Japan Wants to Spend $5B on a D.C.-Baltimore Bullet Train

This Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit President Barack Obama to discuss economic, security, and global issues as well as one proposal that may completely revolutionize commuting from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland. Abe is willing to spend $5 billion to build a Japanese bullet-train system, known as the Shinkansen, that would make a trip from the District to Baltimore only 15 minutes long.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the train line uses a magnetic levitation, or maglev, technology that recently reached a record speed of 603 kilometers per hour. The fastest speed that the U.S.'s Acela Express train has reached is 240 kilometers per hour. Abe's proposal goes further with hopes to link Los Angeles and San Francisco; Dallas and Houston; and New York and Washington, D.C.

To make the D.C. to Baltimore commuter's dream a reality, Abe will need Maryland to transfer franchise rights for what was once the Washington Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railroad. By winning contracts in the U.S., Abe hopes this will influence other nations to jump on the bandwagon, thereby reviving Japan's economy.