Maglev On the Drawing Boards

longacre sends along a Popular Mechanics article on the growing interest in magnetic levitation trains in the US. It's unclear how many will actually get built here, at $100 million per track mile. (In recent years we've discussed maglev projects in China and Germany.) The article has a map of many proposed transportation projects in the US, some of them maglev, and a video of a General Atomics maglev prototype in action. On a related note, an anonymous reader recommends this article on a proposed maglev wind-power turbine, said to offer the promise of replacing 1,000 conventional wind turbines.

Comments

Why get so fancy?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The Japanese, who probably ride more miles of rail than any other country in the world, rely on plain old rails. Even the famous Bullet Trains run on rails.

Sometimes it feels like Americans are trying to put the cart before the horse when they don't even have anything to put on the cart.

Re:Why get so fancy?

[bsane]

Exactly...

How is maglev better anyway? So you reduce your rolling friction to zero, what do you save? 1% of total operating power? You'd spend a lot more if your using electromagnets to keep the 'lev' action going...

On the subject of maglev windmills- I fail to see any real savings here. Windmills are hard to turn because they're doing work (ie creating power with a generator), the actual friction involved is very low.

If you want a train/subway, just build the damn thing. Same goes for windmills.

Re:Why get so fancy?

[Firethorn]

You'd still have to worry about security though. At least a plane at altitude is very hard to shoot down. So unless you manage to plant a terrorist or bomb on the plane it's safe until landing approach.

With the train you could place a bomb of sufficient size anywhere along the tracks set to detonate at the right time to take out the train. Not saying this can't be solved, but we do have to be careful.

Still, I think that it'd be an excellent idea, especially if you relax baggage restrictions as compared to a plane as well.

I could see it going like this:
I'll pick a presumably high volume route, NYC to LAX.
Cost: About the same.

Seating: Well, almost all of us should be familiar with airline seating. Not being huge(fat or otherwise), I'm OK with economy seating, but it doesn't recline as much as I'd like. With a train though, they could more easily give 'first class' seats to everybody. In addition, I'd imagine seeing the return of the sleeper and dining cars. Imagine, rather than having 3 choices of meal that are all pretty terrible, having an actual menu. And after your dinner you retire to a sleeper car and get a good night's sleep while you travel. Wake up, have a nice breakfast and read the paper until you arrive. Advantage: Train, as long as they're smart.

Duration: NYC to LAX is 7 to 8 hours, with one stop. At 300mph, a train would be able to make a straightline distance in ~8 hours, nonstop. Assuming some stops, and the fact that a straightline track between the two locations is rather unlikely, I'll guess it'd be more along the line of 12-16 hours. Advantage: Plane, barely. Overnight train with sleeper cars (and waiting private showers at the train station) would beat it in convenience.

Baggage: Train should be able to relax baggage limits quite a bit. Advantage Train

Given that NYC to LAX would be about a worst case scenario, I could see high speed rail from NYC to Miami, Alaska to California, and at least a couple cross continent passing through places like Dallas, Denver, and Chicago. For one thing if used it'd take a lot of pressure off our airport runways.

Heck, get it good enough and to enough places I could see running cargo over them as well as people - if it's cheaper than air, UPS, Fedex and all them will jump on. Get some trucks off the road.

Though in the article, looking at the map, I can see that we're probably in need of some standardization - it doesn't help cross country travel by rail if they're all incompatible.

Re:Why get so fancy?

[WindBourne]

Not sure where you get the energy costs being similar.See the energy costs in the PM article. The interesting thing is that the Maglev uses less energy than the high speed rail, yet is more than 50% faster.
In addition, the Japanese have a number of different models including a Maglev, and a number of monorails. Japan is increasingly moving to monorails (which are rail based), and away from the standard twin rail system. Why? Because the twin rail system is dirt cheap to build on land, but a small earthquake will send the train off the track (yes, they do get derailed). In addition, the twin tracks cost a great deal more once it is elevated. In fact, it is one of the most expensive options that you have (equivalent to maglev's costs ). Not only does the train have to be built strong to survive truck crashes (hint; that almost always means heavy), but you have to have the track support itself. It adds costs. Of course, the maglev is next to nothing on maintenance compared to twin rails. Finally, Maglev IS cheaper to run than a twin rail, esp because it is elevated and can be automated, is lighter trains, etc.

Long term, maglevs/monorails ARE the way to go.

Re:Why get so fancy?

[jsiren]

I'm not a big fan of maglev. I do recognize that it's a great technology and a nice bit of engineering, but I'm not convinced of its practicality in most cases. The French TGV and the German ICE run at ~200 mph (~300 to 320 km/h). That's fast enough to beat flying over distances of up to 800 miles, depending on airport delays. The dedicated high-speed steel rail lines are much cheaper to construct (by a factor of 10) and operate than maglev.

At 200 mph average speed (possible with dedicated lines, few stops and slightly over 200 mph cruising speed, no big deal) a New York to Los Angeles trip would take something like 13 to 14 hours; increasing the speed to 300 mph would drop the time to something like 9 hours.

If there were a transcontinental 300 mph line available, then 9 hours would certainly beat most flights, with airport delays factored in. However, there's more to the issue. First, a maglev train would be extremely vulnerable to any signalling or trackage faults, and any problem would cause the entire line to stand still, whereas steel rail lines could (and would, and should) be connected to the rest of the rail network, making it easier to route around problems. The trip would take longer, but you'd get there, even if the high-speed line was in pieces.

This brings us to the issue of connections. People don't live at international airports, despite TSA's efforts, and they don't live at rail stations, at least those who could afford to use the trains. So connections are needed. Steel wheel trains could carry on using the existing infrastructure (as the French TGV trains do, sometimes far away from the actual high-speed lines), to where it's convenient for people to get on and off, possibly including airports so existing air connections could be utilized. With maglev, there are two choices: extend the line ($$$$$$$$$), or change trains.

Finally, 300 mph has been reached on steel rails. What I'd like to know is which is more energy efficient (kW per passenger seat at 480 km/h) in 300 mph operation: maglev or steel? Because to my knowledge, at that kind of speed most of the resistance comes from displacing air...

Re:Why get so fancy?

[jsiren]

(...) I'd imagine seeing the return of the sleeper and dining cars. Imagine, rather than having 3 choices of meal that are all pretty terrible, having an actual menu. And after your dinner you retire to a sleeper car and get a good night's sleep while you travel. Wake up, have a nice breakfast and read the paper until you arrive. Advantage: Train, as long as they're smart.

Duration: NYC to LAX is 7 to 8 hours, with one stop. At 300mph, a train would be able to make a straightline distance in ~8 hours, nonstop. Assuming some stops, and the fact that a straightline track between the two locations is rather unlikely, I'll guess it'd be more along the line of 12-16 hours. Advantage: Plane, barely. Overnight train with sleeper cars (and waiting private showers at the train station) would beat it in convenience.

I am not a transportation engineer, but based on what I know about TGV construction costs, I guess a NYC-Chicago-LAX conventional high speed line (estimating a length of 5000 km or 3125 miles), built for 220 mph (350 km/h) operation could be built at a price of perhaps $75 billion (the price of 750 miles of maglev line). At an average speed of 200 mph (320 km/h), the trip would take about 16 hours. If the trains consisted mostly of sleepers, with showers (no problem these days), and had a decent dining car, and had a no-additional-cost onboard Internet access, this might even catch on.

Should such a line be built, it would be put to good use if besides the transcontinental trains there were also other high-speed trains running shorter distances with more frequent stops, providing intercity service along the line. Also, there's no need to stay on the dedicated lines: there's already a passenger corridor down the east coast, for example. High-speed trains would only require a dedicated line where continuous high-speed running is required. Existing city stations could be used, so departure an arrival would be downtown.

Now, I do admit that having a long stretch of dedicated high-speed track sounds like the job for maglev, but it's easily forgotten that transportation is a network. Different modes of transport are linked together. The dilemma is that people generally dislike transfers and prefer direct connections. A new rail line that's incompatible with the existing lines (such as a maglev line) would not enable direct connections, except for a minority of trips.

The only question is who would do this? Richard Branson?

Re:Too expensive?

[chrysrobyn]

And $100 million per track mile is very optimistic considering the Japanese Linimo HSST cost some $100 million per kilometer, or rougly 0.62 miles.

I've had a fascination with maglevs since Popular Mechanics did an article in the early 1990s or late 1980s. Finally, I made it to the World Fair in Aichi in 2005 and saw the Linmo ("Linear Motor"). Actually, I rode it. It was awesome. Not the "awesome" that kids use when they do well on a test, but the "awesome" from waiting for something and then unexpectedly being able to do it after 15 years. The ride was smooth as silk (vertically speaking); the starts and stops were a little sudden, and there seemed to be discrete speed steps. With that said, I have a hard time imagining that $100 million was spent wisely. A rail car could have done the same job for far less. If moving a person costs (installation) + (operating expenses), a maglev has to move a whole lot of people at lower (operating expenses) to make up for the phenomenal (installation).

Between the maglev and the walking robots from Honda playing Louisiana style jazz, the whole hot, crowded, noisy, expensive trip was well worth it.

Amtrak and NJ transit

[zerofoo]

can't seem to make money on the current economies of rail travel. Even at the lowest estimates ($5 million a track mile) I doubt either of these rail systems could make this technology profitable.

Public transportation all over the world requires government funding. Here in the US we seem to think that private companies and capitalism are the answer for everything. Unfortunately for us, this system usually enriches a select few people, provides goods and services that are mediocre at best, and cost quite a bit of money for the users of those goods and services.

The Northeast is particularly bad. Years ago, my wife was commuting to North Jersey - for the cost of her monthly train pass, (nj transit and path) and her monthly parking pass - she could have bought a nice BMW. (Instead she drove a VW Jetta to the train station).

If these companies can't make the current economics work with that kind of revenue, maglev has no hope of ever becoming a reality.

-ted

Re:How much is that in ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Flip the equation around and it gets even better.

March '03 to March '08 is 60 months. That's $408 billion invested into war in Iraq.
At $0.1 billion per track mile, America could have paid for 4080 miles of maglev rail infrastructure. Even at double the cost, that's still over 2000 miles.

According to Google maps, Boston to Miami is 1500 miles. And Chicago to Washington is 700 miles.