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First Maglev Installation Going Up

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the above-ground-above-speed dept.

berniecase writes "After hearing about the 500kph Maglev in Japan on Slashdot, I caught wind of this installation which is going up in Norfolk, Virginia. It's the first Maglev installation in the US. Here's another photo, too."

7 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Only 40mph? by ahecht · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maglevs are more expensive, more complex, and require more power than a standard monorail or lightrail, and considering that even the Disneyland monorail can reach 75mph, what is the point of a 40mph maglev?

    1. Re:Only 40mph? by Matthaeus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No moving parts, no friction, and dammit, it's just cool!

      I would imagine that the 40 mph limit is more a function of the shape and length of the track than the technology itself. Kinda like having a prototype sports car ona go-kart track. It allows you to see if it'll handle decently at low speeds before you invest the money to see if it'll handle decently at 300 mph.

    2. Re:Only 40mph? by ergo98 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How is a maglev more "complex"? Perhaps because of the newness it may appear that way, but the fundamentals are so basic that it seems to me that it's the height of simplicity: The opposite of a normal train which is thousands of constantly wearing down parts, etc.

      Once a maglev is in operations I would expect that it is significantly cheaper to maintain maintenance wise.

  2. short run track by Alien54 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    the ODU prototype is expected to max out at about 40 mph along a track that stretches about two-thirds of a mile. [...] When it makes its maiden run, scheduled for September, the train will carry up to 100 people for 30 to 40 seconds between each of the three stations, running entirely on autopilot.

    with a short run track, I expect that it would not be practical to accelerate to 400 mph.

    It would probably take as long to merely get strapped in for a high speed run.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  3. Ugh. by bahtama · · Score: 2, Insightful

    $14 million dollars to transport people 2/3 of a mile. Get a bike, rollerblades, skateboard, Segway or use those two fleshy things that go into your shoes. Why don't they test this somewhere more useful or at least a longer test track.

    --

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
    Oh bother.

  4. The maddening thing... by Ethelred+Unraed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here in Germany, where high-speed trains are fairly common (the ICE2 goes up to something like 280 km/h, or about 170 mph, though only on top-quality track), there has been some debate for some years about building a maglev passenger train -- but the usual NIMBY problems keep coming up.

    To add to the irony, the Greens -- who you would think would want to support mass transit, especially one like maglev -- have often blocked its implementation in Germany on environmental grounds (disturbing habitats, etc.).

    There there is the situation in the USA.

    On the other hand, maglev could in theory revive passenger train service in the USA. I believe that one of the main reasons it has failed in the States is simply economics -- because of the greater distances involved, the net cost per mile of track, the total cost to maintain a (much onger) average stretch of track, and therefore the ticket price for getting from point A to point B is higher than in Europe, where population density is far higher and a greater potential for train service exists. Another drawback in the States is again because of the distance: with Amtrak's usual trains (which are abysmally slow by European standards) it takes forever to get anywhere. So you pay more for worse (slower) service, and the train company has less surplus money to invest in new technology or track improvements. No wonder Amtrak is so terrible.

    (Consider the irony that the USA is generally considered to have the most modern freight rail in the world -- but passenger rail is a joke.)

    The initial cost of a maglev line is probably a lot higher, but I would imagine that its TCO would be much lower than conventional trains -- and given its far higher potential speeds, it could really compete with airliners (at least on the East and West Coasts, where there is a high enough population density to pay for it).

    But the whole train-related mass transit infrastructure is missing in most American cities (thanks in part to the American love of cars) -- okay, so you got to the main station, but then what? How do you get around? Is there a well-integrated tram/bus/subway/coach system? Most cities just don't have that (certainly nothing like in Germany or France). So even if someone is willing to take the (substantial) financial risk and heavy investment load of building a maglev network in the States, there are still a lot of practical issues to deal with beyond just the train lines.

    So, sad to say, even though maglev technology was developed to a large degree in America, I don't see it happening in the near future. In spite of the problems mentioned above in Germany, I do think that there will be several trunk lines running maglev service in Germany in the next few years (probably Cologne-Hannover-Berlin and Hamburg-Hannover-Frankfurt-Munich at the least).

    By the way, one of the main companies working on maglev is TransRapid. Check out their site (especially the Projects section) for a lot of info about the subject, including about possible maglev lines in the States.

    Cheers,

    Ethelred

    --
    Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
  5. A Question of Design by E1v!$ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There seem to be 2 main camps when it comes to mag-lev.

    1. You put the propusion/levitaion in the car.
    2. You distribute the propulsion/levitaion between the track and the car.

    #1 while being more challenging from a performance standpoint, has some pretty hefty dollar per-mile advantages. I think this type of design is more likely to be put into use here in the US. TCO is likely to be low. A track maintenance problem would likely be nothing more than alignment or (if the track supplied power to charge the batteries) power delivery. But because of the engineering issues (greater car weight leading to most of them), I doubt mag-lev will come to the US until further advances in power storage and high temp superconductors come down the pike.

    #2 Is much 'cooler' in terms of what can be done today, but I imagine initial build cost as well as TCO would be much higher than #1. A track based propulsion || levitation system would dramatically increase the cost per mile of track. Not to mention if there's a problem with the track (an this is more likely with a complex track) that whole run becomes unusable until someone can go out to BFE to fix it. (can you imagine going out to the middle of nowhere to install a new section of track?) TCO would be HUGE.