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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.
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?
. Is there any real point to maglev trains anymore other than "cool its floating"?
the noise, for one.
physical wear...
want another ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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).
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.
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.
Well, I seem to recall some (somewhat successful) attempts to run maglev trains on (slightly modified) current rail infrastructure, but that was years ago and I can't say much more. I think it included laying some sort of third rail in the middle of the track and that was quite a huge safety problem.
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.
Everyone's got a bad human rights record!
To use a frequently-appearing example: "Oh, the Spanish were so evil, they killed off all the Aztec" - Well, guess who the Aztec sacrificed to their gods.
No one is free from the guilt, so don't go trying to lay a guilt trip on me, buddy. Just like every government and most societies do, we'll continue to ignore those violations while it's to our advantage.
Need I get into the US's human rights record?
Jw
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.
Similar projects have failed in other countries or have not even been begun for the sheer economic madness of it. Maybe the Chinese promised to build it to get better terms from the Germans on other projects, so it's not necessary just the pet project of some party leader. Actually, it's pretty clever. Some of German's economic and political leaders would have done almost anything to acquire a maglev contract for Siemens and it partners.
When German chancellor Gerhard Schroder visitied China last year, he and his delegation deliberately excluded topics such as human rights violations from the agenda, in order not to endanger the maglev train project. Apparently, this strategy has failed once again.
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
I wouldn't say as strongly. The system has its faults in extremely high initial investment cost. Particularly, the infrastructure has to be built ground up based on not having tracks. At a distance of 750 miles, that is quite a large sum of faith. The 9 year project has already cost an arm and a leg. I'm not so sure I would be willing to fork over such large sums of money like that when other technologies exist that have proven themselves, are cheaper, and almost as fast (~300km/h).
A study done by a railway consultancy group in Germany has postulated through computer simulation models the efficiency of a Transrapid system is about equal if not less of a "standard" (not maglev) railway. In fact, their conjectures show two to three times more energy required over the marketed ramblings of Transrapid. However I can't speak for the validity of this company, and this study was done more than four years ago from which there have been about 50 patents issued since the published article, and there have been 29 patents filed (but not issued), I'm guessing the situation is more like the situation featured by MegaRail Transportation Systems Inc which is still a year and a half lagging.
I know for certain though that maglev has not become drastically cheaper in initial construction. It is only in the chance of longer term fuel and cost efficiencies it may pay off to invest in it. This is why I think 750 miles is a bit far at this point and would be much better suited for changing over the city subway system network in the richer parts.
As of this moment, in rural areas, the Chinese people live in squandor. It really is a depressing sight and the awareness of such situations will spread with the ease of transportation to such areas. When people have more and more free time to devote to issues that they may otherwise glance over in effect to pay a bill, priorities may not always be akin to someone who lives in a more relaxed state. Given a Transrapid system would cost quite a bit, one trip costing roughly 1/20th of one person's income for a month, there should be more attention focused on that of the 1 billion or so population that does not live in the top 1% of wealth for the country. It is not the United States there, and people are not often exuberantly wealthy as they may be in the good ole' west. It is usually governemnt officials yes, but they also have insight into making their lives filled with more power and that of their family and descendants. As a result, the country must prosper the same and it would not be able to do as much through this system.
Of course I am not making China out to be concerned about their people because they generally are not except in the image they may portray to their trading partners, or at least in any public news stories. Rather, the social implications are only a sidestep to other motivations which I have only briefed upon, namely control and power distributed through their descendants. It should be understood that this method values is prevalent all the way to the lower classes except of those in
And, it's quiet, and doesn't shake. Ever tried ordering coffee from a train kiosk?
Actually, modern trains do offer very comfortable travelling. All you need is modern, well laied rails and good trains. The ICE 3 (the latest German high speed trains) have all axes of all carts powered. Thus you get very smooth acceleration. In a train station, you don't notice the train setting off.
As for standards and international compatibility, there are a few drawbacks in today's railway system, at least in Europe: As far as I know, the width of the rails is standardized by now, but it hasn't always been that way. In most European countries, the US, Canada, China and most of Australia the width is the British standard of 1435mm. But countries such as Spain, Portugal, Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, SA, Japan (apart from their high speed train), Malaisia, Pakistan have different rail systems.
Most, if not all, far distance tracks are electrically powered, but different countries use different systems, mainly 15kV 16 2/3 Hz AC (eg Germany) and 25kV 50Hz AC (eg France). That makes cross border train operation difficult, but there are trains that can operate on both systems, such as the French Thalys, a TGV that commutes between Paris and Cologne.
If you are interested, you might look here
Last week's Economist had an article on the Shanghai airport train.
The guy running the show basically said that as Shanghai becomes more prosperous and more people buy cars, traffic will become MUCH worse, and within a few years road-based transportation to the airport will be insanely inconvenient.
At that point he expects the train to be full all the time, and to make a profit.
This Like That - fun with words!
I think it's an error to consider maglevs as trains. Maglevs have many things in common with planes, so you should make comparisons between maglevs and planes. Why? Because of their sheer speed- and safety-potential. They can , once it becomes a mature technology , replace planes on many occasions: 1) They are almost predestined to commute at distances between 200 km and 1000 km (2000?3000?). You don't stop/start a thing of several 100tons every odd 10km; so by it's nature a maglev could stop/start every 1 to 3 hours ,roughly every 200 to 800 km.
2) It is very difficult to derail,
3) It can't fall out of the sky,
4) It should be able to travel in weather conditions impossible for planes,
5) you don't need something as big , loud and expensive as an airport-infrastructure
In my opinion it's only a matter of time...
less is more
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"
Nobody rides it because it's not actually 'open' yet. It's only running a couple of hours a day, nobody seems to be sure why, but it will start running full time next week or the week after (can't remember).
The taxi ride to and from the airport is just *painful* after a 10-hour flight from Paris or Vienna; it can easily be 1.5 hours and vs. the Transrapid's ten minutes or so is for me just unthinkable. The money difference is negligible considering what stuff costs in Shanghai. $US5 is like seven cans of coke or your half of a nice meal but the speed and convenience (it drops you off right next to a Metro station), not to mention the geek thrill factor, because - as you'll find out - the whole trip is a lot of fun, the decision between taxi and transrapid is as no-brainer as they come.
There is *no way* I'm wasting three hours of my life taking taxis to or from the airport next time I'm in Shanghai.
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