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China Abandons Long-Distance Maglev Effort
Ralph Lee writes "China has chosen to abandon its Maglev train effort from Beijing-Shanghai, according to this AP story: 'Besides cost, "the maglev technique was excluded because it does not match the wheel-track technique used by railways in China," the report said, citing Wang Derong, vice-chairman of the China Transport Association.... The scrapping of the 9-year-old maglev project - two weeks after the country's first maglev, a short stretch in Shanghai, began regular operation - represents a setback for the development of the technology in China, which many had seen as one of its key markets.'" The short 18-mile MagLev run mentioned earlier remains in operation, but China is not going to use magnetic levitation for the planned 750-mile Beijing-Shanghai link.
Normal trains can now be gotten to rather extreme speeds and still be safe. Is there any real point to maglev trains anymore other than "cool its floating"? Other than neatness why are people even persuing this technology? maglev seems to be all but dead in the United States - Is this just an extension where other countries are abandoning an aparently pointless technology?
"the maglev technique was excluded because it does not match the wheel-track technique used by railways in China,"
NEWSFLASH: Chinese researchers have discovered magnetic trains could not use a standard rail track.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
From the article: "The maglev cost can be as high as $36 million to $48 million per half mile, twice that of wheel-track lines, the China Daily said."
Why in the world are they quoting price per half mile? Or is it really "price per kilometer" and they think the American public is too stupid to understand what a kilometer is?
Even if the long distance Maglev is scrapped, the development of high-speed railway links is still a good thing.
Trains like the TGV or ICE have proven that it was feasible to run such a service at up to 320km/h, please passengers (most of the time), have no major impact on the environment AND be profitable.
Maybe it's still too early for the Maglev, or maybe the technology isn't that attractive for its associated costs...
What's with the They and Them's?
I don't see many Maglev tracks outside my window here in Seattle either (although WE will soon have a Monorail, which is way cooler).
This looks to me like a typical government-level game. Somebody, high up there in the Chinese Communist Party, had a vested interest for this project to fail. And as soon as a proof of concept was put into operation (and proved that the concept works, duh!) proceeded to axe it.
Clearly, this person (or group of people) was hoping that the attempt will miserably fail, but it didn't, leaving the only possible option of brute-force project termination.
Why yes, I was born in a communist country.
Sigged!
Even China cannot justify the expense of a maglev train from Bejing to Shanghai.
I remember reading somewhere that they've decided to construct a regular high speed rail line instead, similar to France's TGV or Germany's ICE. Economically, it makes a lot more sense, and until the dedicated high speed line is constructed, the trains can use the current railroad infrastructure that is already in place.
Here's a link to the proposal, which has been in planning for a while already. The Chinese have already constructed a prototype high-speed train engine based on the Swedish X2000 train.
Regular high-speed rail as opposed to a maglev line also makes expansion to other regions of the country a lot easier.
Still, a long-distance maglev line would have been really cool, and there's got to be a region where it would make economical sense as well. Maybe we'll see one in Japan first.
"the maglev technique was excluded because it does not match the wheel-track technique used by railways in China" Seriously!?!?
I'm from germany. I've always liked the maglev/transrapid and I really like the fast normal trains (ICE/TGV). But I hope the chinese know that in order to let these trains reach their high speeds you have to build modern tracks. If you put a fast train on a 100year old track, you will never be able to reach 300km/h. And if you intend to use the existing tracks, probably along with freight-trains and normal slow trains, you won't reach them either. In france the TGV is so fast, because it has its own sperate track system and because the french don't give a f*ck on the people living along those tracks.
It's a shame that this failed as I can see Maglev providing a cheaper, safer, more comfortable and environmentally friendly way of replacing planes for internal (country wise) travel. The Swiss seem to see the benefits of this method and take it one step further. They have the Swiss Metro project (www.swissmetro.com) coming up, and that looks very promising. Imagine a train running down a vacuumed tube (so no air resistance to slow the train down and you've got no wheels with friction) and you only have to use energy to get up to the speed you want plus of course the energy to keep the train afloat. It cruises the rest of the way like you're in space at 100s of km/h - maybe even 1000s. Check the link out - it's a good read.
I believe that the world should not sit and watch Maglev train projects in China get scrapped. Personally, I think maglev trains could change the way we travel today. They are quiet, stable, and they run on electricity.
Of course, other things (like... trains) run on electricity, but with the potential speed of an airplane, I don't see why maglev trains shouldn't be a great victory for the environment.
This said, electricity isn't always environmentally safe. But the future holds many other ways of creating electrical energy from recyclable and healthy sources - wind, water, waves - and when they get more publicly accessibly, fuel cells (hydrogen). As of now, these cells are too expensive and pollutive to create in a large scale.
The progress that maglev trains or vacuum tunnel trains (also magnetic, I believe) create for the ways we transport ourselves today, is worth a lot, in my opinion. Therefor, my view is that the world should finance China in creating this. Not as a good deed, but as scientific collaboration in making maglev trains publicly accessible and, in the future, cheaper.
This might sound unreasonable, but what better place to start this is there than China - where they REALLY need to transport their masses quickly and reliably more than anywhere (except, possibly, India). Given time, this will gain us all.
All this is a bit unclear, but feel free to comment with your opinions.
Distances are measured in kilometers. Is this "mile" thing some multiple of the size of an old dead king's foot? You guys are so funny.
Thats the first thing a consulting engineer would have told them. I work in the rail division of such a firm and I have to ask, If theyre engineers get paid anything like ours (35+per hour), why did it take 9 years of feasibility studies to decide the tracks didnt match when one track inspection could have told them that?
It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
If you put a fast train on a 100year old track, you will never be able to reach 300km/h.
Yes you will, but only once. The French did speed trials in the 70s with conventional train engines and cars (well, apart the engine that had more power), to test the limits of conventional railways, and they reached about 300Km with that train, but the rail track behind the train was all bent out of shape as a result. I saw a very impressive photo of that bent track once, but I can't seem to find it anymore.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Maglev isn't ready for long distance track, the cost per mile of track of the maglev is 15 million of $ the mile ! When a TGV/ICE line isn't more expecive than twice the cost of a regular line. A this time the TGV/ICE are cheaper, proven technology, safe fast enougth.
it involved *PROGRESS* which they seem to admit is difficult for them to deal with...
This is a country that whose output has grown at least 7%/year for the past 10 years, a country experiencing massive internal migration and social change. Uh yeah, a country really opposed to progress.
If you don't know, Beijing and Shanghai are not that close (around 1000km) which makes it an ideal short haul air route. Less urgent freight/journeys can go via the existing (or upgraded) rail intrastructure, high speed journeys can be made now by air. The maglev would be great if it were a cheap tried and tested technology, but it is not, and there are alternatives.
How about some 1st world countries try it out, not waiting to live off the backs of 3rd world countries trying something new? I'd like to see this sort of thing between the ~400km route of NY and DC, for example... a much more suitable distance, centre of town to centre of town.
I remember seeing an article last year regarding China's Internet connectivity. Their copper wire phone system is so fractured, that they were moving to wireless access points.
Maybe they scrapped maglev, and are working on a Star Trek styled transporter.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
There is no Maglev project. There never was any Maglev project.
Funny I am writing from Shanghai at this moment.
The airport maglev is kinda interesting in the way that nobody actually rides it.
Price conscious people takes the bus to major transportation hubs, and convenience / time consicous people takes the taxi (which is only like 15 dollars compared to 10 dollars that the maglev costs - besides the point that the other end station is nowhere near the city and you have to take a cab anyway so it's not that much faster)
so, after a buttload of money, it's not making any of it back except wow points - it might be worth it for an airport shuttle, but you'd bet money has everything to do with it.
that said, I am still taking it in a few days just for the wow factor - but after that it's all taxi since it's so cheap.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
When building a new TGV line, the RFF (railtrack infrastructure division of the french railroad company) not only buys the lands needed to build the high-speed line, but also proposes to buy the surrounding lands in a 200m radius.
As they don't want the construction to be delayed furthermore, the prices are usually very interesting.
However, I believe the noise of the TGV goes farther than 200m away...
The official standard for length measurements in China is Mao's foot
the Chicken guy?
that maglev trains do not use wheels and tracks?
The true high speed trains (like some in france, and the new one going under the mountain chain in Europe, I don't remember what it's called) have to use specially layed track. Those sorts of high speed trains (due to the speed and the wave in the track that it generates ahead of the train) cannot handle the "flaws" used in regular track. It needs track that is bound much more securely to the ground to limit the wave generated in the rail, requires a sturdier railbed, require very strait track (only very gradual curves due to the speed) and many of them are electric requiring lines to be run anyways.
It's not as simple as everyone thinks to just slap a high speed train on regular track.
The comment from the Chinese spokesman that the technoogy was not compatible with the rest of China's railways must surely have been a major consideration even before research into the project was started.
Having said that this was always going to be a vaguely improbably blue elephant. Communist countries may love their hero-projects but this kind of trend-setting is expensive and usually causes egg-on-face incidents.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
why would a faster train warp the rails? was this around the corner, or did this happen along the straightaways also? how did they know that they were warping the rails? can you provide some sort of links/googleable search phrases? this sounds interesting to read up on. Thanks.
moox. for a new generation.
The French were right 30 years ago by scrapping the Aerotrain project (pictures, films) in favour of the TGV...
Where a crooked businessman took $1m from the :)
residents of Springfield for the construction
of the best maglev in America, then ran off
with the money
Vibration.
:-P) More modern pendular systems such as the ones build by the Swedish, the Italians or the Canadians, achieve 230-250 in commercial speed on reasonably modern classic tracks.
Actually, this bent track was more in the sixties, the '70s tests were around 250-280 km/h in a very straight corridor (Mulhouse-Strasbourg), and didn't actually destroy the tracks (with the amount of traffic on that line, they'd better not to
Another challenge the TGV (and ICE) solved is the power supply: conventional electric feeding systems vibrate too much at 300 km/h, and even if you managed to reach that speed despite the poor contact, you'd rip the cables away. (in fact, the TGV 001 prototype, still displayed on the A35/A36 motorway near Belfort (place of construction) and Brumath (large maintenance facility), as well as its commercial predecessor, the Turbotrain (still in little use on Paris-Normandy and a few even more remote regional lines), used a gas turbine specificially to avoid this problem.
X-2000 or Pendolino would probably make a lot of sense given what I perceive should be the state of China's tracks and maintenance procedures.
> Do you think the maglev IP is actually patented in China?
China signed the TRIPS agreement. (as did every developed country and 95% of developing countries.)
The deal was: the rich countries will trade manufactured and agricultural goods with the poor countries, and the poor countries will enforce the patents and copyrights of the rich countries.
The proclaimed trade benefits for the poor countries never happened (and what power do they have to complain?), but the enforcement of patents, trademarks, and copyrights has been enforced (the US threatens to cease trade and cancel IMF and WorldBank funds when the poor get angry). This is why Africa can't manufacture AIDS treatments even though they cost less than 35 cents to manufacture each daily dose.
(For more info, and excellent book is Information Fuedalism, by Peter Drahos)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Just an economic decision
I'd like to add that 'intellectual property' holding back progress is one of the big proofs that capitalism has long out-lived the usefulness it once had (i.e.: overcoming feudal backwardness).
/. IS an opinionated fool just not the same opinions.
It's time for socialism. WAY past time, actually.
We are talking about China one of the few nations left to use as an example of what happends when you get rid of capitalism.
Apparently everyone on
Intelectual property isn't an issue in China.
But let's go with it.
First a disclamer: Knowing someone who went to China dose not magicly endow me with knowing what China is like.
The fact is only to let you know this is second hand information etc etc got it?
My boss has famaly in China and takes her kids with her to see them once a year.
Her son is a little geek so I've been teaching him and he occasionally tells me what China is like.
One of those details is he can find sevral versions of some games. If a game is buggy as hell someone will fix the bugs and release a debugged version. There are quite a few "versions" of Windows in China.
(He has them installed on all three of his PCs.. He likes Knoppix he just won't install Linux).
I don't actually exist.
More modern pendular systems such as the ones build by the Swedish, the Italians or the Canadians, achieve 230-250 in commercial speed on reasonably modern classic tracks.
The Swedish X2000 maxes out at 210 km/h, and hardly ever reaches that in practice.
Hey, I like the french way to do those things ;-) That's the reason why France is clearly on the way to future. They're not stopping the technological progress.
As rail speeds increase, so does the damage that can be done by a terrorist. A 650km/h maglev sounds interesting at first sight - but how much damage could be done by a well placed bomb? Although the thing contains no fuel on board, the combination of released kinetic and magnetic energy would, I guess, be pretty destructive. And because the infrastructure (track) is so expensive, the cost of any damage would be enormous.
Now consider a conventional technology HST. At 300km/h the kinetic energy is less than a quarter that at 650km/h, and the risk of major track damage from a derailment or explosion is less. My conclusion: the risk to a conventional HST from things on board is far less than a maglev. Chances are that the security on a high speed maglev line would be as intrusive and time consuming as that on airplanes. So in fact, the real city center to city center time for a maglev might not be significantly faster than a conventional HST. And it costs more. It's the usual balance: faced with the choice between spending shitloads of money on a technology that may actually have few benefits, and very much less money on a technology that is known to work well, governments do not have the same choices as private citizens. While, as a private individual, I might have a hankering to do my commute in a Porsche, even though it won't be any quicker or more comfortable than my VW, governments should be accountable for public money and make the "obvious" economic decision.
And in China, where most people are still desperately poor, the government has even more responsibility to make the economic decision rather than the vanity decision.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Except that we have no choice but start finding alternatives to petroleum for our cars and so on, because we are gonna be all dried up in about 40 years.
:(
So enjoy those sports cars whilst you can!
If that is true, it's not even worth mentioning in a high-speed train discussion (I was under the impression it was a smidgen better than 210).
Even the old Corail trainsets (180 km/h initially), once refurbished in the new Teoz service, reach a commercial speed of 200-210. And these are really plain jane classic passenger trains.
Nothing sacrosanct about the "metre" either (it's no longer your grandfather's "metre"). Just a known physical length that can be used in realizing goals in physical projects. But, then again, the official "metre" is kept in an underground vault in France (where perfect people and perfect language come from). Hmm...maybe if other countries moved those dead body parts to France...
Many people here seem to think that the Maglev could be one of those technologies, where China leapfrogs TGV/ICE trains. While it's cheaper in the long-term, in other cases of leap-frogging the capital outlay has often been lower for more advanced solutions. Installing the infrastructure for a cell-phone network, for example, is 10 times cheaper than putting in old-fashioned land-lines.
In some cases, the capital outlay is a bit higher, but the pay-back period is very short.
Compact fluorescent light-bulbs are more expensive than regular ones, but if you have it on 4 hours a day you will save more in energy cost than the cost of the light-bulb. Return on investment is 100%, and you don't even need to but such items on a budget. China is also in the lead for LED cluster bulbs, which give even better energy efficiency and full-spectrum light.
Other good candidates for leapfrogging:
Unlike the Maglev, these technologies save capital that is scarce in growing economies, and have multiple positive side-effects. Much as my geeky side would like to one day replace planes and very noisy TGVs with levitation trains, prices are still prohibitive.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I would think that after 9/11 and the increased hassles in flying in the US, we'd get better train service. An airplane trip has become a real hassle, from both a security perspective to the cattle-car mentality that passengers are treated with.
Yet its still faster to fly even short distances here on planes than it is to take the train. Even counting security, a flight from Minneapolis to Chicago is about 3 hours door-to-door (my house to a downtown office), including security. You can literally commute via the airlines (I've done several day trips for work), but a train trip is 8-10 hours and nearly as expensive.
I keep hoping that the train's greater energy efficiency, decreased security risk will result in better service and increase demand, but it appears we're just going to end up with horrific air service run by whoever will work cheapest for management. Indian pilots?
It is true. The point is that X2000 can operate at 200 km/h and maintain passenger comfort on rails that don't normally allow that. (The tilting is only for passenger comfort in fact - the engines don't tilt.)
Actually, the modern metre is defined as 1/299592458th of the distance light travels in one second in a a vacuum, and not in terms of the metre bar in France... reason for that is that we're supposed to be able to measure the metre even if we don't have our wonderful metre bar. So if the people over in China mysteriously got themselves banned from France they could still measure their track length in terms of kilometres and complain about the cost even more accurately.
Are you kidding? It's a government project.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Isn't that sort of the point of maglev? Isn't that like saying that we decided not to use word processors because they don't match the paper-on-pen technique we've traditionally used?
Surely it didn't take them nine years to realize that there were no wheels. I suspect this was imprecisely translated, and I'd love to know what they really said (or meant).
> Clearly, we need to do more.
:)
No, if the poor coutries wanted "more" of what the US deals out, they would have agreed to the Cancun trade round. They rejected it because it sucks, just like the TRIPS agreement.
(and America making use of foreign sweatshop labour is not a form of charity, y'know.)
What the developing nations want, is for the US to take it's foot off their throats so that they can work on building their own economies. Instead, coutries without decent educational systems are currently sinking funds into the prevention of illegal sharing of software and music. Countries with AIDS epidemics are banned from producing the treatments. (and on a less serious note, countries without decent mass transport infrastructures cannot build maglev trains
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I was a China Studies major in college, and lived in Beijing for a semester. In the spring of 2001, you would have had a hard time convincing me that a majority of the people played by IP laws. Pirated DVD shops, pirated software shops, knock off/factory defect clothing shops, etc, everywhere. I have read that the government has cracked down a great deal, in Beijing anyway. Some friends went back in 2002 and said there were fewer shops selling pirated goods. So things probably are changing.
The problem is that the arbitrary nature in which China has been ruled with since 1949, ie whats good today is bad tomorrow and the opposite, has meant that many in China simply choose to ignore the government. Hey, if my government were Communist I'd ignore it too. However, this poses a problem for China's economy because respect for laws and lack of court system that can effectively deal with those that ignore IP laws and signed contracts means some potential business partners get screwed and leave the market. Ultimately, China does have similar IP laws on the books as developed nations, but no effective way of enforcing them. Mod me down for being a bit off topic, but that's how the cookie crumbles.
I love this space stuff - got one planet messed up, right on to the next one.
How about US - a cool maglev from SF to NY?
Guess not in the books either...
Somebody somewhere in the bureaucratic food chain didn't get their "cut," and threw up a road block.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
"Nobody is banned from producing AIDS treatments"
you're so clueless. Why did you post a comment if you don't know what you're talking about?
A patent is a state-granted monopoly on the use of an idea. Everyone but the patent holder is banned from producing that treatment. The patent holder has the option of licensing the patent, but this will only happen if it's profitable. (e.g. not in Africa)
A lot of pharmacutical R&D is funded by the government, so maybe pharmacutical patents are not necessary in the US. But either way, there is no reason to enforce them in Africa. (except for the US fear that black market stuff will slip back into the US. To prevent this happening, the US is content to watch millions of African die of AIDS.)
Maybe you're a rocket scientist, or a brain surgeon, but you're out of your depth in shallow waters when discussing patents.
Next thing you know we'll be hearing that the Chinese have cancelled their plans to terraform Mars by 2010!! Does this mean we can no longer take at face value the grandiose claims made by state-run Chinese newspapers which the Slashdot "editors" post verbatim? Say it ain't so!
"Maglev was excluded [because] it does not match the wheel-track technique used by railways in China"
in other news
"Radiofrequency Ablation was excluded as a possible form of kidney tumor treatment because it didn't match the forceps and scalpel techniques used by doctors in China"
Setback? Not really. Sounds like a boondoggle was finally gotten rid of by some apparatchik with a brain. Ever get the feeling that living in a third world communist dictatorship makes it more likely that the bureaucrats and politicians alike will be more concerned about "national greatness" than serving the public and protecting their rights?
the same site you link to has "serious" articles with titles like:
Illegals gang-rape New York woman
Marriage amendment: Its time has come
Gwyneth Paltrow won't raise child in 'weird' U.S.
i'd take their reports with a grain or two of salt. whether or not the articles are factually correct is not my issue. its my concern that real journalism isn't just about the truth, its about the whole truth. telling one side of a story is not news, its propoganda.
There is a shinkansen departing tokyo (or shinagawa) for osaka what--every 6 minutes now or something during peak times. Each one with some few hundred passengers. You can buy a ticket now and be on the next one in a few minutes in many cases and in Osaka in 2.5 hours.
remember too: train stations, unlike airports, can be centrally located within cities.
Spiegel has been covering the Maglev project in China for some time now, and nytimes.com also recently did a piece on the promise of Maglev in China. This could be a serious blow to the German economy, already struggling to service Eastern debt. Exports are hurting because of the weak dollar, and this is one more blow to the Red-Green Coalition. Any Germans care to (in)validate my claims?
And in the west, several times a day trains leave Paris for Marseille, covering 800+ km in 3 hours. The first TGV track (Paris-Lyon, 2 hrs, 500+ km) decimated the air traffic on that route; the extension to Marseille has done the same to Paris-Marseille. I was reading recently that the Eurostar now has 60% market share for the Paris-London route. Of course, these (and the shinkansen) aren't maglevs, but they're pretty fast all the same -- 300 km/h. It's not a "Tokyo doesn't exist" argument, it's a "the rest of the world outside the US doesn't exist" argument.
Maglev, however, presents larger obstacles. Trains with wheels are at least able to share tracks with "normal" trains for a few miles, to get outside of the downtown area. Obviously with maglev, that's impossible. So maglev stations would serve very large metropolitan areas, and would probably have to be located some distance from the city center. Expect a sizable commute by subway or car just to get to your maglev train. It might be a bit faster to get on a train, but then again, planes go a lot faster once they get going. I don't see any plans for a plane that goes Mach 0.9.
As far as searching everyone for bombs, etc: Don't be obtuse. Blowing up a bomb on a train going 80 km/h will kill whoever's near the bomb, and maybe some more people. Do the same on a train moving 400 km/h, and you'll certainly kill everyone behind the bomb (which will assumedly be placed up front).
In fact, enroute security favors airplanes. An airplane at 33,000 feet is essentially immune from interference, even by shoulder-fired missiles. A maglev train going 400 km/h is extremely vulnerable to track sabotage. How do you plan to protect the thousands of miles of track in the middle of nowhere?
Unlike airplanes, trains (including maglevs) a) are capable of making multiple stops in a short distance and b) have a natural system of possible "feeders" such as other trains, subways, etc. Today's airports rarely have this - ever try to get to a major airport by mass transit? there are a few places where it's possible--not many. However, even if we buy your argument that maglevs need to be located outside of cities and towards the edges, well 1) this is where today's population lives 2) it's trivial to extend existing services there and 3) because of the multiple-stops idea, it's possible to have multiple stations in a city.
regarding speed: it has been stated many times here and elsewhere that maglevs are essentially competitive with airplanes on routes of a few hundred miles or maybe as far as 1500. any more than that, and, at least for the immediate future, airplanes are still the way to go (I say this as an ATP pilot and flight instructor, by the way). a maglev is ideal for the Northeast Corridor (washington-baltimore-philadelphia-newark-new york-grenwich/stamford/new haven-providence/boston), for example, but NY-Chicago and NY-Miami are more questionable.
FWIF, your argument vis-a-vis cities rests on the notion that maglevs near cities would be above ground. do a little reading on the yamanishi maglev - japan seems to disagree! and they want to do a maglev direct from shinjuku or tokyo station to shin-osaka - two of the most highly built up areas in the world! and, when I mean direct, i mean DIRECT. Have a look at a page called byun-byun shinkansen for more info.
regarding security: you obviously don't know what you're talking about if you think a maglev track is easy to sabotage. at least look at a model of a maglev track. a maglev is much harder to sabotage than a conventional train, and yet conventional high speed trains run in europe and in japan with no problems.
your comment about 80kmh vs 400kmh is so stupid and juvenile it's not even worth discussing.
This is my first post on slashdot so please bear with me. Some rail/maglev information: - power consumption increases in a non-linear fashon due to air turbulence. After about 350 km/h the curve gets mighty steep so expect to pay a bundel. To get around this problem, the Swiss have toyed with the idea of building a line in a vacum underground crossing the country, but that's a whole other story. - Noise also goes up in a non-linear fashon. After about 320 km/h the aerodynamic noise overtakes the wheel/rail contact noise. - High speed rail lines have a base line cost of about 10 M euros / km. This ratio can easily double (or more!) if a lot of the line is in tunnels or on viaducts. For example, only 20% of the new Taiwan line will be at grade, in contrast to some older high speed lines in other countries at about 90% at grade. Another multiplying factor, which typically is greater than structures, is politics. Not to get down on your local politican, its just that "in the good old days", they big boys just moved inhabitants out of the way and poured the concrete. Now days, it is relatively easy to mobilize the "not in my back yard" types. - The difference between designing a conventional rail line and a high speed one is too great to make any fair comparison. It's like comparing the design of a freeway versus a two lane highway. One thing that can be said though is that if a high speed line is designed correctly, it works like the trunk of a tree: you zip across the country in the trunk at a high speed, then branch off on the conventional rail lines to many different cities, resulting in more fair use of public money. Hope this is of interest.
Have a bran muffin or something!
No, X2000 don't achieve 230-250 on regular tracks.
If I recall correctly, the record is around 270 km/h on a test tour. The ordinary top speed is about 200 km/h.
200 km/h is NEVER achieved on old track. It is only achived on new track that is built specially for this. The highspeed parts of the system is newbuilt using hevier rails than before, less curves, hevier ballast, new overhead wires and new signal systems.
Of course, when this modifications is made, you can run a convetional train almost as fast as X2000...
Swedens Intercity trains runs at 160 km/h on the same track as X2000 runs 200 km/h on. I regualry choose them instead of X2000 since they are cheaper, more frequent and almost as fast.
You're missing the whole point. Maglevs are dumb and wasteful, because regular express trains are good enough for medium-haul routes, and airplanes are better for long-haul. What's maglev's "value add", for costing three to five times as much? Turns a 50 minute trip into a 35 minute trip, if you live near a station? Big deal.
Stupid and juvenile? Uh, nice arguments.. I guess the discussion's over. You're an ATP / CFI? That's nice, I'm a pilot too. I'm also an engineer, and if you don't think it's easier to destroy a train which has 25 times the kinetic energy to work with, well, "it is".I'm not, and I'm well aware that it's not an exact match. Looks like I should have put a disclaimer in my post:
Here's what the ChinaDaily story said:
And here's what the AP story said the ChinaDaily said:
(Kilometre -> half mile. And no mention of the 20 other rail lines' tying in being a factor.)
(AP's Score: -1, Erroneous)
I'm no economist, and I would agree that your assertion that a pure capitalist system would shun IP laws (i.e. capitalists want it to be totally laissez-faire). However, in reality any capitalist is in the game to maximize profits. If I pour millions of RMB into research and development for a new product, I'm not going to be able to maximize my profit if my competitiors can steal/reverse engineer/etc my product with impunity. SO, I decide it's not my effort to enter the market.
Drug companies are a prime example of this. Most of the biggens are American companies (I know their are exceptions) but that's because we have some of the most restrictive laws on IP/copyright/patent protection. Companies know their property will be protected long enough so that they can make their money back and then some. This makes drugs more expensive in the U.S. because generics are unable to enter the system as soon as in other countries. I don't totally agree with the system, but that's how it works out.
So, no IP laws may prevent competitors from entering a market that are simply hoping to capitalize on another's work, but they do encourage one facet of the capitalist system, profit maximization.
An anonymous coward is just that -- a coward.
His opinions deserve no consideration whatsoever.
It is the same "word" in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ("ri" in Korean, too.) By that I mean the same Chinese etymology, which resulted in the same character and same pronunciation, adjusted for language differences. It's actual length, though, varies a great deal from place to place and time to time historically, even within the same kingdom/country.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
to one day replace planes and very noisy TGVs with levitation trains...
Points taken, but ICEs, for example, are definitely not noisy compared to either US or UK passenger trains that I've encountered (at least outside the stations.) This is probably due to their requiring special (and thus new) track for high-speed runs.
It's a pretty common misconception that wheeled trains need be noisy--the commuter trains around Zurich (Switzerland) are whisper-quiet.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Yes they both a pronounced in the same way.
The first letter is between an L pronounced like an R and an R pronounced like an L.
Your post was consise, informative, unbiased, and remarkably lacking in spelling and grammatical errors. This demonstrates you are an intelligent, rational person.
What the hell are you doing on slashdot?!?
I don't know about ICEs, but it's not a misconception when talking about TGVs- I have travelled on them, been on the platform when they whizzed by, and was in France when people living besides tracks started protesting.
:)
The ICE sounds really cool though
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I happen to live 30 km from Paris, a few hundred meters away from a TGV line and I've never been annoyed by the noise. This is due to the fact that the tracks have been built about 15 meters below the ground surface and the noise is much reduced. Maybe sometimes they care about people in this country, after all. But you can keep your bad opinion if you like...
Anyway. from : European Research Center
the latest TGVs are no noisier than a conventional train travelling at 160km/hr. At a distance of 25 metres, the noise from a TGV line does not exceed 65 decibels (dB), or the equivalent of the raise level from a road with light traffic.
regards
Didieri just have this visual image of chinese people running around a mag-lev-train instead of a fire engine. ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
The X2000 trainset brought to the US for evaluation reached a top speed of 155 MPH* (the ICE did 165) on the Northeast Corridor in tests**.
---PCJ
*just about 250 Km/H
**Normally top speeds on this portion of the NEC are limited to 135MPH (217Km/H) for Acela Express trainsets--the catenary isn't counterweighted and thus isn't tight enough to prevent the pantagraphs (current collectors) from skipping and bouncing against the contact wire
But the point here is that there is nothing divine about the meter. It is just as arbitrary a reference as is the physical length of a dead king's foot. There's nothing that you can measure or compute with metre as the standard reference unit that you can't do with a yard as such. You can even put it on a base 10 system. Oh wait, they have...those crazy guys...
If the "planning boards" (your taxes) bought out all the neighbors adjoining the airport, that would move the airport out of town, by removing the town around it. They should put airports at the end of fat express rail lines, topologically close to downtown in minutes, but far away from crowded public areas, suitable for the air traffic industry. I'd like to see coastal cities using offshore airports - safer takeoff/landing angles, no nuisance, security/cargo quarantine heaven.
--
make install -not war