Maglev Train Exceeds 600km/h For World Record 189
nojayuk writes: An experimental Japanese magnetic levitation train has reached a speed of 603 km/h, breaking the world speed record the same train set last week of 590 km/h. "Central Japan Railway (JR Central), which owns the trains, wants to introduce the service between Tokyo and the central city of Nagoya by 2027.
The 280km journey would take only about 40 minutes, less than half the current time. However, passengers will not get to experience the maglev's record-breaking speeds because the company said its trains will operate at a maximum of 505km/h. In comparison, the fastest operating speed of a Japanese shinkansen, or "bullet train" is is 320km/h. ... Construction costs are estimated at nearly $100bn (£67bn) just for the stretch to Nagoya, with more than 80% of the route expected to go through costly tunnels, AFP news agency reports."
Exceeds 600 km/h? (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously their real goal was to exceed 1 megafurlong per fornight (598.7 km/h).
80% through tunnels? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're putting 80% through tunnels, I'd wonder if it would almost make sense to make it 100% tunnels and have it in a vacuum. You could reach absurd speeds with such a design, though only if your stops are sufficiently distant (you would want a hub/spoke model).
Re:80% through tunnels? (Score:4, Interesting)
It might be easier (although not much more sane) to have two large ventilation systems for the tunnel. One working at high negative pressure (near vacuum), and the other working at a high positive pressure. The vents would be shutters that could be opened and closed rapidly, so you're always pulling air from the front of the train and introducing it behind the train. Basically you would always have a strong tail wind, reducing the heating effects of compressing that much air. The energy required to move the air would be substantial though, and it might not make sense. The high speed shutter system would be relatively complex too, and making it reliable would be a challenge.
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The vents would be shutters that could be opened and closed rapidly, so you're always pulling air from the front of the train and introducing it behind the train.
And then you just do away with the train [theinfosphere.org].
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Then every car (and the tunnel itself!) needs to be a pressure vessel and you need oxygen masks if there is a leak. Plus you have to turn every station into an airlock. Depressurizing the tunnel is a lot of extra work.
It would certainly need to be a pressure vessel. If there were a leak you could use supplemental oxygen or you could just repressurize the tunnel. Agree that the stations would need locks.
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Probably tripling the cost.
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I'd wonder if it would almost make sense to make it 100% tunnels and have it in a vacuum.
Probably tripling the cost.
Agree that it would only make sense over large distances. I could see it for a NYC-LAX maglev, maybe with a stop in the midwest somewhere. Maybe have the stops at airports for easy connection.
Accellerating at 1G you could probably make the NYC-LAX trip in 30-60 minutes.
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Accellerating at 1G you could probably make the NYC-LAX trip in 30-60 minutes.
More like 15.
Of course, you might have a bit of a bumpy landing as you leapt for the platform from the speeding train, which would at that point be closing on 9km/s. So, yeah, 30 minutes if you wanted to walk off at the other end.
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Accellerating at 1G you could probably make the NYC-LAX trip in 30-60 minutes.
More like 15.
Of course, you might have a bit of a bumpy landing as you leapt for the platform from the speeding train, which would at that point be closing on 9km/s. So, yeah, 30 minutes if you wanted to walk off at the other end.
You'll want to factor in a bit more time for everybody to reverse their chairs or whatever so that they're not thrown out of the seat when you switch to deceleration. :) But yes, it has been a while since I ran the numbers bit it is somewhere around 30min, which is pretty impressive. It wouldn't even require all that much energy to make the trip.
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The vacuum idea might be a bit overkill but the tunnels do introduce interesting problems - the shockwave when entering the next tunnel and the column of air the train has to push in front of itself while inside.
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Switzerland recently considered this [wikipedia.org]. They abandoned the idea because costs were too high. (Of course Zurich-Bern is a much smaller travel market than Tokyo-Nagoya.)
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280km (Score:2)
$100bn, just to get there a leeeetle bit faster.
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For the Osaka-Tokyo route, the Shinkansen made the difference between an overnight business trip or return the same day. That made it insanely popular. With the new train, you can not just make a set of meetings; you can do a full days work and still get back the same day (even more so for Nagoya of course).
Many people here get stationed at offices in other cities for months or years, and leave their families behind. They effectively do a weekly commute, and come home only on weekends. For a lot of people t
Question about the speedometer in the video (Score:2)
The speedometer in the video seems to climb steadily to 603 then immediately stop, rather than flattening out as I'd expect. At a very rough guess it was undergoing acceleration of about 0.5m/s^2, which then dropped seemingly instantaneously to 0. Would that be a noticeable jolt?
Is there a reason they targetted 603km/h? Maybe they were going for 600km/h and someone was slow to ease off the magnets...
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Would that be a noticeable jolt?
No, jolts are caused by acceleration - either positive or negative. If the train was to cut power and naturally decelerate then it would be noticed due to the significant friction at that speed. But simply leveling off the speed would not induce any noticeable jolts.
For the mandatory car analogy - it would be less noticeable then when you remove your foot from the accelerator pedal when driving at low speed (and accelerating at 0.5 m/s).
I took a high speed train recently... (Score:5, Insightful)
on a trip to Italy, from Rome to Naples (same distance as DC to Philadelphia). It took 1:10 from city center to city center, at a top speed of 295km/h. Amtrak's best trip over the same distance takes 1:40 and costs literally 4-8 times as much. There was no security theater - you could arrive two minutes before departure and run onto the platform and make the train. The seats were comfortable and roomy, and there was free wifi and charging stations at every seat.
I really don't see how anyone could choose driving/flight over this for short-to-medium range intercity trips. Unfortunately it looks like the US will never get a real high speed rail system, because the Republicans think all trains are an evil communist plot, while the Democrats insist on sending every infrastructure project to 10 years of environmental review dependency hell. Meanwhile every other developed country continues to overtake us in quality of life.
Re:I took a high speed train recently... (Score:4, Insightful)
The real issue is that they do not really seem to want them to really work.
For example the Florida High Speed rail project that Florida "rightly" refused to build was nothing but welfare for Disney. The "first leg" was the Orlando Airport to Disney!
Now they are trying to build one that goes from Miami to Orlando but the people in three counties that are not getting stops are protesting it. This train would run on existing tracks so it should not cost an Arm and a leg but NIMBY is in full force.
BTW I do live in one of those bypassed counties and while I would like for them to add stops I can see why they might not want to at first since the counties have a lower population than ones with stops.
If they really want them to work they should pick real routes like Dallas Houston, LA SF, and yes Miami Orlando.
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There is always an alternative approach, which is to have express and stopping all stations trains. Build the stations. The cost of an additional slab and building is relatively low in the total cost then have expresses stop at the majors and skip the smaller stations.
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True, but then you have to worry about an express service getting stuck behind a local one if the local one is running late or has broken down. You could have the tracks fan out at the smaller stations, so the local service switches to a track that's next to a platform, while the express stays on a track that passes straight through. It doesn't help if the local train hasn't reached one of those stations yet, but at least means the express doesn't get held up for the whole of the route.
Or you build two sets
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Building the extra track is by far the more sensible option. It is also far less than double the cost. You already have all the machinery in place and people working on the design and build. The actual physical track cost is relatively small (compared to the total build cost). It would however still increase the cost, particularly of tunnels as they tend to be round so a small increase in size is multiplied massively.
Breakdowns will screw the entire system anyway. Whether or not it is a local or express
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I live near the Thameslink line between Bedford and Brighton, and we have a similar arrangement there - two pairs of tracks, one for the express trains, one for trains that stop at all stations. Except that it goes down to one pair of tracks in the middle of London, so a late-running or non-moving train can still stop everything else. It doesn't help that the line is at 100% of capacity in rush hour, and it also didn't help that the previous operating company stopped maintaining the trains when they knew th
Re:I took a high speed train recently... (Score:5, Funny)
you could arrive two minutes before departure
Risk of paradoxes seems unnecessarily high.
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on a trip to Italy, from Rome to Naples (same distance as DC to Philadelphia).... There was no security theater - you could arrive two minutes before departure and run onto the platform and make the train. The seats were comfortable and roomy, and there was free wifi and charging stations at every seat.
As of the last time I rode Amtrak (a few years ago), there was no security theater, the coach class seat were more comfortable and more roomy than any airline first class seat I've ever ridden in, and there was a 120 VAC outlet for each seat. Supposedly, Amtrak has expanded its free WiFi offerings to more trains. Unfortunately, the TSA has "promised" to expand its operations into train and bus stations. I am quite sure this will soon affect - if not already - at least 2 of the stations I would be likely to
Trains - high and low speed (Score:2)
I feel the marginal improvement of 40 minutes via a new maglev line for 280KM costing $100 billion is sort of a boondoggle project...and may be a vanity project. The Shinkansen aka Bullet trains are already a costly mode of transportation, tickets frequently costing as much as a regular flight ticket. For the 40 minutes of saving in tr
Sad no one mentioned the French TGV (Score:3)
- Is holding the world record of 574,8 km/h on conventioanl rail since 2007.
- Is linking all major cities in France and some abroad (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, UK).
- Has commercial speeds of 280km/h for the oldest ones, to 320km/h for the current generation.
- Costs a fraction of the price of the maglev.
But, YMMV. And by all means go Japan !
Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:5, Insightful)
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and magic fairies to pull it all the way
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Why do you assume no security theater?
Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:5, Informative)
The number of people traveling on all US flights in total is about 1.75 million daily. By contrast, the Tokyo subway system alone carries over 8 million passengers daily, while the greater Tokyo railway system carries 40 million passengers every day, using nearly 900 stations to embark and disembark. The simple fact is that there's no practical way to do any sort of security screening for mass transit on that scale anyhow, even had they wished to.
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Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:4, Insightful)
One must also assume that since the new tracks will have to be totally new, they will have an excuse not to follow existing tracks into the old center city stations along highly expensive rights-of-way, but will instead stop at new stations outside of cities . . . maybe at airports, to take advantage of at least *some* infrastructure. This would be OK if there were better local connections, except in the US many airports have no connections to their cities; the three New York City area airports, for example, despite being in one of the best mass transit centers in the country, were never fully connected to the existing local commuter train lines. And bus service is laughable.
Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:4, Insightful)
Trains don't have security because it would be trivial to attack them without being on them. Short of acquiring a fighter jet or missile, this is not the case with aircraft. Why bother blowing yourself up on a train when you can do whatever you want to it from anywhere along it's permanent track? Dumbasses demonstrate this tactic all the time by stopping on grade crossings.
As for the NYC airports, only Laguardia is isolated from rail. JFK is linked to Jamaica, which is served by both subway and LIRR. Newark is served by Amtrak and NJ Transit along the NE Corridor line.
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Trains don't have security because it would be trivial to attack them without being on them. Short of acquiring a fighter jet or missile, this is not the case with aircraft. Why bother blowing yourself up on a train when you can do whatever you want to it from anywhere along it's permanent track? Dumbasses demonstrate this tactic all the time by stopping on grade crossings.
Attacking well made trains to do more than greatly inconvenince them is very hard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
some of those trains
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Right, so one of those was an on-board bombing which killed a whopping 2 people. That is exactly my point: you could kill 2 people without smuggling something on board. You brought the TGV into the discussion, and I'm not very familiar with the system. I'm sure a determined terrorist could find a way to kill more than 2 people, but I could just be ignorant. Certainly it would not be hard in the US with typical commuter rail, Amtrak, or subways.
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I can't even imagine how much explosive you would need to damage the tunnels from INSIDE a train. Maybe if you could get some incendiary device on a diesel train, but diesels don't run into NYC. Actually that isn't quite true - NJ Transit runs some dual-mode trains now. Still seems like a long shot.
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"Can't crash a train into anything"...hahaha, you've never heard of the Chicago CTA
sleeping operator makes CTA train crash into and up escalator: http://www.chicagotribune.com/... [chicagotribune.com]
Pothead tries to push train ahead out of the way: http://www.chicago-l.org/misha... [chicago-l.org]
CTA "ghost train" with no operator goes for a ride and crashes, multiple fail-safes not working: http://patch.com/illinois/oakp... [patch.com]
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Trains don't have security theater yet because of the lower perceived potential impact - you can't crash a train into something, for example. This is, of course, an display of lack of imagination.
Yup. [wikipedia.org]
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5% of the fuel cost? Maybe if it's an express route with no stops (which will never happen - every town you want to build through or near demands a stop).
No security theater? You wish. The TSA would descend upon it faster than flies on shit.
You still need to get to the train station just as you need to get to the airport. If train stations are more common than airports then you're going to be subjected to stop after stop on your journey. If they're as or less common then it's the same problem as gettin
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In Japan the Shinkansen stations are connected to or part of a larger general network station. The idea is that they connect hub stations to each other, not that the shinkansens are a stand alone station for the location.
As for security. You walk to them and get on. I was there 3 weeks ago with my family towing suitcases. No one even looked twice at us. The trains are wider than an aircraft and the seats much more comfortable. You also have the choice between allocated and non allocated seating.
Becaus
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In Japan the Shinkansen stations are connected to or part of a larger general network station.
Actually no. Many shinkansen stations are adjacent to mainline railway stations in Japan but not all of them. Shinkansens run on their own separate railtracks on a separate network to the mainline trains. They have to, they're standard gauge (4ft 8 1/2 inches) whereas Japan's regular rail network is nearly all a smaller gauge, 3ft 6 inches.
Shinkansen stations such as Shin-Onomichi and Shin-Karashiki serve smaller
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Thanks. I was under the impression they had connected a local line to all the Shinkansen stations. They have in Shin-Karashiki but from what I can see Shin-Onomichi doesn't have a connection to the local lines.
Of-course you do have to change platforms at a minimum and in some of Japan's stations that can mean a hell of a walk, they are that huge.
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Yep. The first time I tried to visit Kurashiki (mistyped the name in my original post, sorry), I got out at the shinkansen station and started walking towards what I though was the town centre (it's a tourist attraction, an old-style Japanese town with canals and such). Six hours later, hopelessly lost, footsore and out of water I got a taxi back to the shinkansen station and went back to my hotel in Onomichi. Second time I visited I got on the local train to Kurashiki proper from Shin-Kurashiki.
Shin-Onomic
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Have fun! I did Tokyo, Nagano, Takiyama and Kyoto this time (4th visit to Japan). The snow monkeys near Nagano were very cool. The closest I have come to Onomichi and Fukayama is passing through them on the Shinkansen on the way to Hiroshima. One day we have the dream of owning a holiday house in Hiroshima we loved it that much.
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I love Onomichi, it's a little port town nowhere in particular but it's a great relief from the concrete of Tokyo and Osaka. They film TV shows and movies there quite often when the producers need a town away from the big cities as a backdrop and it's even appeared in anime -- the series "Kamichu!" was set there. It has quite a few old rather run-down temples and shrines, not manicured and all shiny like Kyoto's ones. There are few if any foreign tourists too since no-one's outside Japan has ever heard of i
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Many of them are part of general rail stations though, and it's incredibly convenient. They take you right into the centre of town and if needs be you can get right on to another train. It's so much easier than using an airport.
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It's sort of self-fulfilling that the bigger cities like Osaka, Hiroshima etc. have shinkensen stations near their centres because all the trains stop there. Since they slow down a lot before they stop the tracks can curve more than out in the countryside where the top speeds are achieved and straight-line no-grade track is required.
That's not to say the shinkansens slow down to an Amtrak crawl entering the big cities. The shinkansen tracks have blast walls where they pass through built-up areas as they're
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As pointed out, you're wrong about how they're connected.
As for security, you're forgetting that the USA is not Japan.
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Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:5, Informative)
Not just city to city, but city center to city center. I can't tell you how frustrated I get when I take a 1.5 hour flight that requires 1.5 hours to get to the departure airport and 1.5 hours to get from the arrival airport to downtown.
Plus, on a train I don't feel like I'm being jammed into a can with a bunch of smelly sardines. Headroom is such a pleasure on a 4 hour trip. And any trip up to 4-5 hours is just as fast or faster done on a train.
Full disclosure: I grew up in a railroad family. My grandfather was an engineer and fireman (that's what they called the guys who originally shoveled coal into the boilers on the steam trains and then kept the diesel engines running, later) for the Rock Island and my dad was a machinist for the R.R. I have a full set of china from the dining car of the Golden Rocket and I'm drinking out of a heavy china mug from the original Golden Chief. I dig the railroad. My wife and I took our honeymoon on the trans-Canadian railroad in a luxurious railway cabin, and when you've had sex in a gently rocking sleeping car, the "mile-high club" doesn't really seem all that impressive.
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Given that my 24 year-old daughter has my eyes and her mother's beauty and brains, yes, but just once and it was a long time ago.
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Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, less than one Iraq War then?
Sounds pretty good.
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Less than one month of the Iraq War.
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I have no idea why conservatives love cars & trucks so much, they are just another mode of transportation.
Fixed that for you.
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All the liberal democrats I know in California, including myself, voted against the high speed rail. SF and LA voted for it. It'd be useless to the rest of us even if it could be built on schedule and budget.
Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:4, Informative)
that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs. and it would still be half the speed of your average airliner
Only if the entire distance is a mountain chain and 600km/h is 3/4 of the speed of a modern airliner (not average, any).
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600km/h is 3/4 of the speed of a modern airliner (
No, it's 2/3rds, Boeing 777 cruise speed is 905km/h, 747-400, 787, and A380 are slightly faster, A340 is slightly slower.
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600km/h is 3/4 of the speed of a modern airliner (
No, it's 2/3rds, Boeing 777 cruise speed is 905km/h, 747-400, 787, and A380 are slightly faster, A340 is slightly slower.
Well, depends on whether the airline is in the jet stream or not. Anyway, it is certainly not half, 1200km/h is faster than the speed of sound.
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Right back where we started?
That's called a round-trip - and I'd be happy to take on a fast train.
On a plane, not so much.
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It's worth noting that this is just the starting speed. The train, the Type L0, is supposed to run up to around 900km/h after some time. They are taking it slowly in order to maintain a high level of safety, slowly increasing speeds over a number of years. The other big concern is noise, particularly from exiting tunnels, but hopefully that can be solved.
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Very cool, then it should be able to smoke a plane in destination to destination times, between crowded takeoff slots and the fact that trains can do city center to city center it's no contest. The cost is obviously astronomical because of the tunneling, but I'm not sure an artificial island expansion to add air capacity would be that much cheaper, Kansai was $20B and Chbu was $7B, add in inflation and more expensive raw material costs and you're looking at probably half the cost of the train route.
Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Japan is the world leader in high speed rail. They can sell the technology all around the world. The UK's current high-ish speed rail is going to use Japanese trains, for example.
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I would not say that. The french TGV and the german ICE are similar fast.
It is more a question of the rails how fast you can go than the train.
However the mag lev record is impressive as the german "trans rapid" only made something around 450 km/h.
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I know! What do you want to say with that?
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that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs. and it would still be half the speed of your average airliner
Only if the entire distance is a mountain chain and 600km/h is 3/4 of the speed of a modern airliner (not average, any).
Remember that the 600 KPH of this train is its top attained speed, not it's average speed. TGV trains in France often reach 320 KPH (200 MPH) but this is for short periods and the average is much lower for sections of track that only support lower speeds (120 KPH and below).
Trains are great for getting around in densely populated countries like England and France but not for long distance travel. If I had to go from London to Paris, I'd take the TVG as it would be faster (Flight time is 1:05, Eurostar is
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Something like this would be amazing to have in the Northeast Corridor - heck, we're spending $117 billion just to increase the speed there to 350km/h. At 500km/h it would take an hou
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Elon Musk's Hyperloop is starting to look like a bargain, if it's technically feasible.
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could be a bit of a 'make work' program or to maintain the ability for Japanese companies to complete projects like this?
Sure they spend 100B, but as a form of welfare or pork barrel spending, it sure beats smart bombs and cruise missiles right?
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that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs.
Yeah, we could pay for a few years of another pointless war with that much money.
And for that, instead of a useless war on terror, we get a useless train which no one wants to ride because the security theater and speed make it more of a PITA than the airline. It might be a fun vacation trip exactly once, particularly if they are maintaining the "free train rides if you blog about how great it was, even if it wasn't". Maybe twice, if you take the ride back as well.
High sped trains in the U.S. usually aren't.
https://systemicfailure.wordpr... [wordpress.com]
http://chi.streetsblog.org/201... [streetsblog.org]
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that's $2 TRILLION for NYC to LA if you extrapolate the costs.
Yeah, we could pay for a few years of another pointless war with that much money.
And for that, instead of a useless war on terror, we get a useless train which no one wants to ride because the security theater and speed make it more of a PITA than the airline.
"No-one" is a bit of an exaggeration. 30 million people pay to go on Amtrak each year, so there's at least 30 million people who would want to ride a brand new high speed rail. And that's about 29,999,997 more people that wanted the Iraq war.
Fukishima Water Pumping Plant (Score:3)
Fukishima Water Pumping Plant - bonus you don't need to waste electricity on lights.
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Your mom needed to waste electricity operating her vibrating dildo because I didn't have some penetrative vaginal intercourse with her last night.
Thanks for playing, mabe some Cialis will help next time.
Re:money? (Score:4, Informative)
Definitely true. Not a problem to be ignored.
On the other hand, Japan has some of the best public infrastructure in the world. I wonder what the US infrastructure would look like if it could divert 50% of the military spending to infrastructure.
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Definitely true. Not a problem to be ignored.
On the other hand, Japan has some of the best public infrastructure in the world. I wonder what the US infrastructure would look like if it could divert 50% of the military spending to infrastructure.
It'd look like the Works Progress Administration from the New Deal era following the great depression of course, but with minimum bidder, rather than an actual attempt to guarantee jobs for people who would otherwise starve to death, because a WPA infrastructure project can be restarted over and over again every 10-15 years and create more blue collar jobs than it would if the building, roads, and dams were built to last 75 years instead of just 15.
In other words, big government boondoggle to create ditch d
Re:money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Live in NYC, and just got back from Tokyo.
The train system in the Northeast is a joke compared to anywhere in Europe and a hilarious joke compared to Japan.
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Protection from who? Who would dare attack a nuclear capable country? Do you always tell yourself we're protecting the world to make yourself feel better about the US spending almost a trillion dollars a year on our military?
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The Mafia provides protection too...
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From what exactly is the US protecting the world?
Ah, they fear other nations in the world will gather/have/spent/control the rest of the oil? Or what was at your mind?
The USA is protecting Europe from the Russians? That was perhaps true till 1955. From the Chinese? You are joking? Aren't you? From Arabia ... wow ... sorry, comes nearly nothing to my mind from which the USA could protect me/us ...
But it is funny that you have this delusions :D
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And I thought that movie was fiction...
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No, your definition of "bankrupt" is mistaken; you made it up
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if this were a completely private venture
Why do we think it is not privately funded? JR Railways [wikipedia.org] is not government owned.
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There are no level crossings on Shinkansen/TGV/ICE tracks, so I must assume this system will also not have them. (And it's in tunnels most of the time anyway.)
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Please start living in the 21st century.