I use QWERTY and I can definitely maintain 140WPM easily when typing something from memory or when participating in realtime chat. In short bursts, ~230WPM isn't difficult. A look at sites like TypeRacer shows that there are indeed many typists who can achieve 150-160WPM, and some occasionally exceed 200.
That said, I think typing speed is highly dependent upon the keyboard, and layout is only one of many other factors. From personal experience I have a feeling most keyboards out there are extremely suboptimal, with too much key travel and heavy actuation force. I've not be able to go above 130WPM on any laptop keyboard, for example, and even trying to achieve 100 feels extremely tiring. On the other hand, my desktop keyboard happens to have extremely light keys and shallow travel with a good bouncy "cushion" at the end, and I can type for many hours at much higher speeds without feeling tired.
Steno's biggest advantage comes from having very long words produced with a single chord, but the average word length is not so high, and most faster typists I know, as do I, already somewhat "chord" keys for common sequences (otherwise transposition errors wouldn't appear at all --- "hte" instead of "the" being one example, as those with experience will tend to hit both keys almost simultaneously for that.)
It's a TurboStar KM-2601P, a pretty generic-looking keyboard with some multimedia keys on the top and a "turbo" button that adjusts the auto-repeat rate from "none" to "ludicrous". For some reason none of the big search engines (Google Bing Yahoo... and DDG) give any results(!?) for that model, but that's exactly what is printed on the sticker on the back and I do remember searching for it a few years ago and getting quite a few results... and I've even mentioned it before, along with a few others, in various forum posts etc.
On the other hand, there are mentions of the KM-2501P and KM-2601 (without the P suffix), which look the same except for the logo but I'm not sure if the slightly different model number means they have the same switch characteristics:
The total travel isn't very short --- laptop-style switches would be shorter --- but it doesn't take much force to get past the tactile "hump" where it actuates, and after that is a bouncy feeling that helps in pushing the finger back up. Perhaps what I find most desirable is that the drop in force over the hump is not very steep, unlike with many other keyboards I've used where it feels like the key just stays down with very little force and refuses to come back up until the finger is completely removed from it.
Incidentally, I have a mechanical keyboard with blue ALPS switches, but it feels more tiring to type on it than this KM-2601P.
I'm late to the party, but the website posted here is on GitHub pages. If you'd like to PR a change to remove the speed difference between QWERTY and Dvorak, I'd love the help. Could just be "top keyboard typist", and the speed is referring to the top percentile, not Sean Wrona's world record speed.
Top Dvorak Typist: 140 wpm
I use QWERTY and I can definitely maintain 140WPM easily when typing something from memory or when participating in realtime chat. In short bursts, ~230WPM isn't difficult. A look at sites like TypeRacer shows that there are indeed many typists who can achieve 150-160WPM, and some occasionally exceed 200.
That said, I think typing speed is highly dependent upon the keyboard, and layout is only one of many other factors. From personal experience I have a feeling most keyboards out there are extremely suboptimal, with too much key travel and heavy actuation force. I've not be able to go above 130WPM on any laptop keyboard, for example, and even trying to achieve 100 feels extremely tiring. On the other hand, my desktop keyboard happens to have extremely light keys and shallow travel with a good bouncy "cushion" at the end, and I can type for many hours at much higher speeds without feeling tired.
Steno's biggest advantage comes from having very long words produced with a single chord, but the average word length is not so high, and most faster typists I know, as do I, already somewhat "chord" keys for common sequences (otherwise transposition errors wouldn't appear at all --- "hte" instead of "the" being one example, as those with experience will tend to hit both keys almost simultaneously for that.)