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JAPAN: Faster than a speeding bullet train

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Shinkansen maglev prototype -- ©Irfannurd | Dreamstime.com

While the US quibbles over whether to drag our passenger rail service out of the 19th century, Japan is about to step deep into the 21st. Your children will be riding this one day.

Back in 1964, while Americans were acquainting themselves with a place called Vietnam, the Japanese were introducing a new concept in passenger rail service — the Shinkansen.

The world would come to know it as “the bullet train.”

It was sleek. It was efficient. It was safe. And with an initial top speed of 130 miles per hour, it was the fastest passenger train on the planet.

It’s no longer the world’s fastest passenger train, but even after nearly five decades, it’s still faster — and with only one exception, exponentially faster — than anything on rails in the United States.

Now, after decades of research and testing, Japan is about to take the next step, and it’s a big one.

The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun is reporting that the government is finally going to link three of Japan’s largest cities, Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, with a new Shinkansen — at speeds topping 313 mph.

But this will not be the fastest passenger train on rails. This will be a maglev train, which means there will be no rails.

“Maglev” is short for magnetic levitation. Basically, a lot of powerful magnets built into the rail cars and the track bed serve to lift the electrically powered train slightly off the ground and propel it down the line — at speeds ranging from impractical to unthinkable for a conventional train.

The technology was first developed, oddly enough, in the United States. The US, Canada, Germany and Japan all spent years testing it, and all found it to work, but it had two practical limitations.

The first is that it’s expensive as hell to build. The second is that the nature of maglev means that only maglev trains can run on it.

Still, the idea of a 300-mph passenger train was just too good to die.

Los Angeles to San Francisco in an hour? New York City to Washington DC in 45 minutes? Chicago to Dallas in two hours and change?

No need for a long ride in a pricey taxi or a crowded shuttle, because when you step out of the train station, you’re already in town — and all at a price cheaper than flying?

Yeah, I could do that. Bet you could, too.

But with American policymakers largely indifferent toward passenger rail — and lobbyists from the oil, airline and highway construction industries pushing Congress to kill it off — it was long presumed that either Germany or Japan would be the first to pull the trigger on maglev.

We all guessed wrong.

Buying German maglev technology, China stole a march on everybody, opening a maglev line in 2004 between Shanghai and its new international airport in Pudong.

Eighteen miles from city center to airport, in seven minutes? Hell, yeah!

I doubt that anyone in an official capacity in Tokyo would come right out and say it, but to see Beijing leap ahead of them that way that had to sting just a little bit.

Now, Japan is raising the bar. Their maglev would be the world’s fastest train to link multiple cities.

It’s going to take some doing. Construction is set to start in three years and isn’t expected to be finished until 2045. And it’s still obscenely expensive — $116 billion at current prices — a price tag which, thanks to inflation, is all but certain to go up.

The same arguments were made about the original Shinkansen, but the Japanese pushed ahead with it, anyway. The result was a passenger rail system decades ahead of its time, and the envy of the world.

Especially in the United States.

Meanwhile in Washington, American politicians quibble and squabble over whether to bring high-speed rail to the US, using the technology that Japan pioneered 46 years ago.

Technology that Japan is now leaving behind.

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High-Speed Rail: What We’ve Been Missing

High-Speed Rail: What We've Been Missing

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Ever wonder what it’s like to experience travel on the great high-speed passenger trains of Europe and Asia? If you blink, you may miss it.

TGV train in Gare de Lyon station, Paris

TGV train in Gare de Lyon station, Paris

American travelers who experience high-speed passenger trains elsewhere in the world almost always come home with wide-eyed, rapturous tales of wonderful trips…and an even lower opinion of Amtrak than they had before they left home. I’m not here to dump on Amtrak, but to give you an idea of just how high the rest of the world has set the bar for high-speed rail travel.

Cheap to build, maintain, run? Not a chance. So what do you get for all those billion of euros, yen and so on? You get the best passenger trains in regular service in the world. They’re fast, safe, comfortable. They run on time.

And people use them — close to 100 million a year on France’s TGV and more than 150 million a year on Japan’s Shinkansen alone. In both countries, rail operators have had to resort to double-decker cars to keep up with demand.

Having used them in Britain, France and Italy, I can see why.

My first experience on a high-speed train came courtesy of Eurostar, aka “the Chunnel Train.” London to Paris via the English Channel Tunnel in 2003.

Back then, you boarded the train in Waterloo station in the heart of London. The security screening via metal detectors was somewhat reminiscent of airport security, but still not nearly as onerous. Once through the detectors, you simply walked out onto the platform, boarded your coach and found your seat.

A little under three hours later, you left the train at the Gare du Nord in Paris, a brief taxi or Metro ride away from your hotel.

In between was a ride so smooth and quiet that if you closed your eyes, you weren’t quite sure you were moving.

Oh, you were moving, all right, at speeds up to 186 miles per hour. But you didn’t really start moving until you hit the tunnel and came up on the French side. Back then, the British tracks weren’t really ready for high-speed operations. The French, on the other hand, were good to go.

I actually found myself wishing at times that the train would slow down a bit so I could see more of the French countryside that was flying by on either side.

The following year, it was back to France, this time for a run from Paris to Lyon on the TGV. The letters stand for “Train a Grande Vitesse, which is French for “high-speed train.”

To someone grown accustomed (make that resigned) to California traffic, there’s something uplifting to the soul to lean back in your comfortable, high-backed seat and gaze languidly at the passing scenery — while blowing past all the cars and trucks on the nearby highway.

Smug, moi? Guilty as charged, Your Honor — and I loved every minute and mile! Also, totally unstressed.

But what about the luggage-laden mobs in the airports at either end of my trip? Didn’t I feel just a hint of remorse, just a twinge of sympathy on their behalf?

HELL to the no!

These trains have no real dining cars. When you’re zipping across country at speeds up to 186 miles per hour, who has time for a sit-down meal? Then again, when you can get sinfully good croque-monsieur sandwiches and quiches to die for in the train stations or from nearby shops, who needs a dining car?

(Speaking of food and trains, the Gare de Lyon station in Paris has a restaurant called “Le Train Bleu,” The Blue Train. When it first opened, the Wright Brothers hadn’t flown yet. Click on the link — and prepare to be blown away. Just peeking through the doors makes my wallet hyperventilate.)

But the best experience of all was the December visit to Strasbourg in the Alsace region of eastern France.

Naturally, you first have to fly in to Paris at their Roissy CDG airport, then make the grinding hour-long trek via shuttle or taxi to the Gare de l’Est train station to catch the TGV for Strasbourg. Or so I thought — until my friend Walt informed me of a design feature at CDG I hadn’t heard about.

“There’s a train station right in the middle of the airport,” he said. “You can get your train right there.”

Incredible. Walk down a couple of terminals, take the elevators down three floors and you’re there on the train platform. The French national rail company, SNCF, has an office one level up sell you a ticket or take care of any questions about your Railpass.

A few comfortable hours after hitting the airport, you’re were in Strasbourg. No budget-busting cab ride. No getting crammed into a shuttle van. It’s almost surreal.

Eurostar Italia in Italy — not to be confused with the Eurostar train that runs the Chunnel — is almost as fast and just as good. It almost feels as if you’re riding some city’s rapid transit system, except that your darting all over the country in a matter of a very few hours. You can get up and down the Italian boot in less time than it takes some folks to commute between Santa Barbara and San Diego.

Measuring Amtrak against systems like these is like comparing a Model T to a Maserati. It’s just not fair. Nor is it Amtrak’s fault, not when they’re running on technology roughly a half-century behind the rest of the world and are at the mercy of freight companies for the very tracks they run on.

You have believe that America can do better.

The View from the Train

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Local trains, Florence, Italy. | © G. Gross

These days, there are two kinds of air travelers — those who are sick of flying and those who soon will be. A good train makes a great alternative.

My friend Walt flies all over the world for his job. He has enough frequent flyer miles to circumnavigate the globe 40 times. Do you envy him?

Don’t.

“I hate flying. I’m sick of flying. I almost can’t stand to get on an airplane anymore.”

French TGV at Roissy CDG airport, Paris

Back in the day, air travel was fun, romantic, thrilling. In the immortal words of B.B. King, the thrill is gone. In its place are security screeners who treat you like luggage, baggage handlers who treat your luggage like garbage, and airlines that treat you like cattle.

Did the airline overbook your flight? Too many ounces of Listerine in your toiletry kit? Do you have to run through terminals like O.J. Simpson? And why do the screeners want you to take your shoes and your belt off?

What’s next, a lap dance?

TORTURE, NOT TRAVEL
Just getting yourself to the airport often means long drives through hellish traffic, only to descend into a maze of taxis, shuttle buses and other travelers, all jockeying for the same unavailable space.

This is not travel. This is torture.

Okay, I freely admit to being a train nut. My friend Carl tells me that true rail fanatics are called “foamers.” Not sure I qualify; I’ve had all my shots. But I love traveling on clean, comfortable, well-run trains.

Pullman porter

There’s also a personal connection. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, one of my great-uncles was a Pullman porter on the Sunset Limited, the first train I ever rode. The story of the Pullman porters and their struggle for dignity plays a major role in the Civil Rights movement.

Today, there’s a growing movement among Americans to return to a modernized and faster rail system.

Buy your ticket. Head to the platform. Climb aboard, stash your bag, find your seat. Show the conductor your ticket. That’s it. Leave from and arrive in the heart of town.

You can watch all the scenery you’ll never see from “our cruising altitude of 39,000 feet.” There’s a place to plug in your laptop or spread out your picnic lunch and your bottle of wine. If you paid extra for a compartment, you have a cozy little bedroom by night. An attendant will turn the bed down for you.

WORLD-CLASS SPEED
You will not be told to fasten your seatbelt because of turbulence. There is no turbulence. There is no seatbelt.

The high-speed passenger trains of Europe and Asia are the best of all. Trains like Japan’s pioneering Shinkansen and South Korea’s KTX, the French TGV, the German ICE train (the pun can’t be helped, but that’s just a cool name for a train), Spain’s AVE and the Eurostar Italia whisk you to and from your destinations at speed approaching or exceeding 200 miles per hour.

A Eurostar train takes you from London to Paris, under the English Channel via the famous tunnel, in a shade over two hours.

Bar car, Napa Valley Wine Train | © G. Gross

When traffic is at its worst, you can’t get from Roissy CDG airport to central Paris in two hours.

Most of these lines are so fast that they don’t even bother with sleeper cars. You’re going too fast to read the signs telling you the names of the picturesque little villages and towns you’re bypassing (those are left to slower local trains).

In Europe, many airlines don’t even try to compete with them on short-haul routes anymore.

SLOW BUT SCENIC
Here in the United States, even bedraggled Amtrak is gaining travelers weary of the air nightmare and rising gas prices. In summer, Amtrak’s more popular lines are selling out and running full at peak times.

Go north and you’ve got one of the most beautiful transcontinental rail trips in the world, the Trans-Canada.

Stations in New York, Chicago, Washington DC and Los Angeles have regained the buzz they maintained a half-century ago, when train travel was “it.”

Being slower allows Amtrak to run sleeper cars across the American continent. They charge per trip for one of their compartments, regardless of the number of people using it, which makes them cheaper than first-class airfares. All your meals are included — real food in a real dining car.

Lunch, Napa Valley Wine Train

Speaking of food, there are excursion trains and dinner trains that don’t really take you anywhere except to a great time, day trips lasting just long enough to treat you to gorgeous views and sumptuous meals aboard restored antique trains. The Napa Valley Wine Train is an example.

Want ultra-luxury? A few well-heeled rail buffs maintain their own antique railcars, which Amtrak attaches to their own trains for trips around the country. When their owners aren’t using them, they’ll often rent them out.

Bottom line: If you’re willing to be miserable for the sake of speed, flying still wins. But when you’re ready to actually enjoy going somewhere, think rails instead of wings.