Germany To Build New Maglev Railway

EWAdams writes "According to the BBC, the Bavarian state government has announced that it has signed an agreement with Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway system, and the Transrapid consortium, to provide a maglev railway between central Munich and its airport. The only other maglev in full operation at the moment is in Shanghai, again as a city-to-airport service. The cost of the system is estimated at $2.6 billion. No completion date has been announced."

Comments

Why not a good old electric train on tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you can buy a lot more for your 2.6 billion.

Good for Bavaria

[ucla74]

Imagine how wonderful it would be to have such a system between, say, JFK airport and Grand Central Station. But that makes way too much sense, from almost any view, to ever have a chance of actually happening in my lifetime.

Re:Good for Bavaria

[susano_otter]

If it's so wonderful, and makes so much sense, you should have no trouble at all convincing people to give you the $2.6+ billion it would cost. And the eminent domain you'd need for your easements. Let me know how your project works out.

Re:Good for Bavaria

[ScrewMaster]

Look, we can't even be bothered to spend enough money to maintain the infrastructure previous generations built for us.

Re:Good for Bavaria

[homer_ca]

I know $2.6B sounds expensive, but try pricing out 18 miles of freeway, or even just widening and repaving 18 miles of an existing freeway. Those roads don't just pay for themselves.

Stupid wasteful idea

[mce]

Having flown several times into and out of Munich before, I know what the current connection between the airport and the city is like: a complete nightmare. So I fully understand that they want to do something about it. But this maglev project of theirs is a complete waste of resources, economically (way too expensive) and technically (way to many dedicated material inputs). What they really should do, IMHO, is upgrade the rail connection to use standard high speed ICE trains. That's a lot cheaper and about just as effective.

This Maglev is only worth it for really long distances, like the Hamburg-Berlin line they once planned. But then again, there are good reasons why that is not working out. In short, I love the technology, but after about 30 years they should at long last admit that it was a practical failure and can the thing. But certain people can't admit mistakes and certain others (e.g. someone the Germans will be able to identify as soon as I write "Edmund" :-) ) are looking to build a monument for themselves at all cost (that idea totally fits his personality and current cereer status, by the way).

White elephants

[Colin Smith]

They claim...

The track between Munich and the airport is 37km; 23 miles long. A conventional express train (not even ICE) could do that easily in 20 minutes if it doesn't stop at each station. The maglev will do it in 10 mins.

Wouldn't it make more sense to operate the Maglev over a distance which would allow it to save a significant amount of time? i.e. Actually inter city?

Oh, and I don't believe those cost/mile figures for a second. Any of them.

Re:White elephants

[Zoxed]

> The track between Munich and the airport is 37km; 23 miles long. A conventional express train (not even ICE) could do that easily in 20 minutes if it doesn't stop at each station. The maglev will do it in 10 mins.

I agree: if I was in charge I would choose a direct "normal" rail link. But there are 2 points *against* a 'normal" rail-link:

1) Dick-swinging: as in "look at us, we have a cool high tech toy".

2) Public subsidy of private industry: the builders (German of course: and I bet Bavarian firms will get plenty of the work) get a "free" demo track (visiting dignitaries ride in from the airport, maybe 1 or 2 will buy one for their home country).

(Don't get me wrong: I am very pro public transport, but the German railways are slowly getting strangled of funds and the money spent saving a few minutes off a short ride could be better spent elsewhere !)

Because they're noisy and dangerous?

[EWAdams]

Also, 2.6 billion dollars is only 1.84 billion Euro, and dropping daily. :)

Re:Because they're noisy and dangerous?

[nunoloureiro]

Except that the price is in EUR not USD, so you can say that it's 2.6 billion dollars and rising daily. :-)

Re:Ripoff....

[servognome]

Which would you rather have? A shiny new Maglev or 2-weeks of war.

A maglev will provide what an hour of TV viewing, maybe 2 if you include the Discovery Channel "making of the maglev."
Now 2 weeks of war will fill up all the news channels 23 hours a day (1 hour a day for lindsay lohan/brittney/misc DUI moviestar).

Lack of ambition.

[MaWeiTao]

Nowadays it seems like anytime someone proposes an ambitious project inevitably people start complaining about one thing or another, usually money.

This isn't about money, it's about progress. I might agree that it could make more sense to go with a TGV-like system as opposed to Maglev. On the other hand, the only way to refine Maglev technology is to actually use it. Someone needs to be the early adopter.

One thing I always admired about Asia when I was living there was that when they decided they wanted something built they just did it. Not that there sometimes weren't problems, but they did it. They didn't drag their feet, they didn't waste an excessive amount of time on impact studies.

Now being back here in the New York area I find the lack of progress quite depressing. We're stuck riding on an antiquated rail line managed by a corrupt company. This is a company which proudly proclaims that their trains are only 5 minutes late. The times listed on schedules are there only to differentiate the trains, not to actually inform anyone on what time they're supposed to arrive. And that's when a train's contacts dont get snagged on power lines and pull a few down which seems to happen at least once a year.

Politicians around here do nothing but pay lip-service to alleviating traffic problems. But it's not all their fault. We've also got the problem that the rail line is running through one of the most affluent counties in the nation. And those residents will be damned if they see any kind of development that could somehow change their idyllic little world. That's despite the reality that the problems we're having are already adversely affecting them.

So hats off to Germany for being so ambitious. I'd really like to see more of that here.