Virginia MagLev Project Back on Track

Raven42rac writes "After much delay, the $14 million Maglev train project is back on track at Old Dominion University in Virginia. All the petty lawsuits have been settled, and a much needed $2 million grant has been approved. 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. We do not need to be our own worst enemy. I, for one, would much rather ride a Maglev monorail with others, than drive a gas-guzzling car by myself. (And I apologise for the pun in the headline.)"

Comments

Trains vs cars

[0123456]

"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

[Uber Banker]

...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

[91degrees]

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.

Car vs. Maglev?

[heironymouscoward]

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).

Re:Car vs. Maglev?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

Re:Car vs. Maglev?

[Uber Banker]

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?

[cubicledrone]

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.

Re:Car vs. Maglev?

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Isn't this a bit much for a university?

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

[Anonymous Coward]

"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).

Re:Petty Lawsuits?

[spj524]

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:Petty Lawsuits?

[JaredOfEuropa]

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.

Re:Cars and the US

[bhima]

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.

Why a maglev?

[Pig Hogger]

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 time Fucking 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

[Dalroth]

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