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Japan looks beyond bullets

Barun Roy

Having given the world its first bullet train in 1964, Japan is now looking at a train that will fly. It has mastered the technology and done all the preliminary tests.

On December 24, 1997, on a 42.8 km test line in Yamanashi prefecture, north of Mt Fuji, a prototype train, magnetically levitated, reached a top speed of 550 kilometres, or 342 miles, per hour. In April 1999, a five-car train, on a manned run, logged 552 kmph.

Now it’s doing other tests that are absolutely vital. Will a train, travelling at over 500 kmph, be safe, reliable, and durable? What will be the effect when a flying train goes through a tunnel or two flying trains pass each other in opposite directions? How will such trains impact the environment? These are the issues Japan’s railway experts are now trying to figure out. Once they have settled these questions, they will move towards construction. No timetable has been set, but it looks like the project, first visualised in 1970, is now on its home stretch.

It won’t be the world’s first magnetically levitated (maglev) railway. That distinction is reserved for Shanghai, where a 30-km maglev line is due to open early next year (Asia File, June 13, 2002). But it will be the first long-haul commercial maglev railway, a 500 km line that will connect Tokyo and Osaka. Germany, which has supplied the technology for the Shanghai project, is the only other country with an active maglev programme and proposes to build a 288-km line between Berlin and Hamburg.

Basically, the maglev technology uses the attracting and repelling forces of superconducting magnets to levitate and propel trains. Maglev trains have no wheels. They actually float four inches above guide rails. Since there’s no mechanical friction, maintenance is minimal and noise is eliminated.

The only sound heard during trials is the “whoosh” from air friction as the train goes by. The Japanese expect to reap enormous economic benefits from the project. If the flying train reduces commuting time between Tokyo and Osaka to approximately one hour, then people, power and resources can be enticed out of the overcrowded Tokyo region.

Besides, it will certainly trigger the growth of a wide network of high-speed railways around Chubu International Airport in central Japan, making Aichi an international centre of transportation and communication. As planned, the flying railway will have only one stop, at Nagoya. While the existing high-speed line between Tokyo and Osaka hugs the coast, the maglev line will be built further inland. Nearly 60 per cent of the route will pass through deep tunnels, traversing the central mountains.

The levitating train project is part of Japan’s desire to speed up its railways and make them competitive with air travel. Its network of wheel-and-track high-speed trains is already extensive, connecting Tokyo with Osaka and Fukuoka to the west and Morioka and Niigata to the north.

These are the backbones. There are other inter-city connections, like Fukushima to Yamagata, Morioka to Akita, and Takasaki to Nagano. Extensions are now under construction from Fukuoka to Kagoshima on Kyushu island and from Morioka to Aomori. A special bullet line, which cost $ 7 billion to build, was opened between Tokyo and Nagano to coincide with the 1998 winter Olympics.

Today, more than 280 bullet trains (Shinkansens, as they are known in Japanese) operate daily between Tokyo and Osaka alone, at 300 kmph. In 1992, the total number of passengers transported over the entire bullet network had already reached over 600,000 a day, about four times the number then carried by planes. The safety record has been as flawless as the trains themselves.

The punctuality record has been even more amazing: the maximum average time that all the bullet trains lose in a year is 12 seconds.

To cope with increasing demand as more people use bullet trains to commute to work, double-decker cars have been introduced. At the same time, trains have become sleeker while their speeds have kept growing.

The earliest versions (the “O” series) have been mostly discontinued. In 1984 came the second generation of bullet trains, the “100” series, when the speed improved from 200 kph to 230 kmph.

The “300” series, introduced in 1990, increased the speed to 270 kmph. Seven years later, in March 1997, the “500” series Nozomi trains, with one or two stops, were running at 300 kmph. There has been an even later version, the “700” series introduced in 1999, but by then it became clear to the Japanese that wheel-and-track trains have their limits, and levitated trains are the way to go if they are not to get stuck on their tracks.

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