The Federal Railroad Administration recently approved a grant of $27.8 million to develop a 300mph train, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The train would be enable travel from Washington, D.C. to New York City in under an hour using magnetic levitation technology, better known as maglev. The grant, a mere fraction of what the entire undertaking will cost, was given to the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Maryland Economic Development corporation, but the project is officially being led by a private organization called The Northeast Maglev.
The organization is working with officials from the Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) who have already utilized maglev technology to develop the country’s Tokyo-Osaka line which, the Guardian reported, broke a world record earlier this year by reaching a speed of 373mph.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has gifted the U.S. with the technology to develop the high speed train as well as funding to help finance the first portion of the project, which would connect D.C. and Baltimore and is expected to cost upwards of $10 billion. Fortune reported last year that the funding would come from JBIC, Japan’s overseas investment bank, hoping that development of the D.C.-Baltimore leg would attract investors to finance the rest. At that point, TNEM had raised $40 million in private funding.
Japan is developing another maglev train of its own to connect Tokyo and Nagoya without taxpayer money. It’s projected to cost about $93 billion and be ready around 2045.
