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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.)"
I'm glad the project is back on track again, but the 'petty lawsuits' were apparently contractors who weren't paid.
Hardly petty in my opinion - I'd be sueing if I wasn't paid for work I'd done.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
Shelbyville already has one.
-h
"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.
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).
Ceci n'est pas une signature
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.
"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).
I've always found it interesting that in the US (with the possible exception of major cities) adults are almost always expected to have a car. The are many explanations for this phenomenon, e.g. lower population density, individualism, suburban sprawl, low gas prices, major urban development after the introduction of the car, bad public transportation. But for many explanations, it's not really clear what is the cause and what is the effect. There are of course positive (freedom, independence of time tables) and negative sides (environment, dependence on oil, health/obesity) to having cars for everyone.. But it's an interesting difference between the US and many (most?) other countries in the world.
I think there isn't nearly enough contempt and elitism in the tone of voice in this submitter.
Where's the demand for the 'heads of the nonbelievers of the maglev'? or the crimes against humanity committed by evil 'automobilists'.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
I lived over 15 years in atlanta metro, rode MARTA quite a bit,it has plusses and minuses. You've pointed out a plus, but there are minuses too (last I was riding it). Such as non 24 hour service (example, the state says don't drink and drive, yet bars are allowed to stay open past when MARTA is running). That also discriminates against tax payers and citizens who do business in off hours, night shift workers, etc, and makes it impossible for a lot of people to use it even if they wanted to. And here's another critical minus, it's subsidised severely by people outside MARTA'sservice area who will almost *never* use it, and it's a big part of the cost of running it. MARTA's fares are around one dollar *under* true costs. If they were funded fairly upfront and then have the users pay for it at the true rates it would be a... err "more fair fare".
..eliminate congestion! Stop creating the artificial need for more people being forced to travel into and through major urban areas. We are atthe point in time with technology and business that the "need" for over centralised choke points in commerce and government is being propped up out of a state of inertia mostly. The never ending construction on atlanta metros roads for example, tends to nullify any improvements because there's always some place that is a bottleneck. People moved to the suburbs to get away from the downtown area, it's time to really take the next stepand de centralise the urban areas. Eliminate the so called "need to travel" and you won't need as much "urban transit" schemes like expensive train systems and more roads. And just "getting to hartsfield" is nuts, they quite simply built the airport on the wrong side of town, they KNEW that in advance, the bulk of the traffic that uses hartsfield comes from the north side, and they knew that way back when, but it was a political decsion to put in on the southside, for some obvious reasons given the nature of atlanta politics. That created a severe artifical "congestion" in traffic patterns that didn't need to happen in the first place, but then they needed the "solution" of more rail and roads. Government is responsible for helping to create a problem that they then used as an excuse for 'the solution". It's cuckoo, Heglian, and obvious.
I say it would be a lot more cost effective if they really tried to get universal broadband out to everyone using these tax payers funds, rather than further insisiting on over crowding the cities, either from cars or mass transit of people. the way to eliminate congestion is to
I've always been "pro car" but when I was working at the Pentagon I came across the most social form of public transportation I've encountered, SLUGGING.
The I-95 corridor from Quantico to DC has two HOV-3 lanes. Very few people actually use these lanes (a waste IMO) because it is hard to find friends that are willing to carpool with you.
Then, a long while back, people started parking their cars at the commuter lots and literally hitching a ride with total strangers up HOV lanes to DC.
By the time I started Slugging, it had evolved into it's own little system without any government influence. I would go to Potomac Mills mall in Woodbridge, VA and park at their commuter lot. I had a choice of getting a ride to 14th street in DC (next to a train station) or I could go directly to the Pentagon (which also has a train station). Everyone would patiently stand in line and wait for the next car to give them a ride.
Slugging lines became a community. People that broke in line (whether they be in cars or on foot) were scorned by the group. Everyone pretty much got along great. From my time there, I never heard of any crimes committed when slugging. I also got to know a lot of the people who were riding. Some of us became fast friends. It was also a good opportunity to network with others.
There were some basic rules for slugging that everyone stood by. For one, the driver couldn't charge you. That was against the law anyways. Secondly, any driver could refuse to pick you up, though I never saw this happen. Riders could also refuse to ride with any driver. That made sense because some of those cars were crap.
There were many funny stories I could tell during my two years of slugging. I can honestly say that I'd do it again. It really was a fine example of simply living and getting along with your fellow human being.
If you live in the DC area, you can find out more by visiting http://www.slug-lines.com/ They even have a lost and found if you leave something in your drivers car. I actually had the chance to return a guys laptop that he left in my car. We are still friends today.
IMO, this is just one more fine example of how good man CAN be.
cheers
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
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.
As an outer New York City resident , I've been riding the bus, subway, and railroads for ten years now. First to get to school, then to my job. Recently I got a car, and I've reached an epiphany.
There is no toll bridge or road that I won't cross, no traffic jam that I won't bear, no gas tax that I won't accept, and no garaging fee that I will not pay so that I never have to take public transportation ever again.
In my car I control the comfort level, the climate, the music or radio that is played (or not played), the passengers that are picked up, the route that is chosen, the speed that is used, the stops along the way.
Gone are the class-loads of students who get on, headphones on full blast, who still try to have a conversation so they need to shout to hear each other. Gone are the old people who could do an entire day of shopping at a department store and carry their bags onto the train, but still demand that you give up your seat because they're too weak to stand. Gone are the pan-handlers who run a gimmick hoping for some spare change.
Hello liberating highways, drive-throughs, beautiful bridges, awe-inspiring tunnels, sprawling landscapes, incredible cityscapes, and the world flying by on fast-forward.
Hello, great America. I want to drive you just thinking about you. And I'll pick up a caramel Macchiato along the way.
Fuck public transportation.
Similar maglevs have been built. Birmingham Airport had one from the mid 1980s to 1995. It was too hard to maintain, and was replaced with a cable-driven system.
Even as a pork program, the Old Dominion University system sucks. Better taxpayer-supported overpriced transit systems have been built at Southern universities. The Morgantown, West Virginia Group Rapid Transit System is a futuristic system started during the Nixon administration and opened in 1975. It's automated, with 3.6 miles of line, five stations, and little eight-person cars. It's an advanced system; all stations are "offline", and cars pull off the main line to stop at stations, rather than blocking the main tracks. It actually works, but it's way overbuilt for the usage it gets.
First, I wouldn't say it is in a rural area. There is a large population in our region. We suffer from sprawl pretty badly, but the figures say we have more technology jobs in Southeastern Virginia than in the state's capital region, Richmond. Norfolk is next to Virginia Beach (400k), Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, Newport News, Chesapeake and others. At least 1.5mil, if not more.
FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND, the maglev system worked when it was in Flordia on the test track, because the rails were on the ground. There are videos on the American Maglev site of it moving before the ODU system was put together. Once the ODU setup was constructed, they hit a snag. The rail flexes from the weight, and the system tries to adjust for it by adjusting power to magnets, which causes the rail to react, which starts an oscillation loop or something. Ooops.
The system here is opposite from the German Transrapid system (which is totally bad ass, btw). The guideway in the German system is more intelligent / has electromagnets / something, where as the one at ODU most of the guts are in the actual cars. This means the guideway is much cheaper to deploy. If you have ever seen it, the guideway is pretty frigging narrow, it would be easier to handle right of ways for such a thing.
It is a shame the contractors haven't been paid, and it is a shame it hasn't gotten further. From what I understand they are finally getting their hands on the money. It would be interesting to see a cost break down.
If you think about it, 14 million in what could be a better transportation solution for cities is chump change. Companies spend $3 million on blanket Windows software licenses. The theory is if/when it works it could spawn a new industry and our region could gain new businesses that support it.
People complain about the money going to the monorail, yet they don't complain about their tax money going to schools where many of the students are from out of country and leave when they are done with their education. Granted there are private interests working here, but I fail to understand the hatred for the creation of something new and something better.
Lastly, they are started to talk about this stupid light rail stuff here, that is little trollys that run on conventional rails. Lame, gradings obstruct traffic, they are slow. Elevated maglev is the answer! HOORAY!
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!