I’ve always been fascinated with trains even when I was growing up and when I learnt back in school about the high speed rail services that operate in Japan I thought about how neat it would be just to hop on for a ride. Luckily, my wife and I are going on a holiday to Japan and I am looking to pencil in such an experience (if all goes according to plan).
The Japanese “shinkansen” (or ?????? in Hiragana or ??? in Kanji) can operate up to 300km/h and services are measured for punctuality every few kilometres and compared against the published timetables which are very strict in that they allow for about fifteen seconds of deviation (which really puts the likes of CityRail and Metro in Sydney and Melbourne respectively to shame).
I have also been looking around to see if I could find somewhere to get a ride on a magnetic levitation train (or maglev for short) but it looks like it is only operational on a test track that doesn’t accept any visitors. As the name implies, magnets are used to suspend the train above a track and propel it down the line. Maglev trains still have wheels that operate up to around 100km/h but are retracted when exceeding this speed to reduce friction and drag. For the speed freaks out there, the maglev trains in Japan have recorded a maximum speed of 581km/h. Japan plans to have a commercial line operating between Tokyo and Nagoya by 2025 and then through to Osaka by 2040 with the aim of reducing the travel time between Tokyo and Osaka down to one hour.
I hope to make a video and get some photos of the existing bullet trains to share with you as I reckon they are a great example of what our public transport could adopt to help spread out the population whilst maintaining or improving travel times across the board.
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