Japan is such an awesome mixture between tradition and technology, the place is almost like a futuristic society that jumps out of a sci-fi novel. They are well known for their robotics, aeronautics and automotive technologies, not to mention electronics and transportation.
They have one of the best railway technologies in the world, yet, they developed a new maglev (magnetic levitation) train, designed by Central Japan Railway Co. that will run at a blistering 500 km/h (310 mph) and cut the 90-minute trip from Tokyo to Nagoya to just 40 minutes. A single one of these speed demons is designed to carry about 16 carriages, which translates to about 1,000 commuters. The project (extended to include an Osaka-Tokyo leg) will cost nearly nine trillion yen ($112 billion)… Equally blistering, if you ask me.
Nagoya rail isn’t scheduled to go live until 2027, and the boarding call for Osaka isn’t until 2045.
Another competitor in innovative transportation, China’s even planning a whopping 1,000 km/h vacuum-tube maglev train in just a year or so.
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