Another gadgetbahnen bites the dust, hopefully.
Yeah, well, if you really, really want to go 800 km/hr between Tokyo and Osaka, that's what they made jet planes for.
now that is a boondoggle
Oh, yeah, Maglev will get you from Washington to Baltimore in 20 minutes at a proposed fare of $50.
The Tokaido line currently operates near 180MPH and has already proven 200MPH is within the design capability. It's possible they could get it up to 220MPH in the future, which would already be among the fastest land speeds anywhere. Comparatively expensive and inefficient Maglev systems seem like a very expensive solution in search of an extremely niche problem.
They are still building out more of the HSR network but the time lines are long and the speeds can vary considerably depending on terrain. Personally I would prefer they spend everything going to Maglev on speeding up HSR expansions and related improvements.
This does seem like a Gadgetbahn.
The fastest Nozomi is 2 hours and 25 minutes. You're giving a 20% improvement that doesn't exist. Amtrak spends BILLIONS to save 6 minutes on the NEC. the current proposed time from Tokyo to Osaka on MagLev is 67 minutes. That's a 54% time reduction (vs 44% if Nozomi was 2 hours). Even if it was only 2 hours, that's a HUGE time savings. The fastest flight is 65 minutes WITHOUT considering security and boarding times. I don't consider transit to the airport because you'd have to travel to the train station, too.
Two hours would have been within spec of the 500 Series Nozomi. To the best of my memory it was not operated that fast due to energy usage, which will only get worse with Maglev. Domestic flights in Japan are among the most energy efficient (per seat) in the world due to super dense seating with simpler and faster security and boarding compared to Western countries. Comparing the NEC to the Tokaido Shinkansen is so apples to oranges that I fail to see any relevance.
For significantly less money and financial risk a conventional 220MPH HSR could use the same new tunnels to gain faster times and additional stops with the benefit of substantial energy savings and fleet compatibility along with standardized maintenance and repair. One way Japan keeps HSR costs down is by introducing new hardware on top trains and removing the oldest hardware from the slowest trains. This works great when fleets share compatibility, but Maglev will not be compatible with anything else, so the whole fleet will need to be replaced at the same time in one go like a super expensive monorail. Maglev is one layer of inefficiency on top of another on top of another. While the idea of Maglev is great the practicality is as boutique as transportation policy can get.
Even after seeing it is hard to believe the huge volume of people and trains on the existing route. Think big city rapid transit at rush hour. About as much speed as possible has been squeezed out of the exiting route due to curvature and clearances. They have the interesting issue of sonic booms out the exit ends of tunnels on some of the existing tunnels with increased speeds. Remember, when the first Shinkansen lines were built, 200 km/h = 125 mph was considered the edge of the planet so far as speed on rails was considered. Obviously that has proven to be false. At this point it is looking like the practical limit may be more on the order of 400 km/hr, but who really knows? As to the Chinese decided after the building the German maglev at the Shanghai airport to not go further with the concept that was absolutely the right decision for several reasons, not the least among them the obvious incompatibility of maglev and existing railway, complexity of any switchwork, and lack of possibility of safe evacuation due to the train encapsulating the guideway. The Japanese maglev system has the guideway encapsulating the lower portion of the train, eliminating the safety issue. The near overwhelming of the existing Shinkansen track in the area in question makes the lack of compatibility with the existing railway of much less significance. While I am still not sure that maglev is the way to go, if anybody is going to do what it takes to seriously prove or disprove the wisdom thereof, Japan and Japanese Railway engineering would by far be the best people to do it. I still think we are a long way from needing to consider Maglev in the US.
Intercity Maglevs (or any other technology inherently incomptible with legacy rail or HSR technology) may only ever make sense in either:
Beyond a relatively low speed level (~50 mph for cars on a highway), there is an inverse relationship between speed and capacity (which is why cars in dense highway traffic first slow down to moderate speeds before it becomes a crawl and eventually a standstill).
| Design Speed (km/h) | Required movement authority (m) | Travel time at design speed to cover length of required movement authority (sec) |
| 160 [100 mph] | 1,200 | 27 |
| 200 [125 mph] | 2,000 | 36 |
| 250 [155 mph] | 4,000 | 58 |
| 300 [185 mph] | 9,600 | 115 |
| 330 [205 mph] | 13,300 | 142 |
Avoiding quoting the entire post since it is just above this one.
Even if every potential issue along the entire Maglev route is quickly resolved with no further time delays, cost overruns, or construction impediments Japan's working age population is projected to shrink around 10% before such a line can bridge Tokyo and Osaka. Knowning Japan's stance on immigration we can reasonably assume it will contiue to shrink long after that. Outside the two or three busiest weeks per year conventional HSR, domestic widebody aircraft, and overnight buses have all the capacity Japan needs today and tomorrow.
This does not necessarily impact the market of an HSR route, as most of Japan's population shrinkage is projected to affect rural areas, with the cities stranding up well if not even growing a bit more. The population shrinkage is thus likely to hurt the legacy narrow gauge network much more than the HSR.
Nah - I disagree. I think your first point of population shrinkage would actually allow for growth in the rural areas and sort of "spread out" the population. And, as others have pointed out, I think that bringing Osaka and Tokyo closer together is really the penultimate goal. Sure, they'll be happy to export their tech. The Japanese are meticulous about getting things right the first time. Note that the delay wasn't really for technical reasons, but rather political wrangling from their own NIMBYs.
