Faster than a speeding bullet train

China is throttling up a 430-km/h magnetically levitated train to link Shanghai and its airport. Built in China by a trio of German companies and the Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Co., it reaches 430 km/h (268 mi/h)-130 km/h faster than Japan´s famous bullet train. And even as it goes faster than any commercial vehicle without wings, the Chinese train is smoother and quieter than Amtrak´s wheel-on-rail Acela-the state of the art in the United States-which pokes along when it can at a maximum 240 km/h. After many false starts and the completion of full-scale experimental maglev systems in Japan and Germany in the 1980s, maglev in China will finally start shuffling passengers in October in a reasonably large-scale, commercial system. The trains will run from downtown Shanghai´s financial district to Pudong International Airport, making a 9-minute run that will shave about 40 minutes off the typical trip time in a taxi. With three five-car trains, each carrying as many as 574 passengers, and trains leaving every 10 minutes, the US $1.2 billion system could carry more than 10 million passengers a year.