New Bullet Train

Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism approved Central Japan Railways to start construction of linear motor car railway between Tokyo and Nagoya. The new type of bullet train will connect those cities, with the distance twenty miles longer than between Washington and New York, in forty minutes. While it has been a dream for transportation engineers to lay that railroad, people wonder why they need to move so fast.

Linear Chuo Shinkansen is a new type of railway. Train is raised up in the air with magnetic force settles beneath and both sides of train body. After the speed is accelerated to 94 mph on rails, the body is floating above and it gets as fast as 312 mph. The body will be raised 4 inches to make the speed faster, ten times higher than Shanghai linear motor car in China. The technology for raising the body higher also considered risk of earthquake.

Current bullet train runs from Tokyo to Nagoya in one hundred minutes. The time will be shortened by less than a half. But passengers will not enjoy sight from window, because 86% of the railway is in tunnels. Other sections will be covered by fences for not disturbing residents beside the railway. Riding linear motor car will be less attractive than on airplane.

However, possible problem is impact on environment. Digging long tunnel produces a great amount of soil. The plan for replacing the soil has not been determined. In deep place around mountain area, it is possible that the tunnel meets stream of underground water, which may make the construction difficult. While the government expects positive impact on economy, cost for materials for construction and for labor will be raised up, along with increasing demand for Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020. Electricity consumed for the train will amount huge.

Some argue the demand for that superfast train will not be so great as the government expects. Population of Japan will be decreasing next few decades. Laying another bullet train railways along with current one will not expand the demand. One expert on transportation predicted that passenger on linear motor car will not increase independently, while productive population will be decreasing. It is only speed that linear bullet train will be superior to current train.

Group of people alongside of the railway are protesting against the construction, appealing that the government should review the necessity of the railway. Naturalists are frustrated with insufficiency on environmental assessment. There will be further discussion over the train, even after the construction starts.