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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?
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...
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.
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.
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
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...
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 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
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
The French were right 30 years ago by scrapping the Aerotrain project (pictures, films) in favour of the TGV...
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)
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that maglev trains do not use wheels and tracks?
I don't really understand what your intentions are with that post, but at least it's partly wrong. Maglev trains do need tracks, they simply don't have what you'd normally call rails, hence literally there also can't be derailing. Physically, derailing a maglev train probably requires destroying the track or the train (before derailing) or doing both at the same time by having two trains colliding.
If you want some information on the transrapid project (the one used in Shanghai), you can start here or here. The third page is the home page of the German test facility for the transrapid trains. It's unfortuantely in german only, but it has some pictures that don't need translation...
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.
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?
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.
What a load of crap. If anything, the Shanghai project has cost German tax payers money, since the German government essentially subsidized it. Der Spiegel has always hated the Transrapid from day one, and they never miss a chance to diss it. Saying that the German economy depends on the technology of two of its companies is a bit rich even for Der Spiegel, though.
It's ironic how much the Greens have hated the Transrapid, for reasons only they know. Probably because it's high-tech, and Greens deep down are but simple luddites. First it was the noise, and when independent data showed that the Transrapid is actually considerably quieter than conventional trains, it because the energy usage. When that was struck down also, the arguments became more and more bizzare. If anything, the Greens should embrace the Transrapid. It is much cleaner at the point of use (no oil dripping along the track like conventional trains), quieter at high speed and practically silent at low speed in urban areas, the track uses MUCH less real estate (it could even be stacked in tight urban areas) and can be integrated into the environment much more benignly with tighter curves and steeper grades--IOW less terraforming would be required.
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.
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.