The Shinkansen, colloquially known in English as the bullet train, is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. Initially, it was built to connect distant Japanese regions with Tokyo, the capital, to aid economic growth and development. Beyond long-distance travel, some sections around the largest metropolitan areas are used as a commuter rail network. It is owned by the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency and operated by five Japan Railways Group companies.
Transrapid is a German-developed high-speed monorail train using magnetic levitation. Planning for the system started in the late 1960s, with a test facility in Emsland, Germany inaugurated in 1983. In 1991, technical readiness for application was approved by the Deutsche Bundesbahn in cooperation with renowned universities.
Inductrack is a passive, fail-safe electrodynamic magnetic levitation system, using only unpowered loops of wire in the track and permanent magnets on the vehicle to achieve magnetic levitation. The track can be in one of two configurations, a "ladder track" and a "laminated track". The ladder track is made of unpowered Litz wire cables, and the laminated track is made out of stacked copper or aluminium sheets.
Maglev is a system of rail transport whose rolling stock is levitated by electromagnets rather than rolled on wheels, eliminating rolling resistance.
The Shanghai maglev train (SMT) or Shanghai Transrapid is a magnetic levitation train (maglev) line that operates in Shanghai, China. The line uses the German Transrapid technology. The Shanghai maglev is the world's first commercial high-speed maglev and has a maximum cruising speed of 300 km/h (186 mph). Prior to May 2021 the cruising speed was 431 km/h (268 mph), at the time this made it the fastest train service in commercial operation.
The SCMaglev is a magnetic levitation (maglev) railway system developed by Central Japan Railway Company and the Railway Technical Research Institute.
A vactrain is a proposed design for very-high-speed rail transportation. It is a maglev line using partly evacuated tubes or tunnels. Reduced air resistance could permit vactrains to travel at very high (hypersonic) speeds with relatively little power—up to 6,400–8,000 km/h (4,000–5,000 mph). This is 5–6 times the speed of sound in Earth's atmosphere at sea level.
Plans for high-speed rail in the United States date back to the High-Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965. Various state and federal proposals have followed. Despite being one of the world's first countries to get high-speed trains, it failed to spread. Definitions of what constitutes high-speed rail vary, including a range of speeds over 110 mph (180 km/h) and dedicated rail lines. Inter-city rail with top speeds between 90 and 125 mph is sometimes referred to in the United States as higher-speed rail.
UK Ultraspeed was a proposed high-speed magnetic-levitation train line between London and Glasgow, linking 16 stations including Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and six airports. It was rejected in 2007 by the UK government, in favour of conventional high-speed rail. The company behind the proposal ceased efforts to promote it in early 2013.
The high-speed rail (HSR) network in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the world's longest and most extensively used – with a total length of 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi) by the end of 2023. The HSR network encompasses newly built rail lines with a design speed of 200–380 km/h (120–240 mph). China's HSR accounts for two-thirds of the world's total high-speed railway networks. Almost all HSR trains, track and service are owned and operated by the China Railway Corporation under the brand China Railway High-speed (CRH).
Indian Railways operates India's railway system and comes under the purview of the Ministry of Railways of Government of India. As of 2023, it maintains over 108,706 km (67,547 mi) of tracks and operates over 13,000 trains daily. According to the Ministry of Railways, a route capable of supporting trains operating at more than 160 km/h (100 mph) is considered as a higher speed or semi-high speed rail line.
The L0 Series is a high-speed maglev train that the Central Japan Railway Company is developing and testing. JR Central plans to use the L0 series on the Chūō Shinkansen railway line between Tokyo and Osaka, which is under construction.
Hyperloop is a proposed high-speed transportation system for both passengers and freight. The concept was published by Elon Musk in a 2013 white paper, where the hyperloop was described as a transportation system using capsules supported by an air-bearing surface within a low-pressure tube. Hyperloop systems have three essential elements: tubes, pods, and terminals. The tube is a large, sealed low-pressure system. The pod is a coach at atmospheric pressure that experiences low air resistance or friction inside the tube using magnetic propulsion. The terminal handles pod arrivals and departures. The hyperloop, in the form proposed by Musk, differs from traditional vactrains by relying on residual air pressure inside the tube to provide lift from aerofoils and propulsion by fans; however, many subsequent variants using the name "hyperloop" have remained relatively close to the core principles of vactrains.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, also known as HyperloopTT, is an American research company formed using a crowd collaboration approach to develop around the world commercial transportation systems based on the Hyperloop concept.
Hyperloop One, known as Virgin Hyperloop until November 2022, was an American transportation technology company that worked to commercialize high-speed travel utilizing the Hyperloop concept which was a variant of the vacuum train. The company was established on June 1, 2014, and reorganized and renamed on October 12, 2017.
The Hyperloop Pod Competition was an annual competition sponsored by SpaceX from 2015 to 2019 in which a number of student and non-student teams participated to design—and for some teams, build—a subscale prototype transport vehicle in order to demonstrate technical feasibility of various aspects of the Hyperloop concept. The competitions were open to participants globally, although all competitions and judging occurred in the United States of America.
TransPod Inc. is a Canadian company designing ultra-high-speed transportation technology and vehicles.
Arrivo Corporation was a startup company in Los Angeles, California, that developed maglev rail. Arrivo initially attempted to commercialize a hyperloop, but abandoned the effort in November 2017 in favor of established transit technologies.
