Central Japan Railway Co.’s maglev line, approved Friday, will speed travelers from Tokyo to Nagoya in just 40 minutes, beating the fastest shinkansen by more than half the time.
The technology for building magnetically levitated trains, which has been under research since 1962, is also being hawked overseas. JR Tokai, as the railway is known, and the central government are pushing to expand Japan’s infrastructure exports.
The project, however, could see cost overruns as it faces unprecedented engineering challenges, such as what to do with huge quantities of soil generated by the construction of tunnels for the service, which will run mostly underground.
Asked about the strengths of JR Tokai’s maglev technology at a news conference after the project was approved by the infrastructure ministry, President Koei Tsuge gave his best pitch.
“It’s very powerful, enough to manage a long formation of cars. It is strong on slopes. It is fit for long station intervals and suited for Washington-New York,” Tsuge said.
The railway has identified the route between the two U.S. cities as a potential export target.
With an eye to such exports, Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister Akihiro Ota said at a separate news conference that the maglev “is advanced railway technology that leads the world. It will generate big hopes in the international community.”
In April, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pitched maglev technology for the northeastern U.S. when he hosted President Barack Obama.
In the United States, the bulk of travelers rely on airplanes to travel. But in the densely populated Northeast, which is dotted with big cities, many travelers end up spending more than an hour driving to the airport due to heavy traffic. In this light, high-speed rail links are thought to have the potential to provide greater ease of travel than planes.
As the first step, JR Tokai would like to build a maglev line that could cover the roughly 60-km stretch between Washington and Baltimore in just 15 minutes. New York would then be linked by extending the line another 300 km.
Given the high regard in which Japan’s bullet train system is held overseas for its safety and punctuality, the maglev should succeed in opening more doors in export markets, a JR official asserted.
“If we can show it produces results in profitability and shortening time on the route linking Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, we can market it big time,” the official said.
JR Tokai plans to launch the train, which has a top speed of 500 kph, on a Tokyo-Nagoya route in 2027 that will shorten the 88-minute ride by shinkansen to 40 minutes.
The extension west to Osaka is envisaged for 2045, with the ride from Tokyo to Osaka expected to take 67 minutes — less than half the 138 minutes required by the Nozomi shinkansen.
At the news conference, Tsuge admitted “cutting costs is the biggest challenge” facing the project.
In August, JR Tokai announced it was expecting construction of the Nagoya route from Shinagawa Station in Tokyo to require ¥93.5 billion more than its initial estimate of ¥5.43 trillion. This was in anticipation of rises in equipment and personnel.
Extending it to Osaka is estimated to cost ¥9 trillion.
With the population shrinking and demand for labor projected to spike toward the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, personnel costs are seen becoming a headache. And unless Japan’s population decline is reversed, or at least halted, it will continue to overshadow potential demand for maglev services.
A further challenge comes on the civil engineering front. Some 86 percent of the 286-km stretch from Shinagawa to Nagoya will be either underground or in mountain tunnels. The route runs through mountains in Mizunami, Gifu Prefecture, that have 20 to 30 uranium deposits scattered beneath the area.
It is one of the largest uranium concentrations in the nation, and digging 100 to 200 meters deep could result in the extraction of radioactive soil containing radioactive substances, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency says.
The tunnel in this area will run around 100 meters underground. JR Tokai said it has selected a route that avoids the deposits by using information from the agency. In the 3-km interval in the city of Mizunami, JR Tokai will be checking uranium concentrations in air, slush water and soil during the construction process.
In Yamanashi Prefecture, around 6 million cu. meters of soil are expected to be excavated for the tunnel and underground route. Of this, three-quarters will likely be used to build roads.
Keiko Sato, 66, leader of a citizen’s group in the city of Kai, branded the road plans as useless.
“I don’t think they are really necessary roads. It’s useless public works,” she said.
These challenges aside, JR Tokai needs to pursue the project as a backup to its Tokaido Shinkansen Line for two reasons. For one, the maglev line, to be laid further inland, will serve as an alternative route should the bullet train line, which is closer to the coast, be damaged by an earthquake or tsunami.
The other factor is financial. The Tokaido line accounted for 92 percent of the company’s ¥1.21 trillion in transportation revenues.
Shigeru Morichi, head of the Policy Research Center at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Study, said: “If the gold mine shinkansen line stops, JR Tokai will fall. I fully see the rationale behind hurrying the maglev project.”
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