WHY THIS
TRAIN IS THE ENVY OF THE WORLD:
THE
SHINKANSEN STORY
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In 1964,
Japan unveiled the Shinkansen - a new high speed railway connecting the
country’s two largest cities (in the 1960's), Tokyo and Osaka. Travelling at
speeds in excess of 120 mph (200 km/h), the new specially designed Shinkansen
trains had the highest service speeds in the world.
But the
Shinkansen project’s success had been anything but assured. Over five years of
construction, the cost of building the Shinkansen had ballooned, nearly
doubling over the original estimate to nearly ¥400 Billion. Vocal critics
within Japan dismissed the Shinkansen project as destined for failure. Only a
year before the new line opened, the director-general of the Japanese National
Railways Construction Department described it as the “height of madness”. In
particular, he criticized the decision to use a wider gauge track (standard
gauge), which would make the Shinkansen incompatible with the rest of Japan’s
narrow gauge network.
Outside of
Japan, observers looked on with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. The
1960’s was the age of the jet airliner and automobile. Many countries in the
west were focusing on infrastructure projects to accommodate the enormous
growth of both these forms of transportation. The United States in particular,
was pouring billions of dollars into building new interstate highways and
country’s rail network was actually shrinking. Railways were seen as simply too
slow and inconvenient to compete with automobiles and aircraft. Many predicted
that passenger trains would be extinct or near-extinct by the end of the 20th
century.
But the
opening of the Shinkansen changed the way the world viewed railways. The
Shinkansen demonstrated that trains were capable of being the fastest mode of
travel for intercity trips (faster than automobile and air travel). The
Shinkansen was the fastest way to travel the 320 miles (515 km) distance from
Tokyo to Osaka when total door-door travel times were taken into account.
Within just the first 3 years, the Shinkansen carried more than 100 million
passengers.
The Japanese
helped inspire other countries to develop their own high speed networks, like
France’s TGV which entered service in the early 1980's. The enormous success of
the original Shinkansen line spurred the construction of new Shinkansen lines
westward. Over the course of the next half century, the network would be
expanded to reach nearly every corner of Japan.
#Trains
#BulletTrain #Shinkansen
Select
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Music
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Intro:
"Soft Epic" -
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Main Song 1:
" Science Of Dreams " -
https://audiojungle.net/item/science-...
Main Song
2: “Black Heat” -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U4Sk...
Main Song
3: “80s” - https://www.pond5.com/stock-music/888...
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4: “1980s Vintage Synth” -
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5: “Calculations” -
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6: “Electro Swing French Jazz” -
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