Virginia MagLev Project Back on Track

Trains vs cars by 0123456 · 2004-04-18 00:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

"I, for one, would much rather ride a Maglev monorail with others, than drive a gas-guzzling car by myself"

Why would you want to be stuck on a train that goes from somewhere you're not (requiring you to get from where you are to the initial station) to somewhere you don't want to be (requiring you to get from the final station to where you want to go) via places where you don't want to go at times you can't choose, sitting across from a drunk and alongside someone who's coughing and sneezing all over you, rather than drive in your own car by yourself from where you are to where you want to go at whatever time you feel like?

Certainly there are places where the roads are so bad that trains are preferable (e.g. London), but in the vast majority of cases, trains really, really suck.

Re:Trains vs cars by Uber+Banker · 2004-04-18 00:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

...for a train to be anywhere near as convenient for a car... ROTFLEM! Try driving into Central London. Cars really suck for mass transport. Around 10% of traffic comes into Central London by car in a typical week. Replace the residual (mainly taken up by over or underground trains) with cars and prepare for chaos. Convenient, huh?
Re:Trains vs cars by 91degrees · 2004-04-18 00:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

ROTFL. Try going to a London station sometime and watch the trains belching out clouds of diesel smoke into the air, then tell me they're "environmentally friendly". As for "smooth", again, you've obviously never taken a British train.

Most of the lines going to London are electrified now, and the underground has been for a centruy or so. Of course, even for diesels, per-passenger pollution is a lot lower than a car with a single person in it. And the trains are about as smooth as other alternatives. Occasionally there's a shake and a rattle, but I seem to be able to stand perfectly well unaided.

Those aren't issues for maglev, though for a train to be anywhere near as convenient for a car it will need to run every five minutes, twenty-four hours a day, which will mean most of them running mostly empty. That hardly seems likely to be "enviromentally friendly" to me.

Maglev only makes sense for long distances. The sort of distances that will take at least several hours by car. You don't need a service running that regularly.
Re:Trains vs cars by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 00:36 · Score: 1, Insightful

ROTFL. Try going to a London station sometime and watch the trains belching out clouds of diesel smoke into the air, then tell me they're "environmentally friendly".

DOH! Imagine every passenger driving a car which belches out clouds of diesel smoke into the air.
Re:Trains vs cars by farnz · 2004-04-18 00:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

I have a car. I don't go out of town that often either; the only reason I don't get rid of the car is that carrying myself and a Uni holiday's worth of stuff back to the south of London from Durham is next to impossible by train. I can get to King's Cross station (north London), but getting across London with all my belongings is impossible by public transport.

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I appear to have a blog. Odd.
Re:Trains vs cars by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 00:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

Good point!

But for many people, a train starts from where they are, and it goes to where they want to go.

And in that case, it beats paying $500 a year for insurance and $150 a month in car payments. And that doesn't even count on gas prices.

For the week or so that I need a car, I'll rent one for $40/day. I save a lot of money that way. And yes, the train will take me to the rental car place ;-)

But in the end, I agree... if Springfield is going to build train service, it should go somewhere!
Re:Trains vs cars by Jonathan · 2004-04-18 06:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm not so sure. I've never owned a car in my life (and I'm 33 year old research scientist) and I'm always having conversations that go "What? You don't have a car? It must take you forever to get here by subway" and then finding out that it takes *longer* for them to drive, time which presumably is lost to them, because at least I can read on the subway. Yes, there are cities that don't have subways and places in those cities that aren't near a subway stop, but nobody's forcing me to live there.

Car vs. Maglev? by heironymouscoward · 2004-04-18 00:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

Maglev is extraordinarily expensive, noisy, and an engineering solution to what is a civil problem - commuting.

If maglev is what it takes to move people off the roads, I pity our civilization.

What about ordinary (cheap) trains, faster conventional trains (like Europe's TGVs) or living closer to work, or working more via Internet, or carpooling?

The best way to avoid commuting is for people to move back into the cities, to walk to work, to downsize the huge companies into smaller human-sized organizations, to live on a human scale. The best way to connect large countries is through high-speed trains that use conventional rail technology. It does not happen today for one simple reason: the artificially low cost of travelling by car and by air (thanks to subsidies on roads and on fuel).

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Ceci n'est pas une signature

Re:Car vs. Maglev? by 0123456 · 2004-04-18 00:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

"If maglev is what it takes to move people off the roads, I pity our civilization."

If our society has sunk to the point where people think they have the right to force people off the roads, civilisation has long gone.

"The best way to avoid commuting is for people to move back into the cities,"

If people wanted to live in cities, they'd live in cities. Increasingly, people are desperate to get out of cities due to high taxes, poor services and high crime. That's almost entirely the fault of train-loving liberals, and it's not going to change any time soon.
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by ffsnjb · 2004-04-18 00:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

That's almost entirely the fault of train-loving liberals, and it's not going to change any time soon.

That was exactly what I was thinking. To continue: socialism is the reason cities suck. Having to deal with the zero-self-responsibility scum who would rather steal from you than work for a living are the reasons why no one with any self-worth wants to live in cities. If socialism didn't drive the people, who would have to work, to be lazy and steal money from those that do work, crime rates in cities would be much lower.

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"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2004-04-18 00:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

Maglev is extraordinarily expensive, noisy, and an engineering solution to what is a civil problem - commuting.

Maglevs are extraordinarily expensive to build and run, yes, but probably less so than (or on par with) conventional high-speed trains, otherwise nobody would fund such ventures.

But they are definitely not noisy compared to a conventional train. Have you ever lived near a TGV line? no, I didn't think so.

What about ordinary (cheap) trains, faster conventional trains (like Europe's TGVs)

TGVs aren't that much cheaper. About half the price in fact, mainly due to the reuse of existing technologies and French government subsidies. What they really have for them is the ability to roll on the pre-existing infrastructure, which Maglevs can't do.

or living closer to work, or working more via Internet

Yes, let's produce cars, baked bean cans, houses and pencil cases on the great Internet.

Fact: people who can work remotely are a minority.

or carpooling?

But you say below that road travel is an artificially low-cost mode of transportation? surely you don't mean to cram more people on the road...

The best way to avoid commuting is for people to move back into the cities

But you say below that you want to scale back the size of organizations and live on a human scale. Surely you don't mean to cram more people in the same tiny spot of land...

to walk to work

Make the cities big enough and people won't be able to walk to work. You contradict your arguments over and over.

to downsize the huge companies into smaller human-sized organizations, to live on a human scale. The best way to connect large countries is through high-speed trains that use conventional rail technology.

Yes that's true For now. I suspect if nobody looks for better solutions though, we'll still be stuck with conventional trains a hundred years from now though.

It does not happen today for one simple reason: the artificially low cost of travelling by car and by air (thanks to subsidies on roads and on fuel).

This is changing fast. Do you know how much gas costs in Europe these days? and it's still rising.

NOTE: before you take me for an overweight Californian who can't walk across the street without his car, or an oil-producing Texan, let me precise that I don't own a car and go around by bike and public transportation, including trains.

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"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by Uber+Banker · 2004-04-18 00:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

It does not happen today for one simple reason: the artificially low cost of travelling by car and by air (thanks to subsidies on roads and on fuel). Interesting argument. Not sure if this would mean more cities, those cities smaller in population but higher in density (using simple von Thuman or Henderson medols), but it would be a really interesting (and positive IMHO) thing to see. But I completely agree about the subsidy on fuel. People who complain about fuel tax simply don't seem to understand the cost of their using fuel is born on others (both in the present and the future). Increasing the cost of fuel makes the true cost apparant to the comsumer. Pity the government don't realise the other part of the equation that this revenue fuel should be addressed to the cost of it (improving 'green' technologies, actual quantification, perhaps international repatriation).
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by ChiChiCuervo · 2004-04-18 00:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

Is maglev an economically a dumb idea? Yes.

Are there cheaper mass transit alternatives? Of Course.

Do many areas of the United States need better mass transit systems? Yes.

Do Americans need better, less costly and less stressfull commute options? Absolutely.

Should Americans be forced to cram themselves into crowded, polluted, crime-ridden (tho less so now) major cities just to satisfy urbanite arrogance towards the automobile? Bite me.
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by cubicledrone · 2004-04-18 00:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

Maglev is extraordinarily expensive, noisy, and an engineering solution to what is a civil problem - commuting.

You know, I always find it entertaining when it is suggested that trains are so expensive and such a problem. In Japan, they have trains that are 50 years ahead of our best technology, and they don't seem to have much of a problem with them.

Of course, they also built the longest suspension bridge on the planet and put an airport on water. Maybe they have fewer people saying "it'll never work." Who knows?

If maglev is what it takes to move people off the roads, I pity our civilization.

What it takes to move people off the roads is to move past the 19th century workplace where managers insist on five million lunchpail-carrying peons crawling through the door on their knees to punch a timeclock at the exact same moment. That is the cause of traffic, pollution and waste from automobiles. Period.

t does not happen today for one simple reason: the artificially low cost of travelling by car and by air (thanks to subsidies on roads and on fuel).

Agreed.

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Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by ScrewMaster · 2004-04-18 01:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

Maglev is a solution looking for a problem, I think. I don't know if you've ever read a book called "Into the Microcosm" by George Gilder, but he talks about this issue in general. From an historical perspective, when replacing a widespread existing technology, the new one needs be about an order of magnitude better in order to make the changeover investment worth making. One of a number of "Gilder's Laws", actually (see his site. So, overall, how much better than conventional rail is Maglev? Ten times better? Five? Is getting from point A to point B twice as fast worth the enormous investment to change over?

The best way to avoid commuting has nothing to do with moving back to cities. There is a reason why urban sprawl exists: people have discovered that giant cities are not the best places to live and work. Cities only exist because, in the eras predating modern transportation systems they were the only way to effectively concentrate and use resources and manpower. That's just not the case any longer: cities are conceptually obsolete, and are just running on inertia. Urban sprawl is just the first symptom of the end of the road for cities. Besides, the best way to avoid commuting is to decentralize businesses: encourage them to spread out more so people won't have to drive forty miles each way to work.

Fuel costs aren't "artificially low", exactly ... what they are is result of massive investment on the part of oil companies to improve discovery, refining and delivery technologies over the past fifty years. It's too bad that other industries (say, the automobile industry) haven't made similar investments in their products. We wouldn't need so much oil now, if they had had an ounce of vision. But, there's a limit to how the petroleum companies can go in that direction, and they're fast coming up on it.

As a matter of fact, because of that investment energy costs in the U.S. haven't even remotely paced inflation, and they'd be lower still if state Environmental Protection Agencies hadn't been allowed to mandate specific fuel mixes for different regions. The overhead involved for that is incredible for little real benefit.

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The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 02:44 · Score: 1, Insightful

It's not just a simple as that... you have to look at the entire economic system.

"Are salaries higher to compensate for higher taxes" no... and if you think about it, that wouldn't make sense.
If everyone in a country gets paid in DINGOS.. and the government decides to tax them at 50%, but salaraies are also magically going to be doubled to compensate.... what's the net effect? Sure, you take home the same number of DINGOS.. but now they only represent half the wealth of the country... so they are effectively worth half as much.

Cost of living in these countries tends to be lower, and reflects the local economy, as with everywhere in the world.

While people in Sillicon Valley were making $100,000 US a year at tech jobs, I was making about $40,000 CAD a year in Calgary,( Which was about $28,000 US at the time IIRC) and living quite comfortably.. I had a car, a nice apartment, I ate out whenever I pleased, had a few computers, cable internet, etc... all the makings of a normal young urban yuppie life. Looking at jobs in the US... I had to think about what the real difference in living was. I really couldn't find anything that made the lifestyle of a guy my age making $100,000 in the valley any different than my own... the only exceptionw as perhaps people tended to have more expensive cars (which they rarely owned completely)

- Americans seem to pay more in monthly expenses for things I'd never even considered.personal liability insurance, health insurance, etc.
- Rent was way higher in the valley.
- Restaurants, etc were much more expensive.
- Cellular phones and things were more expensive.
- Basic food was more exensive at the grocery store.

If you look at the taxes most Americans pay, and then add up some of the fixed monthly costs that don't really exist in other countries... you might find you end up spending just as much of your salary as these socialized countries take in taxes.
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by maxpublic · 2004-04-18 03:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

I care about my fellows, which is why it is a daily pain to watch hypercapitalism swallow more of America. More sensible socialism is needed.

What crap. The advocates of socialism are no different than the advocates of 'hypercapitalism', as you call it. They're the same animal, with a trivial difference in stripes. Both want to tell everyone else how to live their lives, and distribute their resources, at the point of a gun if necessary - no doubt 'for the greater good'.

Socialism is just another form of dictatorship. The fact that the majority might support this dictatorship makes it no different than any other.

Max

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My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by john.r.strohm · 2004-04-18 03:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

Take a longer look at those Japanese bullet trains. The train companies put an army of track maintenance workers out there, every night, to recondition the tracks from the wear and tear that the trains put on them every day.

Take a longer look at the human environment in which those trains operate. Japan has incredibly high population densities compared to the overwhelming majority of the United States. Without those incredibly high densities, mass transit, of any kind, doesn't work. (About the only exception is Manhattan Island. No, thanks.)

Japan put that airport on the water because there wasn't ANY land available for a new airport. This is part of their population density problem.
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2004-04-18 04:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

The best way to avoid commuting is for people to move back into the cities

Hell yeah. People are going out of their way to live 50+ miles from work, so they can live the American dream and have their own little piece of urban sprawl. Then we build 8-lane superhighways so these lemmings can migrate to and from the city every day.

I suppose the desire to have more personal space is a natural instinct, and it's fueled by the relativly large amount of open space and the relativly inexpensive personal vehicles in this country. But, I wonder how long this trend can continue until we /run out of space/run out of oil/cars get too expensive/ and the benefits of living near work become greater than the benefits of commuting. Perhaps it has begun already..
Re:Car vs. Maglev? by maxpublic · 2004-04-18 05:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

Socialism and capitalism by themselves are quite evil.

What tripe. Capitalism isn't at all evil; it's about being able to distribute your own resources *as you please*. Capitalism is synonymous with economic freedom.

The point where capitalism becomes corrupt is when government gets involved. Government despises a free market; free markets lead to change and fluctuations in power. Government, more than anything else, is interested in maintaining it's power base, and to do that it needs a consistency which you can't get in a truly free market. Government doesn't exist to protect us from the 'evils' of capitalism, but rather to perpetuate whatever power structure exists in the current economic system. This is entirely antithetical to free market capitalism.

You can have both capitalism and social welfare programs. Despite the ravings of left wing loonies the two are not opposed. Charities operate perfectly well alongside capitalism; a government charity could do the same, and without interference in the market. This is a truth which would-be tin-point wannabe socialist dictators refuse to acknowledge because it doesn't allow them to force others to bend to their will, which is the point of their 'greater good' bullshit no matter what they claim to the contrary.

Max

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My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?

Isn't this a bit much for a university? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 00:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

When I was a student, I rode a $100 bike to class. Building a $14 million monorail to do the same job sounds like overkill to me.

Too late! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 00:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

"Let us hope that this sets a precedent to Americans to not litigate ourselves out of the science and technology markets"

For example, yet another lawsuit against the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant (what is this the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth?). The truth of the matter is that this is exactly the reason that the nuclear industry has shut down. Insurance costs are too high because people are sucessful at suing a plant so that it will never make any profits (Diablo Canyon) or voting it closed (Racho Seco Nuclear Power Plant).

Uh Oh by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 00:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

"ODU Board of Visitors member William M. Lechler also has voiced skepticism. ?It sounded like it was going to be a difficult process,? he said in December. ?They really had to have a breakthrough in technology.?

"Morris has insisted that breakthrough will happen once the $2 million federal grant money flows."

That's a pretty big assumption.

Re:Efficient? by Triskele · 2004-04-18 00:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

And what new would we have learnt that way? Surely a university has a duty to innovate. Most research money is down the drain when looked at from a short-term practical perspective. It's only further down the road (when we run out of petrol) that we'll be glad for the work done on this prototype.

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USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.

Re:Yay! by Timmmm · 2004-04-18 00:41 · Score: 1, Insightful

I, for one, welcome our new Maglev overlords.

Maybe slashdot should auto-ban people who post "I for one welcome our [topic] overlords." and "In Soviet Russia, [topic] [verb]'s you."

Or at least punish the people who mod them up.

Joke Science by N8F8 · 2004-04-18 00:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

Throwing good money after bad. BTW, the ODU campus isn't really that big.

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"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power

Re:Petty Lawsuits? by spj524 · 2004-04-18 00:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

Let us hope that this sets a precedent to Americans to not litigate ourselves out of the science and technology markets due to petty disagreements and greed.

Just why is it greed when I'm looking out for myself?

I, for one, would much rather ride a Maglev monorail with others, than drive a gas-guzzling car by myself.

And I, for one, would much rather ride in a comfortable gas-guzzling, XM radio playing SUV than an a 14 million dollar mass transit Maglev that smells like a wet band-aid. Just another petty opinion, I guess.

Seth

Re:Cars and the US by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 00:49 · Score: 1, Insightful

That's suburban sprawl, and it's also unclear if this is a cause or an effect of having so many cars.

Re:Petty Lawsuits? by ScrewMaster · 2004-04-18 01:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

Just why is it greed when I'm looking out for myself?

That pretty much defines greed. A better way to put it would be: why is it greed when I'm only asking for what you agreed to pay me?

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The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.

Re:Cars and the US by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 01:04 · Score: 1, Insightful

In Germany one is expected to own a car as well although many times families have only one car which is indeed a difference between Germany and the US. I personally do know exactly two adults who do not have a car at all and in my family everybody has his/her own car. I guess it largely depends on where you live in europe but it my case it even is a major city with rather good public transport systems.

Re:Cars and the US by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 01:07 · Score: 1, Insightful

Excellent point. Most US cities are like the suburbs and rural areas of European cities - they can be larger than 100 square miles (not kilometers)! Most people live in stand-alone wooden houses, and most of the businesses are on the perifery of the city - many times even in rural areas!

A lot of this happened due to a real lack of urban planning, in the American spirit. "Oh, let's build the factory right HERE, in the middle of nowhere". "Oh, let's put a residential neighborhood right here, in the middle of this farmland".

This is often because planners are unduly influenced by those who own large tracts of land - they're not trying to build cities that make sense - instead, they plan to build cities that make a lot of money for a few land owners.

Re:Petty Lawsuits? by JaredOfEuropa · 2004-04-18 01:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

That pretty much defines greed

That's what the collectivists of the world would like you to believe.

Just looking out for yourself is neither selfish nor being greedy. It becomes selfish when you lose all regard for other people's interests in the process. It becomes greed when it turns into an obsessive lust for wealth.

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If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...

This project by geoswan · 2004-04-18 01:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

The article was short on details.

$14,000,000 is peanuts for any kind of real transit system. raven42rac says

" I, for one, would much rather ride a Maglev monorail with others, than drive a gas-guzzling car by myself."

I strongly suspect that this particular project is not a substitute for driving a gas-guzzling car. On any campus I have ever been on almost no-one drives a car to get from one spot on campus to another. I strongly suspect this monorail system is substitute for riding one's bike, or going by foot.

Re:Petty Lawsuits? by fizban · 2004-04-18 01:28 · Score: 1, Insightful

Well, many times, people who think they're just looking out for themselves actually are being selfish and greedy. It's actually very, very difficult to not be. Care must be taken to always think about how your actions affect other people, both in the short term and the long term. Most of us think about only about the short term and consider ourselves good people, but a lot of the time, it's the long term effects that matter most. Here's an example:

The Tragedy of the Commons

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+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.

Re:Cars and the US by bhima · 2004-04-18 01:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

The love affair that Americans have with their autos is difficult to express rationally, especially by Americans!

Here in Austria many people own cars, but many people ride bicycles. I think it is toss up between time & pride. It takes me two times longer to to drive into the city center (and park) than bike (and park for free). It takes me about the same time to ride to work as it does to drive. So I ride in the summer; the younger more virile guys ride all year rain, shine or snow. But here in Graz it's a reasonable thing, all the stores I want to shop at have a small branch nearby (5~10 min ride) the video store is a 3 minute walk and the Kino is 20 minute away.

I lived in the US for a time and didn't think it was so reasonable. The cities are designed to be car friendly to the expense of all other forms of traffic. The roads and parking are designed to accommodate huge vehicles (A fact many of my co-workers attribute to the poor driving the Americans exhibit, I wonder which came first). The city layout (zoning) is segmented; most people that work in town live in the suburbs, so every morning & afternoon a horrible mass migration occurs. It's outright dangerous to be in this without some sort of armored vehicle!

Whatever the US fascination is about it is NOT about freedom! I think it's more about using the cars they have! Or maybe it's a vicious cycle they can not escape from.

I wonder what will happen when the true price of energy comes to the US? I picture roving bands of Chicanos car jacking Ford gargantuan in order to pump the fuel tank out leaving their hapless owners on the side of the road calling the US version of a motoring club.

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Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Why a maglev? by Pig+Hogger · 2004-04-18 02:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

This is useless technology.

Why? For speed?

Conventional trains routinely hit 320 km/h FOR LONG STRETCHES AND DURATIONS (not just for 10km portion out of a 700 km journey), and have gone as fast as 515 km/h in tests.

The sheer complexity of the switches (*) guarantees that the resulting network will be much less flexible than an ordinary conventional high-speed rail whose switches are of the ultra-simple time-tested conventional design.

What does speed gives you? Since the energy expenditure squares each time the speed is doubled, you soon hit a wall where the energy efficiency drops well below an aircraft.

For example, a 1200 km trip (New-York_Chicago) Speed time saved* Energy How much more than 100 12 10000 at 100 km/h 200 6 6 40000 4 times 300 4 2 90000 9 times 400 3 1 160000 16 times 500 2.4 0.6 250000 25 times 600 2 0.4 360000 36 times 700 1.71 0.29 490000 49 times * from previous timeFucking slashcode that won't let PRE pass. Fuck it (and cowboy neal too, at the same time).

So, each time you increase speed by 100 km/h, your energy use soars so much that for saving a paltry quarter-hour, you spend 13 times more energy than needed to go at 100 km/h!!!

This is the reason french TGVs only run at 300 km/h. They are designed for 400 km/h and routinely hit 450 km/h for demos but running them at 400 km/h would be too expensive for the tiny amount if time gained.

A high-speed maglev runs at the surface, where the air resistance is waaaaay much higher than for an aircraft at 35,000 feet. So the energy expenditure per seat IS GOING TO BE HIGHER than an airplane!

Even though the speed of sound is much higher on the ground than at 60,000 feet (where Concorde used to fly), 1000 km/h maglev trains will need very long viaducts and tunnels to avoid becoming high-speed stomach wrenching roller-coaster rides.

The only way a maglev could be useful is running within an evacuated tunnel in a long journey.

In theory, the trains could run at the orbital speed of the altitude they are; energy expenditure would then be zero (all you'd need is to accelerate the train to speed, and you'd recover most of that energy by decellerating it at destination). But the costs of digging tunnels that would be so perfectly aligned, immune to geological havoc (crossing from one tectonic plate to another isn't really a walk in the park) and to keep the thing perfectly evacuated would likely be prohibitive (and maintenance guys would need to work in spacesuits...). Such money should be spent instead for a space elevator.

Re:Cars and the US by Dalroth · 2004-04-18 02:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

Nobody would drive to work through this hell if there were real alternatives. You nailed it right on the head with one simple sentence:

Or maybe it's a vicious cycle they can not escape from.

Public transportation sucks. Getting a car is easy. I like to walk to work, and take public transportation when I can, but GOOD LORD the BUS is TERRIBLE! It's filled with low-lifes (especially dependent upon the time of day) that sometimes make me feel like my life is in danger. It's never on time, it stops running at 7pm, and worse of all it's perpetually overcrowded at the times I really need to ride it.

So I frequently don't take the bus. But then, how will they ever improve the situation if not enough people ride?

Catch-22 indeed.

Bryan

Maglev Makes No Economic Sense by ExportGuru · 2004-04-18 03:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't want to se another penny of public money poured into "Developing" this "Already-proven technology." A quick look at the history of railroad-building shows that non-public railroads were and are built to haul freight and that passengers are a secondary consideration, if they are considered at all. In Europe, where railroads quickly became a state monopoly, passenger service was promoted because it gave the legislators something they could brag about and whose cost their constituents would presumably support. Or, they were built for military purposes like the Prussian State Railways in the 1850s-1860s.

Maglev has no discernible future as a commercial proposition if conventional rail can go as fast. No one seems to know how to interline freight on to or off of maglev from conventional rail. Changing from another mode and then back again eats up the profit earned from speed (if any, this is freight we are talking about, after all.) Further, if a railroad train loses power, the train stops, almost always upright on its rails. If a maglev train loses power, the train will not "Coast" to a stop! The heirs and assigns of the purple jelly that used to be its passengers will sue that line out of business and no insuror will want to take the risk of insuring maglev. It seems they have come to this conclusion already. Private maglev companies won't exist or if they do they won't survive the first failure of a train or a track segment.

Bottom line: everyone likes tech and wants a chance to play with the toys. Many want to see this technology pursued, but no one seems to want to invest substantial private money in it. Suggest the maglev enthusiasts turn their energies to finding out what free-market forces are at work and why, and address the issues that that investigation turns up. I suggest that that is the best way to save maglev. It may be the only way.

Maybe just higher population density? by mdfst13 · 2004-04-18 04:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

Japan is roughly the size of California and has four times the population. Trains work great in areas where everyone has access to them. The problem in the US is that people are much more distributed. There are six cities in the US where trains are cheaper than buses (off the top of my head, I think that they are New York, LA, Chicago, Baltimore, Miami, and Philadelphia). This is ignoring subsidies, just cost per passenger/mile.

In Japan, trains make sense. They run in areas that can support them. In the US, they mostly do not. Most of us do not live in areas that can support them.

Trains are subsidized too. The government often pays for the track (particularly for commuter trains).

Re:Fuck public transportation by dominator · 2004-04-18 04:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

Hello stoplights, hello tolls. Hello $30/day Manhattan parking lots, and hello to those half-hours wasted circling the street looking for an open spot. Say hello to the pedestrians and bikers, darting out in front of you. Hello traffic jams, honking horns, and cursing, irratic drivers. Hello noxious fumes and single-digit speeds on urban highways.

Say goodbye to reading the newspaper on the way to work. Goodbye to the half-hour nap you took on the train each morning. Goodbye to your stress-free commute.

Re:Multiple choice quiz by Anonymous Coward · 2004-04-18 05:18 · Score: 1, Insightful

For extra points state the reason the companies involved went bust.

Road subsidies matter, not fuel subsidies by billstewart · 2004-04-18 09:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

Fuel isn't subsidized in the US, it's heavily taxed (though not as heavily as in Europe.) The costs of burning irreplaceable dinosaur juice may be unrealistic compared to the value of saving it for future generations, and the oil companies have been allowed to get away with pollution (though that largely affects land that isn't owned by other people, so it's in some sense a future cost that they're not paying, if anybody ever does clean it up), but those aren't subsidies. Sure, the US military works for the oil companies, but it's a self-sustaining empire all its own.

The real subsidies that affect the US preference for cars as opposed to trains are socialized roadbuilding. The public wants its roads, and any time you build more roads, making commuting easier, you make more housing development possible because more people can now live where you built the roads, and once a new area is opened up for housing, it tends to build more houses than the roads can really support, so there's more pressure to make the roads bigger. Residential streets in suburban land developments are essentially funded as part of the costs of building the houses, either explicitly or indirectly, but the regional connector roads get heavily subsidized. And especially as most of the US economy moves to a white-collar services model and stops being manufacturing-oriented, this also makes it easier for offices to move out of the core cities, decreasing the reasons for people to live downtown. Sometimes they go to edge cities, sometimes to quasi-residential areas.

--

Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks

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