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If Japan had struggled with the Tokyo Games this summer, Central Japan Railway Co. would have proudly observed visitors of all the global control laps on its high-speed magnetic levitation train, or maglev, which it promotes as the fascheck in the world. .
In this universe of choice without the coronavirus pandemic, it would have been the excellent year of 1964, when the Tokaido Shinkansen line of the company that links Tokyo and Osaka made its debut just nine days before the Tokyo Olympics as a symbol of Japan’s resurrection from the ashes. World War II, providing what then, again, the world’s fastest exercise service.
“Bringing foreign visitors to see the maglev on our control site in Yamanashi Prefecture is our plan, but with the Olympic Games delayed this year, it collapsed,” said Shin Kaneko, president of the company, also known as JR Central. Shizuoka Governor Heita Kawakatsu in June.
Kawakatsu expressed environmental considerations and is involved in the excavation paintings reducing the flow of water to a giant Shizuoka River that transports water to many cities in the prefecture. The view argues that the governor’s continued refusal to tone the structure of the tunnels in his prefecture green has frustrated hopes of opening the Maglev line between Tokyo and Nagoya in 2027, as well as the 2037 beginnings of Tokyo-Osaka. Expansion.
Here’s a look at the complex situation surrounding Maglev’s assignment: how it started, where he is now, and where he’s headed.
What is the maglev project?
The maglev was catapulted back to the highlights in 2007 when JR Central announced that it would take over and finance the allocation alone, an ambitious company as the structure of a Shinkansen line had never been carried out through a personal company.
The magnetic levitation train, also known as Chuo Shinkansen, is consistent with a 500-kilometer speed consistent with an hour and is fed by electromagnetic generation that lifts the train cars about 10 centimeters above the tracks of their movement.
The unprecedented speed of this floating exercise is expected to be an adventure between Tokyo and Nagoya 40 minutes from the existing 90 minutes or more, and the tokyo-to-Osaka adventure just over an hour from the existing 2 and a half hours.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the maglev is a completely different vehicle from traditional high-speed trains.
On the one hand, it will be controlled remotely and will have no pilot. Most of your 440 km ticket from Tokyo to Osaka will be underground or covered, meaning passengers will be denied panoramic perspectives for the maximum of the trip. Shomei Yokouchi, a former governor of Yamanashi, once the driving reveled through a sewer pipe.
This emphasis on speed in the virtual exclusion of the thrill of travel suggests that the maglev is primarily intended for businessmen who want the fastest trip imaginable, rather than, for example, families or other people going on vacation.
In addition to speed, JR Central also promotes the role that maglev can play in strengthening Japan’s crisis preparedness. More than 50 years after the start of the Tokaido Shinkansen line, the deterioration is now said to be taking hold.
This, combined with the classes learned from the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in northern Japan that paralyzed Shinkansen operations, now reinforces the need for a transportation route, according to the company.
What’s your perspective?
Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting Co., for its part, estimates that the hypothetical opening of the Tokyo-Nagoya maglev line in 2025 would generate an economic effect of 10.7 trillion yen over a 50-year period.
The launch of a Tokyo-Osaka line in the same year would lead to 16.8 trillion yen.
JR Central also states that the maglev, with its speed, will particularly affect the connectivity of the company’s 16 prefectures, leading to the creation of a mega economic zone.
The region’s gross domestic product, which includes only the metropolitan trio of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, but prefectures such as Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Nagano and Kyoto, amount to 330 trillion yen, surpassing that of France.
Why is this for Japan?
Although directed through JR Central, the maglev is, as many say, a “national project” in the sense that Abe’s leadership has made great efforts in this regard.
On the one hand, it provided the company with 3 billion yen in loans as a component of the infrastructure with which it committed in a 2016 economic package. Galvanized through currencyArray JR Central has extended its period to open the Tokyo-Osaka line for 8 years until 2037 compared to its original 2045. I would have charged 18 billion yen.
Behind the government’s drive for the Maglev initiative is its preference to create a megalopolis that will give Japan a competitive merit over countries that boast of so-called megalopolises.
These come with “BosWash” on the east coast of the United States, a chain of cities stretching from Boston to Washington DC, and the Pearl River Delta in China, a shopping mall that includes nine cities in Guangdong Province, as well as the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
The government expects the Maglev Shinkansen to connect up to 19 prefectures, adding those of Greater Tokyo, as well as the central and southern parts of Japan’s main island, in a megalopolis that it describes as a “super mega-region”.
Even larger than the JR Central market, the proposed economic zone will have a population of approximately 82 million people, with an estimated GDP of $3.2 trillion (approximately 340 trillion yen), with $4.2 trillion (approximately 448 trillion yen) of BosWash, according to the Department of Transportation.
The maglev also with government pressure for infrastructure exports, with Tokyo vying to lead the structure of a maglev formula in the United States that would link Washington, Baltimore and New York.
What’s the status?
The launch of the mission as scheduled is now disastrous due to the heist in Shizuoka Prefecture.
In the center of the heist is an 8.9 km segment of the tunnel housed through the prefecture, which would constitute only 3% of the entire 290 km line between Tokyo and Nagoya. As short as it is, this segment would require very confusing excavation paints that will last about 7 years and part and will come with the remedy of the fragile ecosystem and unpredictable geology of the mountainous region known as the Southern Alps.
During the conference, which aired live online, a desperate Kaneko continually pointed out that time was running out. At the very least, he says, paintings of the initial structure before the tunnel is dug will have to begin in Shizuoka until the end of June to meet the 2027 deadline.
“If you keep saying ‘no’, it means that the opening of 2027 will be difficult, if that’s impossible,” Kaneko said. Despite the plea, Kawakatsu, raising environmental concerns, moved.
Nearly two months after the meeting, there is still no sign of a breakthrough, with a delay in the structure threatening to further inflate the nine trillion yen spent on the Maglev project.
Governors of other prefectures along the crossing, adding Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura, criticized Kawakatsu’s perceived intransigence for threatening to derail the 2027 deadline, which he said will have to be met.
Why is Shizuoka a magnetic levitation construction?
Shizuoka insists that he does not oppose the allocation of magnetic levitation consistent with himself. Kawakatsu, for example, says he understands the role he can play in crisis preparedness.
But the fact is that of the seven prefectures crossed by the maglev between Tokyo and Nagoya, Shizuoka is the only prefecture where no new stations will be built to avoid the exercise, which the allocation will gain advantages for the prefecture little. First.
On the surface, however, Kawakatsu directed his criticisms mainly of the project’s environmental impact.
Their greatest fear is the assessment that the structure of a tunnel in the Southern Alps would result in the loss of up to 2 tons of water in line with the time at the close of the Oi River.
Shizuoka Prefecture says the Oi River is an important source of water for some 620,000 local citizens who count on it for daily use. The river’s old propensity for drought, as well as the structure of nearby dams, caused water scarcity in the area, and citizens embarked on a noisy “return of water” crusade in the 1980s.
“People in Shizuoka are known for their mild personality, but even they had to take action,” Kawakatsu told Kaneko in the June showdown. “That’s how careful you need to be in approaching this issue.”
Although JR Central explained first that steps would be taken to ensure that all lost water was returned to the Oi River, it later admitted that a loss of a safe amount may not have been avoided during construction. A revitalized Kawakatsu now insists that “not a single drop of water is sacrificed.”
How has coronavirus affected the prospects of magnetic levitation?
The coronavirus pandemic, which has jeopardized the already questionable profitability of the maglev project, to the stagnation between Shizuoka and JR Central.
In 2013, Yoshiomi Yamada, then president of JR Central, admitted at a press convention that “there is no way” for the Maglev initiative to have a surplus and that the burden of its structure is so large that it can slightly offset revenue. of the old Tokaido Shinkansen line that operates.
But COVID-19 has taken a toll on the firm’s prosperous high-speed train business, slashing passenger traffic by about 90 percent in April and May from a year earlier.
In addition, the pandemic “made many entrepreneurs perceive that they could simply update their classic trips with teleconferences,” says Mitsuhiro Miyashita, leading representative of Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting Co., Normalizing online meetings, he says, suggests that the call because the classic business through shinkansen will not fully recover, even after the pandemic has disappeared.
This new threat to question the raison d’etre of the assignment of the magnetic levitation shinkansen itself, which generates skepticism among some about the need for its speed of 500 km/h.
“We have to adapt to a new era,” Kawakatsu Kaneko.
“The Internet is more than the maglev train, you know.”
The Japan Times LTD. All rights are reserved.