As if you needed one more thing to love about Japan — their superfast trains.
And now, according to this report by the BBC, their fastest train has beat its time. The maglev (stands for “magnetic levitation train,” trains which use “electrically charged magnets to lift and move carriages over tracks”) broke its own record by going 603 km/h, or 374 mph, beating its previous record of 590 km/h it set last week.
The test run was done by Mount Fuji, making it look even cooler.
To put that into perspective, the BBC made a handy chart of the fastest speeds achieved by transport on earth. The next fastest train is in China at 430 km/h. A Formula 1 race car can reach speeds of up to 321 km/h.
Passengers don’t get to enjoy that sweet speed action, though. The BBC reports that the current passenger maglev trains operate at a maximum speed of 505 km/h, and the fastest bullet train is 320 km/h. However, “Central Japan Railway (JR Central), which owns the trains, wants to introduce the service between Tokyo and the central city of Nagoya by 2027. The 280km journey would take only about 40 minutes, less than half the current time,” the article states.
Still, why don’t we have high-speed rail up and down the western and eastern corridors of the United States? Or are we just waiting for Elon Musk to build that hyperloop?
Watch the video of the train breaking the speed record below:
