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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.
“Our plan was to bring in foreign visitors to see the maglev at our checkpoint in Yamanashi Prefecture, but with the Olympic Games delayed this year, it collapsed,” said Shin Kaneko, president of the company, also known as JR Central, in assembly with Shizuoka Governor Heita Kawakatsu in June.
The governor of Shizuoka now poses the greatest risk to the massive nine-trillion-yen magnetic levitation project, in which JR Central bet on its long term and which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s leadership enthusiastically supported.
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.
In addition to local problems, the allocation faces the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led an increasing number of entrepreneurs, the main visitor of high-speed trains, to online meetings. His growing abandonment of traditional long-distance businesses is driving some to consult the price of ultra-fast travel offered by maglev.
Here’s a look at the complex state of things surrounding Maglev’s assignment: how it started, where it’s now, and where it’s headed.
What is the maglev project?
Maglev Shinkansen’s assignment has been in the lifestyle for decades, after obtaining approval from the Minister of Transport in 1973. The assignment gained momentum with the creation in 1977 of now-defunct verification tracks in Miyazaki Prefecture, which was then replaced through a new verification site in Yamanashi Prefecture, which began to be structured in 1990 and officially debuted in 1997. Dubbed the shinkansen of “dream,” the Maglev initiative leapt forward in a wave of optimism, the so-called bubble economy in the 1980s, a rise that once went down in what would turn into decades of economic unrest.
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 realized 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?
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 mega-regions.
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.
In 2014, Abe did her best to accompany Caroline Kennedy, then U.S. ambassador to Japan, on a magnetic levitation control at Yamanashi’s site, promoting Japan’s shinkansen technology.
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.
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 through the maglev between Tokyo and Nagoya, Shizuoka is the only prefecture where no new stations will be built to prevent exercise, which the allocation gains few advantages for the prefecture. First.
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.
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 the COVID-19 had a negative effect on the company’s thriving high-speed exercise business, reducing passenger traffic by about 90% in April and May compared to the previous year.
In addition, the pandemic “made many entrepreneurs realize that they may 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 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.