The Japanese have long been regarded as having one of, if not the, most efficient, functional and downright speedy national train grid in operation. So what do you do as the operator of this national network of high-speed trains when you’re looking for an encore? Go faster!
The Central Japan Railway Company has stated that they intend to proceed with their previously announced plans to build an even faster train network over then next 16 years, starting with the Tokyo – Nagoya route. The new train is expected to operate at ~500 km/h (~310 mph), cutting the trip time between the two cities to about 45 minutes.
The build-out is currently budgeted for about 5.1 trillion yen (~$56 Bn), which is pretty expensive, especially when the global economy seems to be in a rather precarious state. But the chairman of the company is having none of the doomsday gloom:
"We can’t expect conditions to be unchanged all the time," chairman Yoshiyuki Kasai told a news conference. "There are some days of good wind and some days of bad wind."
He also noted that they expect the debt service costs to decrease since interest rates are dropping like a rock these days.
I was very much looking forward to a ride on the existing bullet trains when I was planning our trip to Japan for earlier this year that never materialized. Now I’ll have something even better (or at least faster) to look forward to once I get another trip to Japan scheduled.
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