As Fast as You Can Travel on the Earth: The Shanghai Maglev

The Shanghai Maglev is a magnetic levitation train capable of reaching 431 kph.

The train starts with a slow whine, as if it’s powering up, and then shifts into a brisk glide. You can feel the acceleration but the most dramatic effect is looking out the window, since the ride is otherwise smooth and level. The landscape goes by impossibly quickly, creating an arresting visual pattern of trees and utility poles whizzing by like some sped up movie.

So it’s the fastest train in the world, carrying people 8 miles from the Shanghai Pudong Airport to the Longyang Road Station – a station on the eastern side of Pudong. From there it’s a 15 minute subway ride to the city center.

The train was built as a joint venture between Siemens and Thyssen Krupp, completed in 2004. Apparently this 8 mile segment was built largely as a sales tool to convince China to create a national maglev network, Operational details in this link.

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” -William Gibson, The Economist, December 4, 2003.