Central Japan Railway Co. plans to begin work on the 5.1 trillion yen ($52 billion) maglev line between Tokyo and Nagoya as early as April. Trials resumed today after the company spent five years building a 24-kilometer extension of a test track. The trains can run at speeds of up to 500 kilometers (310 miles) per hour
The maglevs will whisk passengers to Nagoya, a city of 2.3 million people, from Tokyo in as little as 40 minutes for the 286-kilometer journey, from as short as 95 minutes now, according to JR Central. Faced with the challenge of tunneling under Tokyo’s skyscrapers and the Japanese Alps, the project is unlikely to be completed on time even as Japan’s population is projected to shrink, eroding travel demand.
“I think it’s going to be finished very, very late,” said Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research Corp. in Tokyo, which manages about $3 billion in assets. “If the population projections are correct, then the use of the bullet train will go down.”
Japan’s population may fall to as little as 117 million by 2027 from 127 million now, according to projections by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. By 2060, the overall population may drop to 80 million.
