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Japan rail operator plans to build the fastest train ever

A Japanese rail operator said yesterday it plans to introduce the world's fastest train by 2025, a next-generation maglev built at a cost of US$45 billion.

Maglev, or magnetically levitated, trains travel above ground through an electromagnetic pull. The only maglev train now in commercial operation is in Shanghai.

Central Japan Railway Co (JR Central) plans to build a maglev linear-motor train between Tokyo and a to-be-determined area in central Japan at a cost of ¥5.1 trillion (US$44.7 billion), a company spokesman said.

"It will be the fastest train ever -- if it beats the one in Shanghai -- with a velocity of about 500 kilometers per hour, traveling a distance of 290 kilometers," the spokesman said.

The Shanghai train, launched in 2002, travels at 430kph for a 30.5km distance from Pudong airport to the financial district, according to the Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Co's Web site.

JR Central's magnetic-levitated train hit 581kph in 2003 in a trial run on a test course in Japan's central Yamanashi prefecture, the spokesman said.

The company's board approved the plan this week estimating an accumulative long-term debt of up to ¥5 trillion when the train goes into service in the financial year to March 2026.

The company projects the train will bring in 5 percent additional revenue in the first year, shrinking JR Central's debt to the current level within eight years of starting operation, a statement said.

JR Central initially had waited on the plan in hopes of government subsidies.

"The reason why the plan has not moved a bit is because the government isn't able to bankroll it," the rail operator's president Masayuki Matsumoto was quoted as saying in the the Nikkei business daily.
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