For our last hurrah in Shanghai, we decided to spring for the upgraded transportation option to the airport (something like $8 USD).  Instead of the cheaper 1 hour local subways, we made our way to the Longyang Maglev station to take the magnetic levitation train.  I was looking forward to the smoothest, fastest train ride of my life.

This was an experimental line, just servicing the airport to convince the potential funders of its feasibility and safety.  During peak hours, max speed is listed at 300 km/h (same as the bullet trains we’ve been on), but at a few off hours, it goes up to 430 km/h!  Unfortunately our timing was a little bit off, so we only hit 300.  Total ride time: ~7 minutes.  Smoothness: Oddly, it was as bumpy as a regular train.  Maybe the 90′s style aerodynamics of the train had something to do with it?

The train was only ~25% occupied –> maybe the locals are over the hype and just waiting for the cost to go down at this point?

All of Asia’s fast trains have me wondering why North America does not offer them?  It sure would be convenient to have a high-speed rail service along many of our key metropolitan corridors: Austin-Chicago, Austin-Columbus, Austin-Baltimore, Austin-Scotch Plains, or maybe even DC-Baltimore-Philly-NYC-Boston and San Diego-LA-San Francisco-Portland-Seattle.  Key items needed for this to happen:

• The support of a filthy rich and crafty entrepreneur since our government could never accomplish, let alone afford anything on this scale.
• Ability to reuse existing rail lines.
• Speedy ticketing, security, and boarding procedures.  If it takes as long as an airport, it will fail.
• I’m pretty sure there are some other key things missing from this list

Maybe we’ll just end up skipping the whole high-speed rail phase and go right to pneumatic tube based travel…

Beam me up Scotty.