The always insightful Megan McArdle has a short blogpost titled “Bullet trains aren’t magic.” She focuses initially on maglev technology — the magnetic levitation trains that ride not on rails but on air because of magnetic repulsion, and which can accordingly travel at far greater speeds than even the world’s fastest rail-based bullet trains. She notes that we haven’t achieved “the really important goal, which is letting [her] ride a Maglev.”

As it happens, I have achieved that goal, on the short train ride from Shanghai’s Pudong airport to a subway station near (but not in) its central downtowns (the old downtown west of the river and the new one to the east). The train has speed indicators showing that it is traveling at something like 430 kilometers per hour (that’s 270 miles per hour); the 19-mile trip takes about seven minutes. The ride is smooth, but not quite so smooth as Japan’s Shinkansen or France’s TGV; the train seems to wobble just a bit, but not at all alarmingly.