Japanese Bullet Trains in America?

Transportation Minister Seiji Maehara was in Chicago last week to help promote the idea of America using Japanese trains and technology for its high speed rail projects:

The land, infrastructure, transport and tourism minister toured the city’s Union Station, the biggest terminal in Illinois that would serve as a hub for a high-speed rail system the state plans to build over the next few years.

The station is being served by major rail operators including Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corp. (Metra) and the National Railroad Passenger Corp., commonly known as Amtrak.

Metra has purchased about 500 rail cars from Japan’s major manufacturer Nippon Sharyo Ltd.

Maehara has also visited San Francisco in an attempt to help the Japanese bid for a high speed rail connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

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Magus

America is shopping for a high speed train technology provider. It’s going to be Japan vs. Europe for who eventually gets the endless amounts of billions of dollars of contracts.

Both places have pros and cons. Europe’s train companies are more experienced with building bullet train infrastructure and service onto existing railways and more helping the individual countries develop their own train technology. Japan is offering an everything-or-nothing approach. They are offering a superior technology, safety, and efficiency record, but if they win the contracts, they want to build new railroads, and basically make the infrastructure and systems from scratch. The argument, though, is that Japan offers a much more complete package, as JR is also going to develop all of the software to run the new train infrastructure and help with training and everything else, whereas the European companies would be doing more a technology sharing thing.

Both solutions are seriously being considered by the US.
canio

I have used high speed rail systems extensively in both Japan and France.

Frankly, they are both fast enough. I personally prefer the interiors of the French TGV
because it is more comfortable and looks better than the Japanese Shinkansen(500/700 series).

The US is just tossing money away if it goes ahead with the proposed high speed rail systems.
There is no need, except in a few markets(i.e. BOS-NYC-DC, Florida, LA-SF, SEA-Vancouver, Chicago).

I won’t name names, but all you need to do is look at the supporters of high speed rail. They are very big donors to the current administration. (and their families)
Rob A

What is the top speed on this particular brand of train? I seem to recall that either Japan or Europe had a new model that would top out around 500km/hour. If that’s not what they’re buying, they shouldn’t bother.
Mark Richards

In America it would be an unmitigated disaster. As it is, AMTRAK and the regional transit operators, like Boston’s MBTA, have no clue as to how to run their own operations. Trains can barely operate the low speeds and even these stress the crumbling infrastructure and inept management.

AMTRAK has a “high speed” train. It continues to be a mess, with a hodgepodge setup of electric and diesel operations along a poorly-planned and badly maintained corridor.

Public transportation in the US is a job and contract mill and a political patronage machine. It does not exist to provide actual transit as its primary job. Until this changes, I’d keep the higher speeds where they can be properly operated – in Japan.

Japanese Bullet Trains in America?

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