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The story
A Kyodo News report on November 4 revealed that JR Central is considering raising its cost estimate for the Chuo Shinkansen maglev line (Shinagawa–Nagoya section) further above the current ¥11 trillion. This would be the first increase since last October and the third since construction began. The estimate has already doubled since construction started in 2014, driven mainly by soaring materials and labor costs. JR Central had planned to announce an opening date within the year, but sources say that timeline may now slip into next year. On 5ch, commenters repeatedly questioned the project’s overall future, debating who would bear the added costs, the delayed start of the Shizuoka section, and whether the Osaka extension would ever actually happen.
11/4 (Wed) 23:29 — Kyodo News
It emerged on the 4th, from interviews with sources, that JR Central is considering increasing its cost estimate for the Chuo Shinkansen maglev line between Tokyo’s Shinagawa and Nagoya beyond the previous ¥11 trillion figure. An increase would mark the first since last October and the third since construction began, meaning the company finds itself forced into another hike roughly a year on from the last one. Soaring materials and labor costs amid inflation are taking their toll. JR Central is recalculating its estimate ahead of announcing an opening date, and plans to finalize and disclose the figure by the end of the year.
Even the current ¥11 trillion estimate is already double what it was when construction began in 2014, underscoring just how much harder the project has become to manage. After Shizuoka Governor Yasutomo Suzuki announced in July that he would allow construction to begin in the Shizuoka section, JR Central President Shunsuke Niwa had said the company would announce an opening date for the Shinagawa–Nagoya section by the end of this year. Sources say, however, that this announcement may now slip until next year.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Shizuoka has nothing to do with it.
The maglev project itself is a reckless plan with no real chance of success, so the construction costs are going to keep ballooning no matter what.
Just stop pouring tax money into it.
The megabank consortium refused to lend because they judged the project unviable.
So then-PM Abe said fine, the state will lend the money instead — and that's how it turned into a government loan.
They were supposed to fund it themselves, but the government ended up using tax money anyway.
Nobody asked for this — the government just wanted to do it, so there's nothing to be done about it.
Just collect the cost overrun from the bid-rigging fines, problem solved.
That's exactly why they split it into two phases with Nagoya opening first — the Osaka extension was always just a face-saving pretext.
Everyone knew from the beginning the Osaka extension was never actually happening.
Isn't that kind of pointless though?
Even now, Tokyo–Nagoya takes about an hour if you blow past Shin-Yokohama [on the Nozomi bullet train].
Cutting that down to 30 minutes doesn't really mean much.
Even if travel time gets shorter, the total door-to-door time probably won't change much.
If the station's way out in the middle of nowhere and you have to trek down to some deep platform and clear a security check before boarding, what's even the point.
Nagoya–Osaka is exactly the stretch that's too short a distance to be worth it.
And even if they run the maglev all the way to Shin-Osaka, people from Kyoto or Shiga would still end up boarding at Nagoya rather than Shin-Osaka — the cost-effectiveness is terrible.
For JR Central, the profit's the same whether it's the bullet train or the maglev, so stopping maglev service at Nagoya is plenty.
The Shinagawa–Nagoya leg runs through the central route, which has a big impact by opening up new areas — Tono, Iida, Yamanashi, Sagamihara, and so on.
Mie and Nara are already well served via Nagoya or Kyoto anyway.
The Osaka extension is wasteful through and through — they never actually intended to build it.
The government isn't touching a pointless project like this.
The pro-maglev crowd should fall on their swords.
Looks like the Ministry's steering toward cancellation too.
Yeah, the country's lost a ton of national strength since construction even started.
Then once the Abe administration came in, the government started chipping in to help.
The maglev is never actually going to get finished — the real question is who takes the blame, and [former JR Central chairman] Kasai's already dead.
Wait, Chairman Kasai already passed away? Didn't know that.
If [former Shizuoka governor] Kawakatsu hadn't dug in his heels, this might've started taking shape by now, but nobody can keep up the motivation anymore.
It's not Kawakatsu's fault — everywhere else is a total mess too.
If Shizuoka's supposedly the big obstacle, they could've just dug in from the Nagoya side and the Tokyo side and connected the last 2 km in Shizuoka at the end.
There's no partial-opening plan on the table anyway, so that would've been fine — and they can't even manage that much.
If a project can't handle that small a deviation from its own blueprint, the whole maglev concept is hopeless.
Re: #85
There are also rumors they'll be checking passengers' belongings.
For riders, it'll feel less like today's bullet train and more like boarding a plane.
It's a dream — Japan's dream.
High-speed rail isn't about logic.
It's romance.
A dream where the engineers and the public become one.
Not a dream, a nightmare lol. No doubt about it! lol
Isn't the current Nozomi basically good enough?
Tokyo–Osaka would be faster still if they just skipped the Nagoya stop, but they won't even do that.
They talk about speed, but right now it's JR Central that doesn't actually want it any faster.
November 2, 2026, Tokyo Shimbun
https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/525483
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They should've gone via Nagano instead.
Before they even get to the Southern Alps, they can't get the project moving past Shinagawa in the first place.
The route doesn't matter — a Nagano route would hit the exact same wall if it still can't get out of Shinagawa.
Even before that, apparently land acquisition around the long-coveted Nagoya station area is a mess with the landowners and isn't progressing at all.
Supposedly it's at the point where they should just give up on stopping at Nagoya.
Don't even need Nagoya, honestly.
The reality is that even the deep-underground tunnel section in Tokyo — which doesn't require any land acquisition at all — hasn't made any progress either.
The media's been played by JR, pushing the narrative that Shizuoka is somehow the problem when that's basically disinformation.
The Yamanashi test track already offers rides, so just go ride that.
The Yamanashi test track already offers rides, so just go ride that.
And given the need for quadruple-tracking anyway, the reasoning became "might as well just go with the maglev."
They gave up on that one too, in favor of the Hokuriku Shinkansen's Osaka extension.
Re: #177
There was — they moved the test line to Yamanashi. It's lined with solar panels now.
"The Shinkansen is aging" is also just one of the lies JR Central told.
In fact, the aging countermeasures for the Tokaido Shinkansen have already been completed.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
When construction on the Chuo Shinkansen maglev began in 2014, the cost estimate was reportedly about half of today’s ¥11 trillion figure, making this the third increase since groundbreaking. JR Central originally pledged to fund the entire project itself, but that changed in 2016 when it took on ¥3 trillion in low-interest loans through the government’s Fiscal Investment and Loan Program — this is likely what posters in the thread mean by the “government loan.” The Shizuoka section was held up for years over concerns about Oi River water resources, with Governor Yasutomo Suzuki only agreeing to allow construction this past July; some claims in the thread about progress on land acquisition in Nagoya and Tokyo and on the deep-underground tunnel work remain unverified and should be checked against official sources. The Shinagawa–Osaka line was always planned as a two-stage project with Nagoya opening first, and the timing of the Osaka extension remains undecided to this day.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Exclusive] Maglev construction costs to rise again — JR Central, from ¥11 trillion.”
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