Japan finally has an International Buyer for its Bullet Train: India

Japan’s government and its rail companies lobbied the U.S. for years to sell its bullet-train technology and found little success. Finally, there’s an international buyer: India.

When it comes to their bullet train technology, Japan actually found no success at all, as it's the French TGV which have been selected by the U.S..

The contracts are interesting as well:

• $ 17 Billion for 316 miles and 2 Million passengers of India's Shinkansen
• $ 2 Billion for 187 miles and 3,5 Million passengers of U.S. Amtrak's TGV

The $2 billion TGV deal is for the trains and equipment only, it doesn't include the track.The Indian $17 billion deal includes the track, which has 21 miles of tunnels, 7 miles under the Arabian Sea. Almost all of the remaining track will be elevated.

The TGV deal is for a train with a maximum speed of 300 km/h but will mostly operate at 260 km/h. The Indian deal is for a train with a maximum speed of 350 km/h, but will mostly operate at 320 km/h.

The Indian deal includes almost $14 billion in Japanese investment for 50 years at 0.5% interest. India is making decent progress in modernizing. We still have a long way to go, especially in rural areas, but there's a lot of exciting news coming lately.

Those people who ride on top and hang off the side are in for one hell of a ride. :D