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Businesspeople from Japan and the United States have organized an event to promote the construction of a magnetic levitation railway for the US East Coast. The Central Japan Railway Company, or JR Tokai, and Northeast Maglev, a US firm in charge of the railway's development, held the event in New York on Wednesday.

The high-speed train is expected to travel the 360-kilometer distance between New York and Washington in about one hour.

Environmental assessment is currently underway for a 65-kilometer section between Baltimore and Washington with subsidies from the federal government.

JR Tokai has been building the levitating train line that will connect Shinagawa in Tokyo with Nagoya, central Japan.

The event was attended by about 100 people, including officials of the US government, New York state, and local members of the US Congress.

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JR Tokai Chairperson Tsuge Koei said the opening of a magnetic levitation railway will mean a lot to the United States, where airways and expressways are heavily congested. He went on to say that he is committed to fully backing the US project.

The Federal Railroad Administration has withdrawn support for a high-speed train project from D.C. to Baltimore, saying conflicts over federal property and protected wildlife in the path of the proposed rail line are insurmountable.

The maglev train was supposed to be the first leg of a route connecting D.C. to New York City in under an hour. It would use powerful magnetic forces that lift and propel trains above a U-shaped guideway at over 300 mph.

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Northeast Maglev, the private investors behind the project, called the cancellation “the missed opportunity of a generation to deploy the fastest and safest ground transportation system in the world.” The company said it already spent $158 million preparing for the line.

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Lawmakers and residents in the path of the planned train have long argued the price was not worth the disruption. A group of state delegates from Prince George’s County put out a statement celebrating the decision, calling it “the result of relentless and unified opposition from our community and elected leaders.”

The federal government had its own concerns: The train route would cut into residential areas as well as a wildlife refuge and the world’s largest agricultural research complex, and it would touch on Secret Service and NASA property. “The project is not feasible as proposed” due to its “substantial negative effects,” the federal agency said in a notice to the state officials made public Friday.

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Eric Goldwyn, a transportation researcher at New York University, said maglevs offer “faster travel speed, lower maintenance costs, higher reliability” and are “less noisy — there are no wheels or brakes to screech and wear out. But “the benefits are all mainly theoretical,” because very few have been built, and “simultaneously, fixed rail has continued to get faster and faster.”

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