![]() “So now you’ve got a fairly curved track, with a lot of residential and commercial area developed around it in the past 100 to 150 years. “The alignment was laid out a long, long time ago,” Rainey notes. The problem with upgrading old tracks, regardless of location, is that they weren’t designed for high speed. Amtrak has been making such upgrades for decades to its NEC main line to accommodate its Acela trains. HSR trains can theoretically share tracks with regular trains, as long as route design and signaling systems support the speed disparities. The trains (known as rolling stock) are also more streamlined than conventional trains, have more powerful engines, and some are designed to tilt as much 8 degrees to hug the track on turns. HSR’s advantage over other contenders is that it uses standard gauge tracks, although the tracks must be flat (low gradients) and straight to achieve its top speeds of 220 mph any curves must be gentle. Japan was the first to debut HSR in 1964, when it opened the Shinkansen (meaning new trunk line, also well known as a bullet train), between Tokyo and Osaka just in time for the ’64 Olympics. If we were to place them on a rapid-rail reality meter, HSR would score a 10 out of 10 (widely available commercially, mature tech) maglev would earn a 5 (limited commercially, extensive prototypes) and, hyperloop would rank at 2, (early prototypes that are a long ways away from commercial deployment). When it comes to achieving high transit speeds on terra firma, there are three main contenders, each requiring unique technology and engineering: high-speed rail (HSR), maglev, and hyperloop. And that takes money.” Money that could have been-and could still be-spent on rapid rails. “When a lot of countries were investing in high speed rail in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the United States was building out the interstate highway system.” He adds that once such highway systems are built out, “you want to keep investing in them, keep them in good shape. “The US is really a very auto-centric country,” says Ian Rainey, a senior vice president at Northeast Maglev, a privately held company associated with Central Japan Railway. Despite the allure of quietly humming past changing scenery at 200 mph or more on an electrically and sustainably propelled ride, without having to navigate airport traffic and security lines, the US is not poised to install high-speed rail anytime soon, anywhere. But none of the high-speed rail plans or projects underway three decades ago succeeded. In March 1990, The New York Times reported efforts to build a high-speed rail system linking Ohio cities, a project based on Florida’s plans for an anticipated 325-mile high-speed rail. In August 1992, Scientific American also ran a feature on the promise of maglev trains. Still, PopSci was not alone in covering the hope for high-speed rail in the US. Unfortunately, neither project came to fruition. “Florida recently approved a plan to build a magnetically levitated, or maglev, train system that would begin operating in 1996,” wrote senior contributing editor Chris O’Malley, further adding that high-speed rail was going to be dashing through Texas as soon as 1998. What’s more, California, Texas, Nevada, and the Northeast, all have rapid rail projects that have been sputtering along for years.īut three decades ago, in June 1992, Popular Science published a story that predicted high-speed rail would soon launch in major US regions, with more to follow. To be fair, Amtrak did announce that its new top speed for its Acela train on northeast routes, or Northeast Corridor (NEC), is 150 mph on a 16-mile track segment in New Jersey-still shy of other high-speed rail like China’s recently upgraded Beijing-Wuhan line that zips between 190 to 220 mph. But here in the US, home to more than 150,000 miles of railroad tracks- the most in the world-it’s been high-speed rail crickets. And Japan, which debuted the bullet train in 1964, will be opening a new 41-mile high-speed rail line from Takeo Onsen to Nagasaki. China opened 140 new miles of high-speed rail, while also showcasing a line dedicated for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Italy unveiled direct high-speed rail links from Rome’s airport to Naples and Florence. France revealed its next generation high-speed train, TGV M, which is larger, more carbon efficient, and travels up to 220 mph. In just the past year, countries around the world have continued rolling out high-speed trains. Read the series and explore all our 150th anniversary coverage here. In the Are we there yet? column we check in on progress towards our most ambitious promises. ![]() From cities in the sky to robot butlers, futuristic visions fill the history of PopSci. ![]()
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