Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
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.
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The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
What about the Chinese Transrapid maglev (built by a German company) now running on a 30km track between downtown Shanghai and its airport.
- 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
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