Shinkansen

The Shinkansen (Japanese: 新幹線, [ɕiŋkaꜜɰ̃seɴ] ^ⓘ, lit. 'new trunk line'), colloquially known in English as the bullet train, is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. It was initially 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.^[1][2] It is owned by the Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency and operated by five Japan Railways Group companies.

Starting with the Tokaido Shinkansen (515.4 km; 320.3 mi) in 1964,^[3] the network has expanded to consist of 2,951.3 km (1,833.9 mi) of lines with maximum speeds of 260–320 km/h (160–200 mph), 283.5 km (176.2 mi) of Mini-shinkansen lines with a maximum speed of 130 km/h (80 mph), and 10.3 km (6.4 mi) of spur lines with Shinkansen services.^[4] The network links most major cities on the islands of Honshu and Kyushu, and connects to Hakodate on the northern island of Hokkaido. An extension to Sapporo is under construction and scheduled to open in March 2031.^[5] The maximum operating speed is 320 km/h (200 mph) (on a 387.5 km (241 mi) section of the Tōhoku Shinkansen).^[6] Test runs have reached 443 km/h (275 mph) for conventional rail in 1996, and up to a world record 603 km/h (375 mph) for SCMaglev trains in April 2015.^[7]

The original Tokaido Shinkansen, connecting Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, three of Japan's largest cities, is one of the world's busiest high-speed rail lines. In the one-year period preceding March 2017, it carried 159 million passengers,^[8] and since its opening more than six decades ago, it has transported more than 6.4 billion total passengers.^[3] At peak times, the line carries up to 16 trains per hour in each direction with 16 cars each (1,323-seat capacity and occasionally additional standing passengers) with a minimum headway of three minutes between trains.^[9]

The Shinkansen network of Japan had the highest annual passenger ridership (a maximum of 353 million in 2007) of any high-speed rail network until 2011, until the Chinese high-speed railway network surpassed it at 370 million passengers annually, which later reached over 2.9 billion annual passengers in 2023.^[10]