International Railroad Discussion > WSJ: Japan pins its hopes on mag-lev

http://online.wsj.com/articles/japan-pins-hopes-on-floating-trains-1404674144?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories

Japan Pins Hopes on Floating Trains

Government Sees Magnetic-Levitation Rail System Spurring Country's Technological Rebirth

By ERIC PFANNER
July 6, 2014 3:15 p.m. ET

TOKYO—One of the images symbolizing Japan's postwar economic boom is a blue-and-white bullet train streaking past Mount Fuji on the world's first high-speed railway line, which went into service on the eve of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Half a century later, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to use another leap in train technology to demonstrate that even after two decades of economic decline, Japan can still think big. The company that operates the original bullet train, linking Tokyo to Osaka, intends to build a new line that cuts the journey between the two cities to little more than an hour—less than half the current time.

This wouldn't be any old upgrade. At a projected cost of about $90 billion, it could be the world's most expensive railway line to date. And it would be the first intercity train to use a technology called magnetic levitation, or maglev, which lifts the cars several inches off a concrete track and whisks them along at more than 500 kilometers, or roughly 310 miles, per hour—nearly 200 kilometers per hour more than the fastest bullet train, or Shinkansen.

Mag Lev is kind of a mystery financially speaking.
It would be useful to see the operating costs, in particular energy costs.
There are elaborate studies on energy per seat-mile for all other forms of transport but I have been led to believe that the high speed Mag Lev operators (Japan and Seimens) hold their information a proprietary.
I can see the cost savings of not having to do right of way maintenance due to no contact with the guideway (or do they contact a "third rail"?)
Right of way maintenance is both costly in cash and in lost opportunities to use the network 24/7.