The government and Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) are leaning toward launching high-speed maglev train service between Tokyo and Osaka up to eight years earlier than the originally targeted 2045, sources said Thursday.

The government is considering providing long-term, low-interest loans to JR Tokai through its fiscal investment and loan program, and the railway is willing to accept it, the sources said.

JR Tokai plans to start running its magnetically levitated train line between Tokyo's Shinagawa Station and Nagoya in 2027 and then between Shinagawa and Osaka by 2045 at a cost of ¥5.5 trillion (about $50 billion) for the first phase and more than ¥9 trillion for the entire project.

The company had earlier said that even if the Tokyo-Nagoya segment opens, it would take eight years before starting construction of the Nagoya-Osaka part to see if the first-phase operations would lead to accumulated debts and have detrimental effects on its entire business.

While JR Tokai intends to shoulder all the costs by itself, it appeared to have judged that it would be advantageous to receive government loans.

The government, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and JR Tokai have recently been in talks on the Nagoya-Osaka operations as there have been strident calls from the LDP, business groups in the Osaka region and local governments for an early start of the line.

At a news conference on Wednesday, JR Tokai President Koei Tsuge said his company "wants to consider it if there is a proposal from the government side."