r/BeAmazed • u/zzill6 • Sep 02 '25

Technology Reporter left speechless after witnessing Japan's new $70 million Maglev train in action at 310 mph

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u/BatPsychological9999 Sep 02 '25

Why can’t we have nice things

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u/discourse_friendly Sep 02 '25

California probably has a better train by now, they've spent 5 billion on their fast train from SF to LA *checks in on the project*

ooooh fuck

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

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u/KeynoteBS Sep 03 '25

Atleast CEQA is now thrown out for developing housing. Recently went into effect a month ago. That’s a win.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

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u/MildMannered_BearJew Sep 03 '25

And who’s taking out the CEQA lawsuits.

The NIMBYs.

It always comes back to the NIMBY

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

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u/JDtheProtector Sep 03 '25

Because the nimbys are using that as an excuse to stop it...

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u/marinuss Sep 03 '25 edited Sep 03 '25

And no one mentions a lot of that is per Federal requirements, not just CA. The whole tiny fish thing that Trump was obsessed with in CA. That was a FEDERAL LAW that prevented CA from moving water. They had to apply to the the Federal Government on years they wanted to do it. It was protected under the Endangered Species Act. Want to know what they haven't changed to "supercharge" the US? Gutting the ESA. Trump could have posted on Truth "Remove this tiny ass fish from the ESA so we can get water back to CA" and that would have been done. Wouldn't have helped at all with the issue he was speaking about because the water he was pissed about doesn't go to LA, but at least it would have been action that had teeth.

I'll use your comment to blabber on, the ESA is super important. You wouldn't want like grizzly bears to go extinct. We have also decimated billions of species as humans. So on one hand should we as people protect things? I think yes. On the other, should protecting them overrule development. Well that's what these boards are supposed to decide. Looking into how these little smelt fish interact with the local ecosystem (although if that's gone then there is no interaction). Maybe the rules just need an update. Does that fish exist somewhere else? Yes? Okay maybe this project is worth doing. It doesn't? COULD it exist somewhere else? Okay move them.

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u/WitnessRadiant650 Sep 03 '25

The NIMBYs are using CEQA to stop building.

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u/Zestyclose_Habit2713 Sep 03 '25

That must be why they (Trump) killed the train that passed through the desert from LA to Vegas. The reason why places like DTLA doesnt build bigger buildings and opt for sprawling neighborhoods is 100% because city council doesn't want kids to miss out on "people watching" from a 7 story building. There are just not enough people per stop to justify train station stops for a project like this. People want to protect their 'investment' of their single family home so they don't want more housing. As long as these nimby's use things like CEQA as a body shield then we aren't going to see these maglev trains in our lifetime.

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u/Iustis Sep 03 '25

We usually lump that in with NIMBY bullshit

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u/discourse_friendly Sep 03 '25

Yep. California needs to completely revamp how that process works.

Ideally throw it out, but if that's a no go the state should do an environmental impact study of large areas ahead of projects being proposed, so its not a delay in building.

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u/Obant Sep 03 '25

Elon Musk has proudly claimed he purposely has been tanking the project. He invested billions into his Boring Company as a competitor just to tank the high speed rail project in CA.

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u/discourse_friendly Sep 03 '25

waste of money if true. all one has to do is sit back and let California do California things and the project will die

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u/Jonger1150 Sep 03 '25

The United States can't get anything done do to NIMBYs and zoning boards. My own county has pages of comments with people fighting a Chick-fil-A. 180,000 people and a fast food joint is controversial.

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u/PutridCheetah8136 Sep 03 '25

Who would want a high speed train built anywhere near their house? Same as with homeless shelters or prisons.

Easy to talk shit about NIMBYs until you become one of them.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

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u/PutridCheetah8136 Sep 03 '25

Do you own property near where the vibrations and noise would bother? If so, 👏👏

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

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u/PutridCheetah8136 Sep 03 '25

“I live here” could mean you’re a renter and don’t need to face living with loud trains for decades.

Let’s not act ignorant.. Anyways, seems you’re much better than most. I wouldn’t want any kind of loud trains built near my house without some compensation.

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u/DreamsOfLlamas Sep 03 '25

Well they’re over the hard part (getting sued by every single city in the state trying to delay the project just because) and have broken ground. Before the feds started looking into pulling the funding the projected in-operation year was 2032 for the first segment, merced to bakersfield, which would at the very least greatly shorten the existing bus/train routes (currently 13 hours).

For a more optimistic HSR outlook, see brightline west, a privately run project that makes use of existing highway right of way to connect LA county to vegas that is projected to be fully operational by 2028

California has a lot of environmental protection laws that are unfortunately prone to abuse by NIMBY groups, and land surveys ate up a lot of time since the area is prone to earthquakes.

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u/halavais Sep 03 '25

I don't think Brightline is a great model to replicate. It's publicly funded and privately profitable (at least in the Florida case). I'll be curious to see what the Vegas route ends up costing.

Mind you, most of the trains in Japan are public-private partnerships, but they tend to be more tightly interwoven, and actually serve the public.

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u/Optimal-Golf-8270 Sep 03 '25

If its a public private partnership, it'll go to absolute shit. That's how everything in the UK is built and everything is very expensive whilst not working.

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u/wasmic Sep 03 '25

Typically for PPPs, you'll have the government providing a loan to a private company; the private company then builds and operates a line for a certain period of time while paying back the loan, and getting to pocket the profit. The government then gets to own the infrastructure after the agreed period ends.

Some of the more recent PPPs in Japan are the other way around. For example, the connection between the Tokyu and Sotetsu railway networks. It was paid for and is owned by the Japanese government, and then the private companies get to operate them, using the operating profits to gradually pay for the infrastructure until they have eventually purchased it in full, after which it will be fully privatised.

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u/discourse_friendly Sep 03 '25

that's good news

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u/RunningEarly Sep 03 '25

I saw on the news a few days ago that currently the highspeed train is planned to connect Merced to Bakersfield (bum-fuck nowhere to bum-fuck nowhere) as its goal, but it was finally proposed that if they extend it out to connect SF and LA, it might be profitable.

Who the fuck is in charge of this shit??

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u/ProtonPizza Sep 03 '25

They start mega project like this in the middle of nowhere so they can learn how to build before they’re digging up downtown San Francisco 

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u/IlllllIIIIIIIIIlllll Sep 03 '25

I was operating under the crazy assumption that they were contracting skilled and experienced builders who wouldn’t need to resort to trial and error to figure out what they were doing.

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u/wasmic Sep 03 '25 edited Sep 03 '25

That sort of skilled and experienced builder does not exist in the US, because the US has not done any high-speed railway projects before. You could import a lot of Chinese workers, but I doubt that would go over well.

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u/Goredema Sep 03 '25

No one in the US has any experience building high-speed rail, and the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad have all been dead for 60+ years. Even skilled builders need some ramp-up time when building something completely outside their experience.

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u/IlllllIIIIIIIIIlllll Sep 03 '25

Then don’t hire those losers and bring over the experts from Europe and Japan, Better Call Saul style.

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u/RunningEarly Sep 03 '25

I'm sure there's steps to these things, but the way it was being reported, they were making it sound like after all these years, they just realized that connecting the big cities might just be the way to go.

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u/evmoiusLR Sep 03 '25

I ride ace train to work into the Bay area,. It's basically a slow freight train with passenger cars.

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u/jmlinden7 Sep 03 '25

It's not even fast is the problem.

The whole point of a fast train is to be time-competitive with flying. California chose an awkward compromise with a weird route and lots of viaduct, and now they have the costs of a truly fast train but not the speed.

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u/wasmic Sep 03 '25

The vast majority of the cost is in tunneling - viaducts are extremely cheap in comparison. They're saving a lot of tunneling by going with the chosen route. It's also not that much longer than a more direct LA-SF route would have been. The direct route is around 560 km and goes through a lot of mountains, while the chosen route is around 610 km and goes mostly through flat land that's much cheaper to build on.

and now they have the costs of a truly fast train but not the speed.

Flat out wrong. It's being built for an operating speed of up to 350 km/h which is some of the fastest in the world. Even in France and Japan, the top speed doesn't go higher than 320 km/h. IIRC 350 km/h is only routinely done in China and Indonesia.

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u/jmlinden7 Sep 03 '25

Max speed isn't the problem.

The problem is that it makes too many stops and there aren't enough express services. The express services are the only ones that have a hope of getting large ridership numbers.

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u/Unveiled_Nuggets Sep 03 '25

Suspected to be operating in the 2030s?

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u/discourse_friendly Sep 03 '25

2039 could happen, yes :)

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n Sep 03 '25

Sounds like a lot of money but when you consider even China spends up to 15 million euro per kilometer which would translate to 9 billion for SF/LA. Building infra is expensive, especially in developed nations where you got all sorts of pesky laws and people in general who have the right to complaint (and even China is catching up on that).