportionate to the cost, it seems fine. However, will that be the case?

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[Anonymous Coward]

if the Japanese people are happy to borrow for this project, and if the lenders are happy to lend, then what's the problem?

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[Fire_Wraith]

For one, it's an investment in technology. Being a leader in high-tech stuff has lots of advantages, such as selling to other countries that want to build the same thing. It makes a lot more sense than, say, the money that the USA wasted in the Middle Eastern wars over the past decade or so.

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does it really matter to Japan? 70% is held by the Bank of Japan with almost the rest of it being owned by other Japanese banks, corporations, etc. Unlike the US, almost all of their debt is 100% internal, so it really doesn't matter.

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[gentryx]

JR will finance this through earnings from their Shinkansen lines.

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[galabar]

I'd rather have debt denominated in my own currency and owned by foreign entities than the same debt own by domestic entities. Which is better if significant inflation occurs, you know, maybe from printing too much money or something?

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[galabar]

I would love that to be the case. However, if history is any guide, it won't be: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ne...

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[INeededALogin]

if this were a completely private venture

Why do we think it is not privately funded? JR Railways is not government owned.

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation in Japan you say? Shinzo Abe has been trying really have to have this inflation thingy to appear in Japan's economy by printing gazillion of yen, but is still unsuccessful.

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[galabar]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ne...

Re:Current level of Japanese debt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, actually, this maglev line is eligible for government subsidies like all previous Shinkansen routes. JRC declined the subsidy for this one because they wanted to build a straight line from Tokyo to Nagoya with very few stops, while local governments along the way wanted the route to meander through their turfs with stops at each little fief.

Fukishima Water Pumping Plant

[Dareth]

Fukishima Water Pumping Plant - bonus you don't need to waste electricity on lights.

Re:Fukishima Water Pumping Plant

[Anonymous Coward]

Fukishima Water Pumping Plant - bonus you don't need to waste electricity on lights.

Your mom needed to waste electricity operating her vibrating dildo because I didn't have some penetrative vaginal intercourse with her last night.

Re:Fukishima Water Pumping Plant

[Ol Olsoc]

Your mom needed to waste electricity operating her vibrating dildo because I didn't have some penetrative vaginal intercourse with her last night.

Thanks for playing, mabe some Cialis will help next time.

Re:Fukishima Water Pumping Plant

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom needed to waste electricity operating her vibrating dildo because I didn't have some penetrative vaginal intercourse with her last night.

Thanks for playing, mabe some Cialis will help next time.

Yeah with such a floppy saggy old bitch you need all the help you can get. Still a good lay if you can get it up. Experience is not to be discounted!

Exceeds 600 km/h?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously their real goal was to exceed 1 megafurlong per fornight (598.7 km/h).

Re:Exceeds 600 km/h?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, units agrees:
$ units
You have: 1 megafurlong per fortnight
You want: km/hour
        * 598.71429
        / 0.0016702458

Re:Exceeds 600 km/h?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's 'fortnight' partner.

80% through tunnels?

[Rich0]

If you're putting 80% through tunnels, I'd wonder if it would almost make sense to make it 100% tunnels and have it in a vacuum. You could reach absurd speeds with such a design, though only if your stops are sufficiently distant (you would want a hub/spoke model).

Re:80% through tunnels?

[jandrese]

Then every car (and the tunnel itself!) needs to be a pressure vessel and you need oxygen masks if there is a leak. Plus you have to turn every station into an airlock. Depressurizing the tunnel is a lot of extra work.

It might be easier (although not much more sane) to have two large ventilation systems for the tunnel. One working at high negative pressure (near vacuum), and the other working at a high positive pressure. The vents would be shutters that could be opened and closed rapidly, so you're always pulling air from the front of the train and introducing it behind the train. Basically you would always have a strong tail wind, reducing the heating effects of compressing that much air. The energy required to move the air would be substantial though, and it might not make sense. The high speed shutter system would be relatively complex too, and making it reliable would be a challenge.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[galabar]

Actually, I think the scientific term is "Ludicrous Speed".

Re:80% through tunnels?

[YrWrstNtmr]

I'd wonder if it would almost make sense to make it 100% tunnels and have it in a vacuum.

Probably tripling the cost.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[RavenLrD20k]

I knew Plaid would come back into fashion! Advertise it as "Urban Camouflage for the Ludicrous Pace of Life!"

Re:80% through tunnels?

[RavenLrD20k]

I knew Plaid would come back into fashion! Advertise it as "Urban Camouflage for the Ludicrous Paced Life!"

Re:80% through tunnels?

[wonkey_monkey]

The vents would be shutters that could be opened and closed rapidly, so you're always pulling air from the front of the train and introducing it behind the train.

And then you just do away with the train.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[galabar]

But they can make it up in volume... or lack there of... budabum.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[RavenLrD20k]

See...the pace is so Ludicrous I get the same joke posted twice within minutes of each other! (dafuq happened? I posted the "Pace of" version...not "Paced".)

Re:80% through tunnels?

[Rich0]

I'd wonder if it would almost make sense to make it 100% tunnels and have it in a vacuum.

Probably tripling the cost.

Agree that it would only make sense over large distances. I could see it for a NYC-LAX maglev, maybe with a stop in the midwest somewhere. Maybe have the stops at airports for easy connection.

Accellerating at 1G you could probably make the NYC-LAX trip in 30-60 minutes.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[Rich0]

Then every car (and the tunnel itself!) needs to be a pressure vessel and you need oxygen masks if there is a leak. Plus you have to turn every station into an airlock. Depressurizing the tunnel is a lot of extra work.

It would certainly need to be a pressure vessel. If there were a leak you could use supplemental oxygen or you could just repressurize the tunnel. Agree that the stations would need locks.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[wonkey_monkey]

Accellerating at 1G you could probably make the NYC-LAX trip in 30-60 minutes.

More like 15.

Of course, you might have a bit of a bumpy landing as you leapt for the platform from the speeding train, which would at that point be closing on 9km/s. So, yeah, 30 minutes if you wanted to walk off at the other end.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[jandrese]

My guess is that going pure pneumatic is probably inefficient and more difficult to build. A hybrid system probably make more sense, if for no other reason than you don't have to maintain an airtight seal around the car for an entire 1000km journey. Electric motors are pretty reliable and relatively inexpensive.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[magarity]

The vacuum idea might be a bit overkill but the tunnels do introduce interesting problems - the shockwave when entering the next tunnel and the column of air the train has to push in front of itself while inside.

Re:80% through tunnels?

[bluegutang]

Switzerland recently considered this. They abandoned the idea because costs were too high. (Of course Zurich-Bern is a much smaller travel market than Tokyo-Nagoya.)

Re:80% through tunnels?

[Rich0]

Accellerating at 1G you could probably make the NYC-LAX trip in 30-60 minutes.

More like 15.

Of course, you might have a bit of a bumpy landing as you leapt for the platform from the speeding train, which would at that point be closing on 9km/s. So, yeah, 30 minutes if you wanted to walk off at the other end.

You'll want to factor in a bit more time for everybody to reverse their chairs or whatever so that they're not thrown out of the seat when you switch to deceleration. :) But yes, it has been a while since I ran the numbers bit it is somewhere around 30min, which is pretty impressive. It wouldn't even require all that much energy to make the trip.

280km

[YrWrstNtmr]

About the distance from New York City to Baltimore. Or Seattle, WA to Portland OR.
$100bn, just to get there a leeeetle bit faster.

Re:280km

[Fire_Wraith]

By contrast, Amtrak is spending $117 billion to upgrade the Northeast Corridor to get to a mere 350km/h.

Re:280km

[JanneM]

For the Osaka-Tokyo route, the Shinkansen made the difference between an overnight business trip or return the same day. That made it insanely popular. With the new train, you can not just make a set of meetings; you can do a full days work and still get back the same day (even more so for Nagoya of course).

Many people here get stationed at offices in other cities for months or years, and leave their families behind. They effectively do a weekly commute, and come home only on weekends. For a lot of people this would let them get home more often or even stay home and make this a daily commute. Expensive, but on the other hand the company doesn't have to pay for a second short-term apartment and the other costs of two households.

Re:280km

[RailRide]

No they aren't. Amtrak outlined a plan for a new Northeast Corridor that could support what everyone else in the world would term "high speed rail".

It amounts to a formal plan to have on hand, just in case monkeys flew out all our collective butts, causing the money to actually do this to miraculously materialize out of hot air.

In reality, at best Amtrak is more concerned with wrangling the funding to replace it's Acela trainsets before they completely wear out, and assuming they pull that off, finding funding to replace all the close-to 40-year-old passenger cars and the not-much-younger diesel locomotives that they've been running the wheels off of just to keep their network running.

Relevant link: Why America Can't Have Great Trains

---PCJ

why only metric figures?

[Anonymous Coward]

603 kph = 375 mph

shame on you /. you must know that a signficant chunk of your readers are from the US/UK!

Question about the speedometer in the video

[wonkey_monkey]

The speedometer in the video seems to climb steadily to 603 then immediately stop, rather than flattening out as I'd expect. At a very rough guess it was undergoing acceleration of about 0.5m/s^2, which then dropped seemingly instantaneously to 0. Would that be a noticeable jolt?

Is there a reason they targetted 603km/h? Maybe they were going for 600km/h and someone was slow to ease off the magnets...

Re:Question about the speedometer in the video

[willy_me]

Would that be a noticeable jolt?

No, jolts are caused by acceleration - either positive or negative. If the train was to cut power and naturally decelerate then it would be noticed due to the significant friction at that speed. But simply leveling off the speed would not induce any noticeable jolts.

For the mandatory car analogy - it would be less noticeable then when you remove your foot from the accelerator pedal when driving at low speed (and accelerating at 0.5 m/s).

Re:Question about the speedometer in the video

[Anonymous Coward]

The acceleration is slow so you probably wouldn't notice much of a jolt. It's the equivalent of taking about a minute to reach 60mph on the highway and then easing off the gas to maintain constant speed.

Nobody can ride it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, nobody can ride the train since with the increased speed, there is now a sign at the terminal that says, "You must be this tall to ride this ride."

subway are not really setup for airport like secur

[Anonymous Coward]

subway are not really setup for airport like security jumping turnstile happens alot as well.

The acceleration and decelration timeframes are!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

They say 40 minutes! Thats 19:30 to acceleration and 19:30 to decelerate with only about 0 minute at top speed. So no different the local commuter plane hop.
I guess thats enough time to serve peanuts and coffee before collecting the trash.

I took a high speed train recently...

[bluegutang]

on a trip to Italy, from Rome to Naples (same distance as DC to Philadelphia). It took 1:10 from city center to city center, at a top speed of 295km/h. Amtrak's best trip over the same distance takes 1:40 and costs literally 4-8 times as much. There was no security theater - you could arrive two minutes before departure and run onto the platform and make the train. The seats were comfortable and roomy, and there was free wifi and charging stations at every seat.

I really don't see how anyone could choose driving/flight over this for short-to-medium range intercity trips. Unfortunately it looks like the US will never get a real high speed rail system, because the Republicans think all trains are an evil communist plot, while the Democrats insist on sending every infrastructure project to 10 years of environmental review dependency hell. Meanwhile every other developed country continues to overtake us in quality of life.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[LWATCDR]

The real issue is that they do not really seem to want them to really work.
For example the Florida High Speed rail project that Florida "rightly" refused to build was nothing but welfare for Disney. The "first leg" was the Orlando Airport to Disney!
Now they are trying to build one that goes from Miami to Orlando but the people in three counties that are not getting stops are protesting it. This train would run on existing tracks so it should not cost an Arm and a leg but NIMBY is in full force.
BTW I do live in one of those bypassed counties and while I would like for them to add stops I can see why they might not want to at first since the counties have a lower population than ones with stops.
If they really want them to work they should pick real routes like Dallas Houston, LA SF, and yes Miami Orlando.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Anonymous Coward]

you could arrive two minutes before departure

Risk of paradoxes seems unnecessarily high.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Harlequin80]

There is always an alternative approach, which is to have express and stopping all stations trains. Build the stations. The cost of an additional slab and building is relatively low in the total cost then have expresses stop at the majors and skip the smaller stations.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[UnderCoverPenguin]

on a trip to Italy, from Rome to Naples (same distance as DC to Philadelphia).... There was no security theater - you could arrive two minutes before departure and run onto the platform and make the train. The seats were comfortable and roomy, and there was free wifi and charging stations at every seat.

As of the last time I rode Amtrak (a few years ago), there was no security theater, the coach class seat were more comfortable and more roomy than any airline first class seat I've ever ridden in, and there was a 120 VAC outlet for each seat. Supposedly, Amtrak has expanded its free WiFi offerings to more trains. Unfortunately, the TSA has "promised" to expand its operations into train and bus stations. I am quite sure this will soon affect - if not already - at least 2 of the stations I would be likely to use.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Pembers]

True, but then you have to worry about an express service getting stuck behind a local one if the local one is running late or has broken down. You could have the tracks fan out at the smaller stations, so the local service switches to a track that's next to a platform, while the express stays on a track that passes straight through. It doesn't help if the local train hasn't reached one of those stations yet, but at least means the express doesn't get held up for the whole of the route.

Or you build two sets of tracks along the whole route at twice the cost and probably twice the amount of NIMBY-ism...

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Harlequin80]

Building the extra track is by far the more sensible option. It is also far less than double the cost. You already have all the machinery in place and people working on the design and build. The actual physical track cost is relatively small (compared to the total build cost). It would however still increase the cost, particularly of tunnels as they tend to be round so a small increase in size is multiplied massively.

Breakdowns will screw the entire system anyway. Whether or not it is a local or express setup. As for running late you are able to do pretty accurate modelling of how much trains will be delayed by high volumes of passengers. If you take the 95% percentile of station delay time and double that in your scheduling it will only be major cockups which impact the expresses.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Anonymous Coward]

"every other developed country.."

Not quite every developed country - I live in Australia. To be fair the greater distances mean that current high speed train technology doesn't work out economically. However something as fast as this would make Sydney - Melbourne on a dedicated track (no, not via Canberra) start to make time and therefore (possibly) economic sense. To those who don't know, Sydney - Melbourne is one of the busiest air corridors in the world.

PS If you think Italian trains are good, you should try them in Spain.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Reading UK - we have exactly that and works fine - fast trains to London Paddington take about 22mins (only 2 or 3 stops), the slow train takes 45mins stopping at all stations. There are at least 4 lines in all places, up fast and slow down fast and slow, no problem. Reading itself is just getting a £5bn reworking of the lines/station to give a flyover just west of the station to allow freight trains from south coast to Midlands to pass under the main east/west route without crossing points (switches for USAians) as apparently the manadatory saftey times between trains crossing those points were actually the limiting factor for services throughout the southwest of the UK

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Anonymous Coward]

and costs literally 4-8 times as much

You're ignoring the fraction of the ticket that's paid for with taxes.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Pembers]

I live near the Thameslink line between Bedford and Brighton, and we have a similar arrangement there - two pairs of tracks, one for the express trains, one for trains that stop at all stations. Except that it goes down to one pair of tracks in the middle of London, so a late-running or non-moving train can still stop everything else. It doesn't help that the line is at 100% of capacity in rush hour, and it also didn't help that the previous operating company stopped maintaining the trains when they knew they were going to lose the franchise...

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Vitriol Angst]

The insistence on environmental impact studies might be able to be streamlined -- but it's not the same hindrance as the roadblocks Republicans have created.

All those required improvements to Coal plants in the USA made us have the cleanest, most efficient coal tech -- and we export it around the world. One of the things the US is best at.

The Auto manufacturers screamed and moaned about increasing fuel efficiency standards and now those other countries with the "horrible anti-competitive high standards" are shipping cars here.

Japan exports high speed rail systems because they had high standards and pushed the technology. It was probably not the most cost-effective thing at the time and I'm sure they had people in their country, much like our Republicans, complaining about costs.

That's why we have governments; to make us do things that don't make short term economic sense but are the RIGHT thing to do. America should be the one exporting solar cells and green technology, and yet, we find ourselves more and more being the third world recipient. Heck, we can't even participate in a space station anymore without help from Russia and pretty soon, people will prefer Chinese or Indian rockets.

What I'm getting at is this obvious fact; Republicans suck. And we have more of them, so other countries have a better way of life than we do. The French get more time off to eat their cheese and sip their wine on a picnic. The Germans get more and cheaper education. Iceland privatized their banks and suddenly solved an intractable debt situation where they "owed" a bunch of crooks and we can't figure out this simple calculation that's where most of our national debt came from. I can't think of one thing Republicans are against, that we shouldn't be doing 10x more of. Especially sex and drugs and taxing useless rich people to pay for more of it, closing down prisons, and high speed rail where poor people don't even have to pay for a ride -- screw "cost effective" -- it pays for itself by commerce. Sorry to be so partisan, but I am so because I'm objective.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[LWATCDR]

They are not just complaining about no stops. They are also upset about those noise, and the "danger", and the risk of first responders being stuck waiting for a train.
I could also complain about the mass transit system as well. It takes 30 minutes to take a bus from my office to the mall but only 15 minutes to walk it. BTW before anyone says just walk this is south FL so think lots of heat and rain time of year.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[LWATCDR]

This is single track right of way so I do not think that is a real option and really would add to the cost of the system.

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Harlequin80]

Noise I can understand. As for the waiting for a train for first responders - I take it the train isn't elevated (I know nothing at all about the proposed design) but surely for a highspeed train you wouldn't want cars driving over the track, potentially getting stuck, dropping things.... I would have thought, perhaps wrongly, you would want either over or under passes for any road / rail crossings..... Christ the shinkansen is continuously welded rail because the joints were considered a risk, having a train doing 300+ and potentially hitting a stuck cement truck is insane!

Re:I took a high speed train recently...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I've traveled a lot between Houston and Dallas (mostly driving) I agree that seems like an obvious candidate for high speed rail but is it really?

My experience is a bit dated, but most of the time it was just a boring 4 hour drive without much traffic once you got out of Houston - unless it was Thanksgiving or Xmas and then you were fucked - well, I did Dallas to Houston on Xmas once and that was amazing - hardly a single fucking car on the road, but Xmas Eve or the Friday, Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving? Yeah, you're fucked.

Here's how I figure a high speed rail line between those 2 cities would work out:

1: I've got to figure out when the train will leave.
2: I've got to get a ride to the train station. Do I get someone to drive me halfway across Houston (or Dallas) to get to the station or do I drive myself and leave my car there at $12 / day?
3: Okay, I've got to the train station and am finally on board. For all the time it's taken me I could be in Hunstville by now in my car. In a car vs. high-speed rail the train probably overtakes me (in my car) about halfway there. The train gets to Dallas first, but where in Dallas? And what do I do for transportation once I get there? Do I rent a car? Do I get people to come pick me up? Do I take a bus? Fuck that last option - buses are for poor people. I know that sounds like some sort of snobbery but really it's a pain in the ass, inconvenient and have you seen the kinds of people who get on buses?
4: By the time I get to my destination on this hypothetical high-speed train (with help from buses, rental cars, friend's cars, walking or some combination of those things) my car would have already been there long enough for the engine to cool down and for me to be cracking open a 2nd beer.

Seriously, where would you put the end points? And does either city even have good enough public transportation to get you close enough to walk to your specific destination? They might. If you want to wait around in the heat and humidity waiting for buses while hauling your luggage with you. If I didn't rent a car and didn't have someone to pick me up I'd probably take a cab but that's yet another expense - and I still wouldn't have my own transport the next day.

But maybe that's just me. I once told my boss I was going to drive from Dallas to San Antonio instead of flying with him (because I wanted to hang out in Austin the night before). He thought that was strange but was cool with it as long as I was sure to pick him up at the airport in SA.

Picking people up from a train station is going to be no less of a pain in the ass than picking someone up from the airport and I have never lived anywhere where it was convenient to go to the airport least of all Dallas or Houston.

Fastest time door-to-door from west Houston to north Dallas: 3 1/2 hours. There is simply no way a train is going to beat that. Then again at the speed I was driving that day I could have been arrested.

600/kph

[Anonymous Coward]

I can only image what will happen when some old truck can't get across the tracks in time....

Re:600/kph

[mean pun]

There are no level crossings on Shinkansen/TGV/ICE tracks, so I must assume this system will also not have them. (And it's in tunnels most of the time anyway.)

Dead fucking wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, you're dead wrong. Jerk is the derivative of acceleration. and is much of what causes carsickness and airsickness.

Trains - high and low speed

[bayankaran]

I have been a train traveler for more than three decades. I have used extensively four networks - (one of the biggest) Indian Railway, Amtrak, Japan Rail and China Railway.

I feel the marginal improvement of 40 minutes via a new maglev line for 280KM costing $100 billion is sort of a boondoggle project...and may be a vanity project. The Shinkansen aka Bullet trains are already a costly mode of transportation, tickets frequently costing as much as a regular flight ticket. For the 40 minutes of saving in travel time what will be the hike in ticket price for a project costing $100 billion?

The other end of the equation is Indian Railway - frequently derided as slow, archaic, unsafe etc. by armchair analysts who has never set foot in a train.

A few weeks back I traveled 1800 KM, point to point on a second class ticket which took 22 hours and cost Rs 800 ~ $12 on an Indian train. The ticket was booked online, I produced only a confirmation text message (the website of Indian Railway has improved a lot and is better than AMTRAK.) The summer heat made for a roasting day, but it was safe - probably the cheapest and safest option point to point anywhere in the world. (Indian Railways are super safe compared to driving in an Indian road.)

The same travel will take may be six hours on a high speed line, but will cost $120 or more - which is what a flight ticket will cost in that sector. A majority of Indians who travel by trains will not be able to afford an extra zero in their ticket. (This is what the current proponents of high speed train travel in India ignore or do not understand.)

A version of the above exists for developing countries too...a few months back I was traveling between Washington and Philadelphia on AMTRAK. Only the wealthy - or a professional who gets reimbursed via his office - can afford an ACELA...the tickets were close to $100. Luckily there were enough "Northeast Regionals" for $40 - comfortable and faster than a Greyhound and only $10 more.

What a country like America requires is (arguably) a much more denser railway network (not as slow as the Indian network) but not necessarily a super high speed network where a majority of the population - the lower class, the lower middle class and even the middle class - is priced out. We always forget Japan Railway and China Railway has enough regular trains which are slightly slower but cheaper.

May be I am wrong...automobiles are the preferred mode of commute and the drop in oil prices means flight tickets - and driving - will stay cheaper. So the age of trains in US may be over, purely for economic reasons.

Structure begets control.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't have this sort of large technology project in a society where random people can go about making bombs etc. So if you invest in such a huge project you find your society needing to impose more and more control over the areas where it operates, just to protect it. Imagine airport level security along the entire length of the track where it is above ground. So you need to put is deep underground, and that costs a lot.

With a lot of clored lights flashing back and fort

[Anonymous Coward]

You could reach absurd speeds

Would that be faster than ludicrous speed?

Re:subway are not really setup for airport like se

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not? They tried. In NYC at least.

Hyperloop

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon Musk should propose building his Hyperloop in Japan. It might actually stand a chance of getting built.

MPH please

[Anonymous Coward]

Please express in MPH. If you want to provide KPH, please place it in parenthesis after the MPH.

Thank you.

Re:MPH please

[wonkey_monkey]

Please start living in the 21st century.

Re:MPH please

[vakuona]

The metric has you! Hahahahaha!

374 MPH

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN just provided the speed. The train traveled 374 MPH!

Sad no one mentioned the French TGV

[forged]

- Has been operating on conventional rail (cost $ vs. $$$ for maglev) since 1981.
- Is holding the world record of 574,8 km/h on conventioanl rail since 2007.
- Is linking all major cities in France and some abroad (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, UK).
- Has commercial speeds of 280km/h for the oldest ones, to 320km/h for the current generation.
- Costs a fraction of the price of the maglev.

But, YMMV. And by all means go Japan !

Hovertrains..

[red crab]

A promising technology that predates magnetic levitation is hovertrain whose potential wasn't fully explored.

Re:subway are not really setup for airport like se

[Agripa]

That has not stopped TSA from setting up checkpoints for screening at train stations, bus stations, and subway stations.

http://articles.latimes.com/20...