Today marks a very significant milestone: the 60th birthday of the Tokaido Shinkansen.

The service between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka (the Sanyo Shinkansen wouldn’t open all the way to Hakata for another ten years) was known (marketed?) at the time as ‘Yume no Cho-Tokkyu’ (夢の超特急): the Super-Express of Dreams. What a glorious appellation. But looking back now, when the Shinkansen is so engrained into everyday life in Japan and the system as a whole is an inspiration for high-speed rail networks around the world, I think that it’s almost more appropriate to talk about ‘Cho-tokkyu no yume’ (超特急の夢) instead: the dream of the super-express. Just think what the Shinkansen has made standard, un-noteworthy, in Japan over the past six decades:

• A service with punctuality measured not in minutes but in seconds;
• A long-distance, inter-city service with a frequency akin to a Tokyo commuter line;
• A service that makes travel simple over distances that would previously have been unthinkable without travelling by air.
• A service that has significantly changed the style of both business and leisure in Japan.
• A service that, even now, continues to attract new custom, contributing to economic growth and development, with each new extension to the network.

Networks in other countries may be more extensive, may exceed the Shinkansen in terms of speed; but in terms of frequency, punctuality, ridership and reliability, the Super-Express of Dreams surely still leads the way.

And over the past six decades, the ‘Yume no Cho-Tokkyu’ (夢の超特急) has become the ‘Nichijo no Cho-Tokkyu’ (日常の超特急): the Everyday Super-Express. Perhaps that, more than anything else, is the true achievement of the Shinkansen: it has made punctual, frequent, reliable high-speed railway travel not something out of a dream, but something exceedingly normal.

Here’s to the next six decades of progress.