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Money Problems May Derail First U.S. MagLev Train
PSaltyDS writes "The Virginian Pilot is reporting on the trials and tribulations of what was supposed to be the first MagLev train in regular use in the U.S. The MagLev Project was to cover a portion of the Old Dominion University campus, and start service in 2002, but after $14 million spent, it has yet to carry a single passenger. In the article, several engineering types seem to say the same thing, something like 'A great idea that is just too hard to do without an unlimited budget.' Is a maglev train an impractical fantasy like the personal flying car?"
Not only do they have one, it's the fastest in the world.9 id01.htm l
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/031202/ap/d7v6
They do, check out this link.
The japanese definately have the economy to do this, like has been mentioned. From the page:
A landmark for Maglev occurred in 1990 when it gained the status of a nationally-funded project.
You do realize the Japanese Economy has been in the crapper for about the last 10 years or so, right?
Why?
This is a bit out of context. It is not because no-one wants to use them, but a clash of availability versus American culture and lifestyle. For the past 50 years, automobiles have been the core of transportation for Americans, from teenagers on up. But that does not speak the same for the rest of the world.
In my time in Australia, I was WELL introduced to their mass transit systems, in both Sydney and Melbourne. For both cities, Trains, as well as Trams and buses, are their main modes (yes, MAIN) modes of transportation. Yes, people have cars there, but more than 100 million kilometers were travelled by train in 2002 alone; the bulk of it being in New South Wales, and Victoria (44 million and 32 million, respectively) alone.
Trains are very much alive, and will be for a very long time. It is just the United States, which has lacked in picking up on a trend that transports hundreds of thousands of people, in favour of polluting the air with carbon monoxide gases from car exhaust.
Don't the Japanese already have one? What do the Japanese have that the US does not, to allow them to create a MagLev?
For the same reason they have better broadband. Geographically denser population than the US.
Your information is not completely correct. The operating speeds for all but the oldest TGV are at least 300kph.
Your reference seems to be speeds on "normal" rails, but many of the routes in France are designed for 300kph (or higher) speeds, and are used for commercial traffic at these speeds.
Look at the link there, and the article on the Old Dominion fiasco. Yes, the Japanese train works very nicely on a test track. They've had 30,000 test passengers over N years. They're not running it as a fully-deployed production system, much less a profit-making one. It's very cute, but it's not even as practical as the Disney World Monorail.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
One alternative I've seen to this is a passive maglev system which uses passive copper coils on the track and "hallbach" magnets on the train. The hallbach magnets create a sinusoidal magnetic field, and as the train moves over the passive coils, the coils produce a repulsive field. As long as the train is moving fast enough, it will rise up off the tracks. If the propulsion fails, the train will just slow down until it lands back on the tracks. No complex control system needed. Also, the hallbach magnets have the unusual property that the magnetic field is only on one side of the magnet, so you need less shielding for the passenger compartment.
There is a real system based on this. It is called Inductrak. It was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The article I linked to was kind of old, so I don't know if they've made any progress lately.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
I'm sure someone is preparing the calculations for you. In the mean time, I'll give you some hints.
Hair Dryers - power - measured in watts.
50,000 pounds lifted 1/4 inch - a measure of energy, or work done
energy = power * time
So you just need to factor in the amount of time required to lift the train cars.
I suspect the press release was actually referring to the power loss in the system (as heat) when maintaining 1/4 of lift above the rail.
In comparison, the French TGV system requires 0.0 watts of power to keep a 50,000-pound car lifted several inches above the rail - they use wheels.
What about the Chinese Transrapid maglev (built by a German company) now running on a 30km track between downtown Shanghai and its airport.
No, it does not. It operates at an avg of 300 kph, and a max of well over (around 340 kph). It does Paris-Marseille, a distance of over 800 km, in 3 hours several times a day, and that's with the slower speeds near the origin and destination cities.
They did a TCO/ROI analysis of both High Speed Track and Maglev... the TCO/ROI is supposed to be higher for the Maglev.
So what's the difference? Estimated cost is around 45-60 billion dollars. BILLION. It'll generate income once its built, but its hard to convince the public to spend that amount of money when the state is dire financial need.
For the record, apparantly the project is being half funded by the state, half funded by private companies. They've almost raised the 20 billion to start construction.
cheap and fast : http://www.aerotrain.net
but doomed anyway...
- the japanese are doing it right. slow, methodical, engineering-sensible development will probably result in a chuo-shinkansen maglev in 10-15 years at the longest and possibly in as little as 5-10 years. See here for a gentle introduction.
- the chinese are building a maglev shanghai-beijing. every engineer or knowledgable person i have ever spoken to has said that this was a rushed through engineering abortion; an inefficient showpiece really. still, there's something to be said for having it done first, and, if the chinese do it, then more power to them.
- 14 million of research from an ab initio program isn't enough to make a toilet handle on a maglev train. a maglev is something at least as complicated as a 777 given all the supporting things that need to be built such as stations, emergency vehicles, turnouts (switches), safety devices, computer systems, and so forth. 14 million for a maglev project is GUARANTEED not to go anywhere other than perhaps some basic research in electrical systems that the japanese have done long ago.
- a maglev is PERFECT for:
- the US northeast corridor
- london-edinburgh via manchester/liverpool
- tokyo-osaka via the chuo-shinkansen route (duh).
- hong kong - guangzhou - shanghai
Incidentally, I find Japan Railway Technical Review journal to be a well-written intelligent web site with discussion of the true state of the art of trains. Worth a read if you actually read things in more than the slashdot 3-second scan way.Birmingham International Airport had a maglev back in the 1980's. Very cute, technically brilliant and eventually replaced with a bus for simple economic reasons.
Maglev is terribly "neat", but nobody seems to have solved the fundamental problem that if you use just a fraction of the amount of power required to levitate the train to push a wheeled one instead, the wheeled one goes a damn site faster and costs less to run
The Japanese have test trains running on test tracks, and some rosy promises made for future passenger service, but I don't think they have ANY MagLev providing regular service, nor does anyone else. Could those who keep bringing up existing Japanese trains be confusing the "Bullet Trains", which run on conventional but smoother and more precisely built wheels and rails, with MagLev? I have still not seen any examples of running regular MagLev service. And I believe there is a reason why they don't exist.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Some of the problems were not Amtrak's fault; it looks like Bombardier had some technical problems with the Acela trains.
-ted
I would like to add two interesting links pulled from other posts:
Birmingham International Airport in Britian used to have a MagLev running from '84-'95. It was shut down due to high maintenance cost and replaced with a cable-drawn rail system.
The Shanghai Transrapid looks at first blush like a running passenger service, but look closer and it is a "Test Facility" that gives guided tours and "Demonstration Rides".
There can be no doubt about the technical capabiltiy to build these things, but the practical viability has yet to be seen.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
I live in Japan and I really like the bullet train. Going from Tokyo to Kyoto is great. It is faster than the plane but it is NOT cheaper. We live in Tokyo and when we go down to visit my wife's family in Shizuoka (about half-way to Kyoto) it is both faster AND cheaper to drive rather than take the train (that includes the super high highway tolls). Japan Rail is still trying to get out of its state owned, pork barrel mode and pull its act together as a competitive business.
Japanese train sets world record at 581 kph
That was set on December 2nd with passangers on board.I'm tired of bombing the universe
The timing of these magnetic pulses has to be extremely precise, especially when the trains are traveling at over 300km/hr! If just one electromagnet attracts when it should be repelling, the train will crash.
And how is that crash possible when it's only 1 magnet that messed up and the amount of time at 300kph that the train would be next to that segment is so small that the wrong magnetic effect at that point in time would be basically zero. If anything it would slow the train down and by the time the train is past that segment, because of the small amount of exposure to that segment, the train would still be going at the same speed because the effect is big enough. Not to mention the fact that the trains wrap around the track and not just sit on top like a regular train does. In order to crash the trains would have to literally pull the track with them in order to "derail".
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
What was the number one cause of unatural death?
Over 42k traffic fatalities in 2002.
Compare with 3k fatalities in the WTC attack.
cheers- raga
In the US, with greater distance to cover than any of these countries, you really need speed. You should lobby your politicians, write letters of complaint to Amtrak, do whatever it takes, till you get such speeds as routine, everywhere, and 160 to 200mph on the longer distances. Rail is safer and more energy efficient than air transport, and on moderate distances quicker between city centres.
Get decent, reasonably cheap rail services, you will find the passengers will come... In the UK we have a particularly competent operating company (GNER) on the East Coast Main Line, London to Edinburgh is 4 hours will several stops in just over 400 miles, 100mph end to end overall. It is well-nigh impossible to beat that by air, although the plane will only be in the air for an hour. The train is far more comfortable, and if booked in advance on the internet, very much cheaper, and in daylight you even get a decent view out of the window, and coming soon, mobile internet as already discused on Slashdot.
These are electric trains, and they are capable of 140mph, but the track and overhead wiring would need to be improved first, which was intended once upon a time, but is not going to happen soon. But,the service is good enough for many people to commute from York, which is about half way to Edinburgh, and property prices in York doubled when the new trains were introduced, maybe about 15 years ago now.
I don't see why both the US and the UK should be left behind by Frogs and Japs, it is time it changed.