First Maglev Installation Going Up

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."

Comments

Only 40mph?

[ahecht]

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?

short run track

[Alien54]

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.

Not very impressive...

[NanoGator]

I'm not impressed, really. I can see the strings.

Re:Obligatory Simpsons Reference

[SirSlud]

What's wrong with obligatory?! It's a perfectly cromulant word! ;)

(And great sig.)

Re:Can this be improved by using...

[Russ Steffen]

No no no ... It's a Buttered Cat Array. The toast is incidental to the design.

The maddening thing...

[Ethelred Unraed]

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