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Japanese Maglev Train Sets New Speed Records

posted by martyb on Saturday April 25 2015, @11:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the mach-0.49 dept.

takyon writes:

Just days after setting a world speed record of 581 km/h, a Japan Railways Group maglev train set a new speed record of 603 km/h (375 mph):

In terms of actual travel, it will be some time before the actual speeds achieved this week translate into real train journeys. The first commercial maglev trains will run between Tokyo and Nagoya in 2027, and will likely run at 500KPH [sic], taking 40 minutes to connect the two cities.

Until then Japanese passengers will have to make do with the existing 320KPH bullet trains that take twice as long.

Those Stateside may also have reason to celebrate: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is due to push the train technology in Washington DC later this month, proposing a high-speed link between America's capital and New York City.

Were that to happen it would reduce current travel time from about four hours to under an hour.

Some question the necessity of newer, faster trains:

One argument against Japan's plan to install new high-speed routes is the country's declining population. Bloomberg reported that the nation's population may fall to 117 million by 2027, down 10 million from the current population. By 2060, the population could be as few as 80 million according to current projections by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. The country simply does not have the demand, said Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research Corp. in Tokyo.

"[High-speed transportation is] good for growing, developing countries, but not for Japan that's decreasing in population," Mr. Merner told Bloomberg. "It's mis-allocation of resources. Demand for bullet trains will be limited."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Sunday April 26 2015, @02:20AM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Sunday April 26 2015, @02:20AM (#175228) Journal

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/us/delays-persist-for-us-high-speed-rail.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]

    While Republican opposition and community protests have slowed the projects here, transportation policy experts and members of both parties also place blame for the failures on missteps by the Obama administration — which in July asked Congress for nearly $10 billion more for high-speed initiatives.

    Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin, all led by Republican governors, canceled high-speed rail projects and returned federal funds after deeming the projects too expensive and unnecessary.

    Mr. LaHood said California seemed the most likely candidate for success with high-speed rail, even though plans for a 520-mile train route between Los Angeles and San Francisco have been mired in controversy.

    Despite strong backing from Gov. Jerry Brown, a court ruling had tied up state bond funding for the $68 billion project. An appeals court on July 31 threw out that ruling, which had been based on a lawsuit. But opponents are still increasing calls to kill the project, and polls show waning public support for it.

    Still, California has begun construction of the tracks and put out bids for a vendor to build the trains. And the new rail project will get an infusion of funds from the state’s cap-and-trade program, which requires business to pay for excess pollution.

    http://time.com/3100248/high-speed-rail-barack-obama/ [time.com]

    First of all, while Congress has appropriated $10.5 billion (not $11 billion) for high-speed rail, only $2.4 billion (definitely not $11 billion) of it has been spent to date, much of it on planning, design and other pre-construction work. The big construction spending has just started, and will continue through September 2017. Yet the Times and other critics are judging the program as if it had already blown through all its cash. The new meme on the right is that Obama has poured $11 billion into high-speed rail with nothing to show for it. In fact, less than one-fourth of the money has gone out the door. Just because funds have been appropriated and even “obligated” does not mean they’ve been spent, much less “poured.”

    So where did the Administration send the money? The big winners in the initial state-by-state competition were Florida and California, which had ambitious plans for new bullet trains. But after Rick Scott, a Tea Party Republican, was elected governor of Florida in 2010, he killed the Sunshine State’s Tampa-to-Orlando-to-Miami train and sent $2.4 billion back to Washington. That meant the far more daunting and less shovel-ready San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line would be America’s only new bullet-train project. After years of legal and political warfare, California is just now preparing to start laying track in the Central Valley.

    The rest of the high-speed money is going to lower-speed projects where Amtrak trains share tracks with lumbering freight trains. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad projects. “They’re not as sexy, and maybe they don’t look like much, but they’re providing tangible benefits,” Federal Railroad Administrator Joe Szabo said in an interview. Bridge and tunnel repairs, projects to upgrade and straighten tracks, sidings and double-tracking to help passenger trains pass freight cars, and other incremental improvements can all make rail travel more attractive.

    And it’s happening. By 2017, the program will reduce trip times from Chicago to St. Louis by nearly an hour through upgrades that will increase top speeds from 79 to 110 miles per hour; Chicago to Detroit will get a similar boost. The Department of Transportation says it has already sliced off a half-hour between Springfield, Mass., and St. Albans, Vt., while completing projects to reduce delays around San Jose, San Diego, Fort Worth and Oklahoma City. It has extended Amtrak service for the first time to Brunswick, Maine, anchoring a thriving downtown revitalization program, and it’s bringing trains to the Illinois towns of Geneseo and Moline for the first time since 1978. It has renovated stations in St. Paul, Minn., and Portland, Ore, and it’s expanding service between Raleigh and Charlotte, where ridership has nearly tripled since 2005.

    Once Republicans took over the House, Congress stopped appropriating money for high-speed rail. Period. There was never any chance that bullet trains would be whizzing all over America by now, but the reason there’s no realistic prospect of that happening anytime soon has nothing to do with executive incompetence and everything to do with politics. And while I love the New York Times—even when it publishes ludicrous essays slagging my hometown—its validation of the “mostly nowhere” nonsense will help make sure America’s passenger rail system remains a global joke.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 26 2015, @02:28AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 26 2015, @02:28AM (#175233)

    Instead of blaming the Republicans, maybe you should just admit that Obama failed in this case.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday April 26 2015, @03:07AM

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Sunday April 26 2015, @03:07AM (#175247) Journal

      What is Obama supposed to do, claim the land in the name of D.C. and lay down the tracks himself?

      The Republicans decided to snub the cash. Maybe that was a good decision. But it doesn't get new trains deployed.

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