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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.
Geez. As if finding money to throw around was ever a problem for politicians. And building a coast-to-coast maglev line would be a much less dangerous waste of money than some other, er, projects.
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.
Maybe this technology is still 20 years away from being feasible at all. Why not spend money on regular trains and install extra isolated windows in cities at only a fraction of the cost?
Full Tilt
The US Rail system needs a track upgrade. The east coast is going from horrible to better, but beyond the great divide, track conditions are apalling. Seems to me the best way to go would be to get more track certified for 120-150mph runs in the northeast corridor, and that would take the demand off of congested airports, and would certainly be more fuel economical.
This is my sig.
A hundred million bucks a mile? Do they have to coat the trains with moon rocks?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Most European cities would shit a brick if you suggested putting in an elevated monorail. Underground is far more expensive, but far more desirable, as it doesn't spoil the view that has taken hundreds of years to evolve.
A monorail is far from ideal.
Google for the cost of highway construction and one of the gems you find is this http://www-pam.usc.edu/volume2/v2i1a3s2.html link.
Read it and weep. 100 million per mile? Most costly project was 1 billion per mile and plenty of other projects are higher as well.
Now google a bit further and you find more "reasonable" costs of 20 million per mile being quoted but it makes it bloody clear that roads are very expensive indeed.
Yes sometimes they are cheap at a 1-3 million per mile, if the highway is simple and the conditions are ideal. This is however rarely the case. If you follow these kinds of projects you will also know that there are always complicating factors. For instance the straight road sections might be cheap, but the points where they connect to the rest of the road network, that is where the money really starts to bleed away. As for when you need a bridge or a tunnel. Just forget it.
Also offcourse not all highways are the same. One going through open desert vs one going through a city has huge extra costs in the form of safety, sound reduction and landcosts.
A further thing you might want to ask, how costly is maintenance, and what is the capacity of this network? It is less hassle to replace tradiotional rails then it is too resurface a road. How long is this 100 million per mile going to last you before more millions are needed to maintain it?
Then there is the question of what you get for it, if this 100 million dollar per mile track means you don['t have to construct/upgrade 10 road systems per say 20 million dollar per mile, then you are actually saving money.
But please slashdotters, next time you feel like posting about how costly something is, do a bit of research first. Although I really wish reporters would do it as well.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As someone living in Munich... I can tell you the German Maglev train is going nowhere. Everyone is opposed to it, except one politician who wants it as his 'swan song'.
They can either put in a Maglev for 1.2 billion euro for a 10 minute trip, or build a normal express S-bahn for 1 million for a 20 minute trip.
Maglev really makes no sense at all, but what do I know, maybe its more of a Shelbyville thing
If Shelbyville and North Haverbrook can afford it we can too!
-nick
Full Tilt
but here is the real issue.
How many votes per mile of track can a Congressman buy?
Answer that instead.
The amount of money just wasted in earmarks alone could solve a multitude of problems, from medical care, rehabilitation for our vets, maglev, NASA, and more. You name it, we have the money for it.
The problem is, not all of the above garner vote buying opportunities.
The real reason the Iraq war annoys Congressmen is that it deprives them of money they could have used in directed vote buying campaigns. Instead of a monument to a living Congressman (read: new pool in your neighborhood or library - etc) it went overseas and is lost to them. Now it does garner votes in a negative way but Congressmen prefer postive vote buying expenditures.
Now the problem I see with the maglev tower is, who is going to want it in their backyard? It looks more palatable than a windfarm but its so damn tall that that the land area may be moot versus the "sight pollution". Of course we already have giant cooling towers but this thing looks larger.
We really need a new Mahattan project for our generation - one that frees us of fossil fuel generated power. Of course our next problem will be heat pollution - all that power does have a side effect (green power or not)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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