Bullet Trains

Bullet trains are one of the most recent technological advancements known to most of mankind. Although only a few and selected number of foreigners are able to witness what the bullet train is really all about, we can just imagine. For those of us that have been on trains and subways, a bullet train is much greater than that. In Japan, the first country to produce such a thing, it is common for locals to travel intercity, and who wants to waste time traveling around these days? The trains have a world record of going as fast as 581 km/h, which is nearly 361 mph. The term bullet train is familiar to foreigners, but the locals call it Shinkansen.

The term shinkansen literally means the New Trunk Line, which is a reference to the tracks. Shinkansen is a network of high speed railway systems in Japan which is operated by a total of four Japanese Railway Group companies. It has been started since 1964 with a speed of 210 km/h and now since the new network of a total of 2,459 km has been established in most major cities, the trains run at an average speed of 300 km/h. The trains also cut a lot of time by going through, under, or over obstacles rather than going around them. The Tokaido Shinkansen is one of the world's busuiest high speed railline which carrys an average of 375,000 daily. It has transported a total of 4.5 billion passengers compared to the rest of the world's high speed lines combined. Although it is a long distance transport system, it also serves very well for commuters who have to travel to metropolitan areas from outer cities.

The astonishing fact is that over the 44 year period since these trains have been actively running, not one incident has occurred that has caused a fatality, either by derailment or collision, including typhoons and earthquakes. Japan has always been a country that keeps in mind about its surrounding and culture. It was for that reason that in the mid 1960's they established the idea that there would eventually be a problem with cars and started to work on the bullet train. Due to them taking a step forward in this technology, by the 1980's other countries such as France, Britain, and Germany established high speed rails in order to produce a means of easier traveling.

Always thinking about the future and planning ahead, Japan is now more interested in controlling the noise pollution in order to increase speeds. Current research is more particularly aimed at reducing operational noise along with the "tunnel boom" that occurs when a train exits a tunnel at a high speed. There are major extensions on their way along with many new trains capable of more speed for daily uses. By 2011, some companies have already announced trains that are capable of going up to 320 km/h appearing around the same time as the completion of the bullet train extension.