Yep, we've probably heard this before. "Fast Trains could replace airplanes" While we don't doubt that faster train technology could very well prove much more efficient than flying, especially for point to point, high volume corridors, we just find it funny how an article, like the one referenced, never for a moment mentions the price of tickets. From this author's brief experience in Japan, he found the bullet train amazingly smooth, fast, and expensive. More than many cheap airfares in Europe. Still intuitively we admit that it seems far more efficient to hurtle us straight forward at ground level, at 500mph, than to spend all the time getting into the air, thitting 30,000 feet and doing the same. So one day surely fast trains will probably have their spot.
...In another developmental endeavor, JR Tokai has been tapping into linear motor car technology.
A maglev (magnetic levitation) car is expected to run at a maximum operational speed of 500 kph. If completed, a maglev train could travel from Tokyo to Osaka in about one hour, realizing JR's dream of undercutting airplanes in terms of traveling time. Currently, flying from Haneda Airport to Osaka Airport, takes about one hour and 10 minutes.
Test runs of a maglev train were launched in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1997, registering a record speed of 581 kph in 2003. In 2005, the Construction and Transport Ministry's expert panel on assessing the reliability of new technologies said JR Tokai's maglev technology "had cleared all basic technological hurdles."
JR Tokai plans to build a large-scale testing facility for the maglev train and invest more than 300 billion yen in the project, starting from fiscal 2007.
When maglev train services will start remains undecided. But the costs involved are eye-opening: Constructing a linear motor train route from Tokyo to Osaka is estimated to cost as high as 8 trillion yen to 10 trillion yen, according to JR Tokai. [emphasis added]
It's the age old battle of fixed costs vs. variable costs. Add incremental airplanes for capacity or sink it all at once.
Unless the risks of the fixed cost investment are extraordinarily low, variable usually wins. Case Studies: Eurotunnel vs. Ferry, Panama Canal vs. Straights of Magellan, transatlantic cable vs. clipper ship... etc. These investments went belly up before they generated a return.
Posted by: Andrew Schmitt | May 18, 2006 at 04:15 PM
Having travelled by maglev train in China (only 431 kph, but still) the huge advantage over planes is the departure and arrival.
You get to the station, you buy a ticket, you get on and go. You arrive at the destination while the airline passenger is still going through a ticket check back in Shanghai.
You also carry your own luggage so there is no waiting around while some minimum wage staff send your bags to the wrong place.
This is the huge advantage of trains, if only they can exploit it.
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