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?

[Smidge204]

The advantage is speed. A maglev train is essentially a plane without wings, so speeds of 300+MPH are not unreasonable right now. In theory, though, a Maglev can reach the 500+MPH of a commercial jet.

Of course, the French TVG is also about that fast, so that advantage no longer really holds much weight until the technology improves. Maglev right now is pretty much a "bright shiny thing" to make the public all doe-eyed so they don't mind the pork as much. (Much like the "Hydrogen Economy")

You might not have noticed, but America is a pretty big country. If you want to cross it, you have three options: Plane (~500MPH), Train (~80MPH) or car/bus (~60MPH). Assuming you're not making the trip for the scenery, the choice is pretty much a no-brainer.

A fast train, ~300MPH, would make trans-continental travel easier. Even if it took twice as long, it would still be same-day travel and I'd prefer to take a high speed train than an aircraft (unless I *had* to get there in 6 hours). If a viable Maglev train could cover the distance at the same speed as the jet, though, then there is no advantage to flying at all.
=Smidge=

Re:Why get so fancy?

[jfruhlinger]

You might not have noticed, but America is a pretty big country....

True, but a significant portion of intra-US trips take place within the northeast, the most densely populated part of the country. Washington-Boston is 450 miles; New York-Chicago is 800 miles. There's also a lot of intra-West Coast travel -- LA-San Francisco (400 miles), LA-Phoenix (375), San Francisco-Seattle (800 miles).

One of my pet peeves is that many Americans, when told about how Europeans are much more likely to travel by train, reflexively point out how big America is. It's true, but when Europeans travel from, say, Madrid to Warsaw, they fly. It's the sub-1000-mile trips on which trains can be competitive with both air and car travel if they're upgraded to high-speed standards -- something that can be done far more cheaply and easily than building a maglev. And with trains being far less polluting per passenger than either cars or planes, and air travel being an increasingly unpleasant experience, it's high time to invest in upgrading rail corridors.

To the ****** commenting on price

[SmallFurryCreature]

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.

Germany

[thefirelane]

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

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