Japan Plans To Accelerate One of the World’s Most Ambitious Maglev Projects

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to announce a fiscal stimulus package of as much as ¥10 trillion ($90.7 billion), which includes the acceleration of its timetable to build a maglev line that will connect Tokyo to Nagoya, and eventually proceed to Osaka, reported Bloomberg, citing Nikkei newspaper May 27. This plan emerged in the context of Abe trying to introduce reality in the form of warning “of the risk of a global economic crisis” in the final communiqué by the G7 heads of state and government meeting May 26-27 in Ise, Japan, but Obama and Cameron blocked him.

This proposed maglev line is one of the most ambitious of any such plans. The Central Japan Railway Company began full-fledged construction work on Dec. 18, 2015, starting the digging of a 25 km tunnel that will run below the Hida, the Kiso and the Akaishi Mountains. This line will travel 286 km from Tokyo to Nagoya, and 86% of it will be underground.

On Dec. 20, 2015 Construction Week Online reported,

“Notably sections of the tunnel will lie under 1,400 meters of mountains, the longest such distance for any railway tunnel in Japan, and the work will face high overbearing pressure and the risk of high-pressure underground water due to the complicated stratum in the central part of the Japanese archipelago.

“‘It’s inevitable that workers will fight against high-pressure spring water. The project will involve the most difficult construction in the history of Japanese mountain tunnels,’ said Atsushi Koizumi, a professor of tunnel engineering at Waseda University.”

The tunneling work, and laying of the route, which together require a leap in engineering capability, will take ten years. The maglev line is projected to start operations in 2027, and will connect Tokyo to Nagoya in 40 minutes. That route would then be extended to Osaka, which had an original completion date of 2045, but now the Abe government is saying it will take 8 years off that timetable. The maglev from Tokyo to Osaka, a distance of 503 km, will take 67 minutes.

The maglev will “fly” on a magnetic cushion on this route at maximum cruising speeds of 505 km/h (308 mph), However, the Central Japan Railway Company is pushing the limit. On April 21, 2015, its test run, carrying 49 employees, achieved a top speed of 603 km/h (373 mph).

Now think again of the G7 meeting: The maglev is the physical economy concept that Abe pictured in his mind, when he opposed the British and Obama who can think of gambling tables and looting.