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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."
The Maglev in Shanghai (built by the Germans) is great fun. The ride takes less than 10 minutes, and you hit a top speed of 433kph - smooth as glass.
:)
You can frequently find Japanese tour groups that will ride back & forth between the airport and downtown, like it was a theme park ride
When the Shanghai Maglev first went online, ridership was fairly low. The ticket cost is a bit high in local terms... Today, with the Olympics right around the corner, ridership means the train is usually full.
Plans are in place to build the next one as a longer leg, perhaps between Shanghai and Nanjing.
Halbach Arrays would allow them to build a magnetically levitating train without active control of the magnets. The track would be nothing more than a series of aluminum or copper rings. The levitation doesn't work when the train is stationary, but secondary wheels only designed for low speed on a prepared surface could handle this. (Failure mode away from stations would be for the train to drag its belly. It could be designed to ear up the track, but ensure the passengers safety.) Electromagnetic drag also decreases as the speed of the train increases.
The resulting track and train would both cost a fraction of what they are currently spending. Both the levitation and guide magnets would be totally passive.
It is far more likely that if such a system gets built, it will be General Atomics. GA's is not only American, but it is a fraction of the price/mile. Of course, it is not as fast. The transrapid does 300 MPH+, whereas the GA will be 250. But the GA is expected to cost about the same as a monorail (5-10 million/mile), whereas transrapid cost 30 million/mile just in china.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You answered your own question. It's not sexy. Maglev is sexy. This is truly a real-life version of Monorail. No one but Stoiber and his little group of cronies wants it built. The track costs are enormous, the route will require no fewer than three more tunnels and two bridges (or bridge extensions), there are some difficult easements to obtain along the route, the energy usage is extreme, ugly noise abatement walls will have to be built, annual track maintenance is more than double the standard rail tracks which the S-Bahn uses, and all of this for what? To shave a maximum of half an hour off the trip between the airport and the train station.
Except no one will ride it. Most travelers aren't going to Hauptbahnhof. They're headed to Ostbahnhof, Marienplatz or Pasing. Once they arrive at the Hauptbahnhof they then have to transfer to the S-Bahn anyway. Not that anyone will ride the thing to begin with. The costs are so high that the ticket prices will be at least three times that of the normal S-Bahn. No local is about to shell out for that and neither would most of the foreigners.
An express S-Bahn in conjunction with the existing S-8 route could be done with only one additional track, but even with a dual track would be a much better solution. The time could be cut from 60 minutes to 40, only 10 minutes slower than the expected maglev time at a cost savings of a few billion plus more than 120 million annually in track maintenance, a recurring cost which will also continue to rise.
Anyone who believes the costs will actually stay anywhere near 2.6B is on drugs. This white elephant will end up costing us more than 5B. But it's sexy.
I want to know just how much of a vested interest in the suppliers, operators and landowners those who have pushed this project have. Maybe we can have another neat scandal.
"Except no one will ride it."
I would. you might be right that it wouldn't be popular among the normal commuters (not at 3x the normal price, anyway), but I've never been an a maglev, and would like to try it once.
So...maybe you should see it as a touristic attraction.
Ofcourse, you're probably right with the rest of your analysis. And indeed, it will probably cost 5 billion, if they predict 2.6 - those over-budget things happen a lot, with huge projects.
That said, a small remark, though. When I see the argument 'current TGV trains can go almost as fast as maglevs, for far less money'...well, true, in a way. But that's NOW, and that's when our current state of investment is pretty low, just because of the arguments you brought up. But, the old trainsystem can only be optimized in a relatively small way anymore: it's more of a technical 'polishing' and optimizing...but at the end, no drastic improvements are possible, because it's a fully matured technology.
When the jet-engine for airplanes was first build, they weren't all that faster then the old, matured and optimized classical engines neither. And they were costing a lot more, and were (are) more expensive in maintainance. If people then would have said; well, just let us continue the old way and optimize our current engines a bit further, the technology for the jet engine wouldn't be where it is today. It has proven to be a superior product in many respects by now. Maybe the same can be said of the maglev-development. Sure, it's more expensive to buy and to maintain, and it's currently not all that much faster than an ordinary high-speed train - but it's a NEW technology. That doesn't just mean it's more 'sexy', it also means it's at the beginning of its potential, not at the end, like our current, matured train-technologies.
It's often worth to give a novel technology a shot, even, certainly in the beginning, it doesn't seem all that better and is often more expensive. Fighting against an established market/technology can be very difficult, but it can have its advantages in the long term too.
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