May 20th 2011, 10:32 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES
OF ALL the high-speed train services around the world, only one really makes economic sense—the 550km (340-mile) Shinkansen route that connects the 35m people in greater Tokyo to the 20m residents of the Kansai cluster of cities comprising Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto and Nara. At peak times, up to 16 bullet trains an hour travel each way along the densely populated coastal plain that is home to over half of Japan’s 128m people.
Having worked for many years in Tokyo, with family in Osaka, your correspondent has made the two-and-a-half hour journey on the Tokaido bullet-train many times. It is clean, fast and highly civilised, though far from cheap. It beats flying, which is unbearably cramped by comparison, just as pricey, and dumps you an hour from downtown at either end.
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