The true cost of Japan's bullet train: costs and environmental degradation | Hacker News Reader

The true cost of Japan's bullet train: costs and environmental degradation

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19 pointsTaurenHunter22 comments

Most of the objections in the article (costs, environmental impact of tunneling, eminent domain) could be applied to any major infrastructure project. I'm particularly irked by the concerns about energy use - at 500 km/h, Linear would primarily compete with air travel, so that's where the comparison should be made.

On one hand, if you stop to appease every stakeholder, then you will end up in an eternal quagmire like the California HSR project. On the other hand though, if you make a practice of expedited construction, then you could end up copying the PRC and stomping on anyone that dares to dissent against national prestige projects.

There are about 3 flights between Tokyo and Nagoya taking about 1hr10 mins. There are 33 bullet trains taking about 1hr 30 mins.

The bullet train is almost certainly faster than the flight when factoring in security, distance from the city center, etc.

And even if this ends up replacing all air travel between Tokyo and Nagoya, you're talking about 500 people each way per day. That's a fraction of 1 of the 33 bullet trains that already run between these 2 cities.

I don't disagree with this project. But it's evident that the project simply doesn't make sense in itself. It's clearly a Proof of Concept that Japan is using to be able to sell MagLev technology abroad in places which currently do not have existing high speed trains and will be choosing between paying a lot of money for bullet trains, or slightly more money for an even faster Maglev train.

Which is a significant justification IMO, but that's a very different justification from saying that this new MagLev line makes sense in of itself.

Who’s to say there wouldn’t be more flights per day if the airlines didn’t need to compete with 33 bullet trains per day?

If those 33 trains were operating full you'd need more than 100 flights to replace them.

It sounds like a flight is 3-6x worse than the bullet trains in terms of energy/passenger/mile, with no ability to go zero emissions. (Trains vary)

There are far more than 33 shinkansen trains between Tokyo and Nagoya. Today there are 127. There is some variance in how long it takes depending on time of day and number of intermediate stops, but most are less than 1h40m.

It basically never makes sense to fly between the two cities. I'm not sure you'd even make it from the entrance to Haneda to the exit of Centrair faster by plane than by train (it takes ~3 hours by train, including 2 transfers. About half the time is on the Shinkansen...). Maybe you can do it in less than 2:30 by plane. It could make sense to connect airplanes in some cases, I guess.

It makes sense to fly to Nagoya if you are transferring from another plane. And they could service it with puddle jumpers. It is too bad that Haneda or Narita aren't serviced by Shinkansen stations themselves, then you would just take the train.

It's a pretty quick 20 minute ride on a local train from Haneda to Shinagawa station. Narita is a bit tougher, yes.

(source, I went to Nagoya for a conference last summer...)

I think this is unlikely to replace all flights either- the flights that do exist are probably for people arriving in Narita to get to Nagoya more quickly than getting out of the airport, taking a 1 hour local train to central Tokyo, then take a Shinkansen to Nagoya vs just walking to another gate. For pretty much every other use case the train is probably cheaper and faster.

Tokyo to Nagoya (Japan's 4th largest city, and 3rd largest metro) seems really reasonable, especially since it is midpoint to Osaka, and that's where they eventually want the maglev to go. The idea is probably more to add capacity to the Shinkansen network then to replace air travel, and faster trains do allow you to make more trips a day. The Tokaido shinkansen is probably just full, or close to full, and this is one way to expand capacity (the route is different, so they still need to keep the old one around to serve communities between).

As a complete outsider, I just liked to read about a major maglev project currently underway. The article even included a map wich sadly is rare for articles about rail projects! Japan can consider me a potential tourist now. Even if the maglev trip is 90 % tunnel.

More on topic, it can help a lot to have redundant train lines. If there is an incident on one line, you can route around it.

Recently watched a bit of this on the news channel here in Japan. I had not heard about the water situation until the news exposed it. I can understand the concern because in Japan I must say that water is a resource that the rural parts of Japan pride themselves on. Being familiar with the Sagamihara station project to some degree it did displace some residents but also a school which was moved. Aside from that, rent increased for people close to the planned station simply because it could increase the marketability of the area. If the station or plan falls through it would make the increased rent that was paid for nothing (same for any prospective new housing/businesses that came).

So cost, energy usage (weird to lump fossil fuels and nuclear together), and soil from tunneling are opposition reasons? Benefit is faster trip and potential to export the tech? Imagine if these environmentalists existed during Industrial Revolution. Please build it and then do it here.

It would be interesting to measure the environmental cost, which is substantial, against the benefits: 40 minutes instead of 50 from Tokyo to Nagoya, 67 minutes instead of 90 from Tokyo to Osaka. Is this reduction in travel time worth consuming 3 to 4 times the energy?

Tokyo to Nagoya now is about 95-100 minutes: 50 minutes is the time difference, not the current duration. It's a little over twice as fast.

I also imagine that like the (cancelled) HS2 in the UK, a major driver is not only faster journeys (though HS2 was a much more marginal time saving, certainly not half) but relieving capacity on the existing "stopping" line, which has 365 trains a day, 450,000 daily passengers and is the busiest high speed line in the world.

HS2 is only cancelled if you live in the north east and pay no tax.

This misses the main benefit of HS2 which is making the network as a whole more efficient by eliminating bottlenecks. When people say ‘we should improve regional rail services’, they ignore that HS2 is what that looks like. And, frankly, if HS2 doesn’t reach Euston, it’s nearly cancelled for many Londoners due to the inconvenience.

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2023/hs2-a-high-speed-be...

What bottleneck between London and Birmingham exists that is making my journeys from York to Leeds so fraught ?

Are you trying to convince me that HS2 is worth my tax £s because it’ll make TPE services better ??

No more capital expenditure should be allocated to London bound rail services until the northern corridor line (Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, York, Hull) has been substantially upgraded or replaced.

I agree that the segment north of Birmingham was important for removing bottlenecks, including those that affect services from London. That is precisely why I think it makes little sense to regard HS2 as meaningfully cancelled only for those in the northeast. The cancellation is a problem for everybody.

I do love it when HS2 is sold as the solution to all rail congestion everywhere in the UK. Absolutely hilarious that in fact a separate rail upgrade project is underway between Manchester and York, unrelated to HS2

The vast majority of opposition isn't from environmentalists. At least that's not what the article says.

In fact, the only person quoted speaking about the environmental impact is a local dairy farmer, who's more concerned about loss of local "nature" rather than broader environmental concerns.

I can't speak to whether this is a good project or not. The article doesn't provide enough details for that, but what is pretty clear is that the article provides no evidence that any opposition is due to environmentalists.

Also, thanks to environmentalists millions fewer people are dying each year. Or I guess you really like lead in your air, or burning rivers, or smog, or skin cancer, or asthma... And we haven't even touched on the impacts of climate change yet.

Isn't this train much more efficient than the alternatives though?

Cars will be vastly worse and take vastly longer.

Airplanes are worse.

The only possible better alternative is a slower train.

Nuclear and fossil are both non zero marginal cost energy sources that Japan pays global market prices for. Makes sense to group them from a cost perspective at least.

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