TOKYO — The miles passed like seconds as the train rocketed through the Japanese countryside, whirring by the cherry blossoms.

The roughly 27-mile ride, about the distance from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to Washington, took nine minutes. When the SCMAGLEV reached 90 on the speedometer — Saturday morning’s demonstration topped out at 311 mph, though railway officials assured everyone it could go even faster — it literally levitated, like a vehicle out of “Star Wars.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore needed one word to summarize the experience: “Wow.”

The visit to the Maglev Prefecture Center, nestled in the mountains about 60 miles east of Tokyo, was the first stop on an international trade mission, Moore’s first as governor. A delegation of two dozen other dignitaries, staff and business leaders joined him.

The trip, a weeklong journey through Japan and South Korea, comes at a crucial moment. Fresh off a legislative session that didn’t entirely go his way, he arrived in Japan as shifting U.S. trade policies have sent stock markets around the globe into turmoil. Moore has said Maryland’s economy, stagnant by most measures, is in need of modernization and super-charging.

A superconducting, magnetic, levitating train with world-record speed just so happens to be both of those things. The ride itself feels effortless, with acceleration and breaking so smooth it is hard to tell you’re moving nearly three times as fast as the average Acela, Amtrak’s fastest train.

The maglev has been in development for decades. The Central Japan Railway Co. is building a maglev line from Osaka to Tokyo, Japan’s two largest cities. The technology is commercially ready and, once the line is completed, passengers would be able to get between the two — the equivalent of going from New York to Washington — in under 70 minutes.

Wayne Rogers, chairman and CEO of Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail, a private company aiming to bring a maglev to the East Coast, ticked through all the benefits it would bring the Maryland region in an attempt to bend the governor’s ear.

The project could create tens of thousands of jobs, Rogers said. Millions of cars would get off the road because people would take the train, which would in turn lower pollution. Billions of dollars would hit the regional economy. It would spur real estate development in areas where it’s sorely needed, including Baltimore.

Take the area around Shinagawa Station in south Tokyo, for example. In the 1990s there was little commercial activity in that part of the city, but once the Central Japan Railway Co. connected the area to the bullet train service, it started to fill with office towers and apartment complexes.

“They saw the development potential,” Shin Kaneko, the chairman of the Central Japan Railway Co., said.

Now, with the Central Japan Railway Co. planning to put a maglev station there, even more commercial and residential development is underway, Kaneko said. Once the entire line between Osaka and Tokyo is built, it may set the stage for the creation of a “super mega region.”

And did anyone mention it’s fast? So fast that, if it’s ever built, people working in midtown Manhattan could live in Baltimore and have the same commute time as someone driving to work from deep in Queens. A rider could get from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes, from BWI to downtown in five — faster than they could get to their car in an airport parking deck.

“I’m obsessed with going fast,” Moore said.

However, the process of getting high-speed rail built, or any other rail project in Maryland, for that matter, is anything but fast.

Moore told railway officials they have a partner in his office to find ways to advance the project, but it’s unclear how the administration might go about that.

Plans submitted by Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail have been stuck in neutral going on a decade. The Federal Railroad Administration paused the environmental review process in 2021, and there’s been little movement since. The company commissioned a poll this year that found that, out of 500 likely voters, about two-thirds support the project.

Prospective plans call for at least 75% of the proposed route between Washington and Baltimore to be underground. Tunnel projects are abnormally expensive in the U.S. compared to around the world, partly because they take so long to build. A 2017 article in The New York Times found one mile of new subway in Manhattan cost $2.5 billion.

Even the Japanese maglev line, which started construction in 2014, is slow coming together.

Still, the train ride is one that will likely stick with Moore as a showcase of what’s possible

“It’s not just impressive,” he said. “It’s the future.”