When I was a kid, magnetic levitation trains, maglevs, were going to be the future.
Television shows would film breathless reports on the latest trials
in Germany, or here in Japan,
promising unbelievably fast and smooth travel between faraway cities.
But decades later, the only actual high-speed maglev service in the world
is in Shanghai, China.
Which is fast, but it's almost a gimmick.
It only goes 30km.
It loses enormous amounts of money every year.
Not many people use it.
I thought that maglev was one of those technologies
like Concorde, that we thought with the future until they weren't,
and now there’s just abandoned test tracks and the dreams of the past.
Which is why I was very surprised when my local producer here in Japan
asked me if I wanted to take a ride on the new maglev.
Because it turns out Japan has had a test track for years.
It carries passengers, because every so often
they will open their tests to the public, with a lottery for tickets.
And this test track is already longer than the entire Shanghai maglev system.
The plan is that it'll be part of a 285km route, taking 40 minutes,
which is less than half the time of even the bullet train,
with a cruising speed just over 500km/h.
90% of that track will be in tunnels, and that's under construction now.
Forgive me for getting excited,
but the future appears to be arriving, and I'm going to take a ride on it.
But first, the team here said they'd let me stand by the track,
as the maglev goes past, at speed.
And that's the maglev. Wow.
So it's going to accelerate
and then they’re going to bring it back, at full speed, into that tunnel,
500 km/h.
That accelerates so quickly.
I don't know if that comes across on camera, but a normal train
would have started so much slower than that.
It's already doing, what, 30, 40 km/h in a few seconds?
That would have pushed you back in your seat. Wow.
Okay. Now we wait for it to come that way.
Won’t lie... little bit nervous.
I know I'm safe, but there's a reason I'm not allowed behind this line.
It's about maybe a kilometer
to that tunnel mouth, maybe a little less.
And the train's now coming towards us.
500 km/h, which means it's going about 1km every 8 seconds.
It's nearly here. Apparently.
They've just told me it's nearly here, and I can't hear a thing.
Oh, I can see a light.
I can see the train coming. I can see headlights.
All right, how fast is 500 km/h?
I hope that came across on camera.
‘Cos you hear nothing, and it looks so far away,
and it looks so unthreatening.
And then it is there and this wall of sound hits you.
That's incredible.
I don't have words.
It's my job to have words for a moment like this, and I don't!
All right.
It's going to come to a stop.
I'm going to get on it.
We're going to ride at 500 km/h.
It smells new.
There’s new plastics and fabrics in the air.
Okay.
Here we go.
The acceleration is noticeable.
Like, I got pushed back in my seat there,
in a way that I think I've only felt on planes.
It's not full-plane-takeoff, but it's still way stronger
than anything that I’ve felt in a train anywhere else.
We're already approaching 100 km/h.
That is...
100, and we’re still acclerating.
130.
So the wheels are going to come up soon, we're going to hit 150 km/h,
the wheels are going to come up...
And the noise goes away,
and it's so much smoother.
200 km/h.
And we're still accelerating.
The only reference I've got now is the big screen,
which is just counting down how long until the end of the track.
It's a little bit bouncy, but nothing you wouldn't expect on a regular train.
Okay. 300 km/h.
We're at 'continental Europe high speed train' now, and we're still accelerating.
I'm still being pushed back in my seat.
Not dramatically, but it's still noticeable.
I've never experienced this much acceleration for this long.
And we're still going.
480. 490.
And we ease off the acceleration.
That's 500 km/h.
That's the fastest I've ever traveled on land.
And it feels... like a train!
It is a little bit louder than you'd expect from a train,
but it's way less than an aircraft.
You can still have a conversation, there’s
a bit of noise in the background, but it's still doing okay.
But there's nothing uncomfortable
about this. I was worried that at this speed
I was going to feel like I was being jolted about.
But this...
this feels like a train!
So will it work this time?
Because there is a long history of breathless British people
traveling to other countries and getting excited about maglevs
and telling the English-speaking world about the future that never comes.
This feels like a video that the BBC could have filmed in the 70s or 80s.
And the original opening date of 2027 has already been pushed back,
the new date is still uncertain.
One local government keeps raising objections to the construction.
The future is not here yet, and we're not going
be seeing one of these in Europe any time soon.
But the track is being built.
The technology does work.
And it looks like the economics are sound,
because there's clearly demand for traveling between two major cities.
In a few years’ time, we might finally get to ride the maglev
that the world was promised all those years ago.
We are braking now and it is still really strong.
One last thing.
They stopped the train in the middle of a curve.
When I was coming through this at 500 km/h, it felt perfectly level to me.
I felt nothing weird, but it turns out that actually...
the whole train is tilted ten degrees!
I'm having to brace myself to stop sliding down the carpet.
Thank you very much to everyone from JR, who’s standing behind the camera there.
This was a privilege. Thank you very, very much.