JR Central says that 248km, or almost 90%, of the inaugural section of the line will be tunnels and that it will make public the Preliminary Environment Assessment report of it maglev project this autumn. Work on the project is scheduled to be completed by 2027 when the service will offer a journey time of 40 minutes between the two cities. The subsequent Nagoya - Osaka second phase is scheduled to be completed by 2045 and will offer a total journey time between Tokyo and Osaka of 1h 7mins.

JR Central says it will fund the project through a mixture of its own cash flow, loans and bonds.

The announcement follows the completion of a five year project to extend the railway's maglev test track from 18.4km to 42.8km. Test runs of maglev trains at 500km/h resumed on the track on August 29.

A five-car train is being used for the trials at first with another nine cars set to be delivered by 2015 ahead of 12-car train tests. The prototype Series L0 is 2.9m wide, 3.1m high and 25m in length. It has no cab and uses a 2+2 seat arrangement.