[afuchs]

I'm confused?

What do you mean by land use issues?

Japan isn't using maglev for commercial high-speed service yet. Japanese high-speed trains have steel wheels that make contact with a steel track, just like regular trains. Their maglev trains are limited to experimental research and development [1], or low-speed urban transit [2] (which was built as a showcase for a World's Fair).

France's and Japan's high speed trains are based on the same technology as their lower speed counterparts, including American freight rail. How does a differing level of experience maglev technology cause a difference between different countries' quality of infrastructure, when that technology isn't being used?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0_Series

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo

[serhei]

Incidentally, Japan's maglev project (unlike their ordinary trains) is being done at ridiculous costs and ridiculous timeframes ($80 billion USD spent over 31 years -- 2014-2045 see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen). Seems like the technology is very tricky and 90% of it will have to be built in tunnel.

They can support this because their ordinary transit infrastructure is built out already, the Tokaido high-speed line is at capacity (trains every 5 minutes at peak hours)! Effectively, they have the money and they've run out of more reasonably scaled infrastructure projects to build.