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Transportation Bill Sets Aside $45 Million For MagLev Train
tbischel tips us to news that the MagLev train project which would run from Las Vegas to Disneyland has received approval for $45 million in funding. The project has been in the planning stages for quite some time, and it was delayed further by a drafting error in a 2005 highway bill.
"Derided by critics as pie in the sky, the train would use magnetic levitation technology to carry passengers from Disneyland to Las Vegas in well under two hours, traveling at speeds of up to 300 mph. It would be the first MagLev system in the U.S. The money is the largest cash infusion in the project's nearly 20-year history. It will pay for environmental studies for the first leg of the project."
So a route which was cancelled because of low ridership... is getting the most expensive trainset in the country?
Disney land is in the LA Metro area which has a population of about 13,000,000 people while LV has a metro area of about 1,700,000 people. Most of the land between the two is desert while most of the land between DC and NYC is populated making a right of way much more difficult to obtain there. The way the summary states that it connects to Disneyland, while possibly true, is really designed to be deceptive. It would have been much more honest if it said connects to LA and LV. There exists a huge amount of both car and air traffic between the two cities. Even with the high price of gas and a recent expansion of the highway between the two cities the roads are still clogged. While I don't know if maglev is the right technology a solid case for high speed rail between LA and NV can certainly be made.
Cheers,
Greg
The French LGV Est is 300 km and cost 4 billion euros - $6 billion. $21 million a mile.
Or if you look at the British London-to-channel-tunnel rail link, it cost £5.2 billion ($10 billion) for 108 km - $100 million a mile.
Even if economies of scale get the price down to $10 million per km the cost will be $4 billion.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Won't happen. It'd be nice but it won't happen.
I read Trains magazine religiously each month. This month there was an article about a train (Amtrak) that Missouri pays for to run between St. Louis and Kansas City (IIRC). Ridership on the train was very good, but unfortunately the track it uses has a lot of freight trains as well, so the Amtrak trains are frequently late, and ridership is declining. Missouri did a study and found that it'd cost $45 million to improve the line, and they allocated $10 million to double track a few sections.
Meanwhile, as the article points out, if Missouri instead decided to build a 6-lane highway, the federal gov't would kick in 80% of the funding.
Sanity. It just won't happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel-electric_locomotive#Diesel-electric
I wouldn't call it 'dirty'. For a diesel they're quite clean, considering their power and size.
There's no drive between diesel engine and wheels.
I also wouldn't consider a mechanical link between the engine and the wheels a disabling factor for calling it a 'hybrid'. That's how GM is proposing the volt be set up, actually.
What would disable it is that, unlike car hybrids, current generation diesel electrics don't have any significant levels of alternative storage - they can't store energy from stopping to get started again.
Instead, the reason they use the electronics is that it's replacing the transmission - which would actually be more costly, less efficient and break sooner than the electronic setup. Oh, they'll use the electric motors to help them stop, saving brake pads, but instead of going to a battery the energy goes to a resister net on the roof of the locomotive.
Personally, given that trains normally go for non-stop travel, I wonder if it might be better to leave the batteries in the station so the train doesn't have to haul them and electrify the rails, at least in switching yards and such, instead.
I don't read AC A human right
How about this:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/freight_in_america/html/table_01.html
The US moves (by weight):
Truck: 60%
Train: 10%
Boat: 8%
Pipeline: 18%
Mixed-mode: 1%
Other 2%
The interesting thing is the ton-miles table where Trains are much closer to Trucks.
I used to work at a mid-sized auto parts company. We had a fleet of about 20 trucks that would move things from Minnesota to about half of the country, mostly on the east side. I always thought it was fairly in-efficient that we had trucks that would go all the way to Texas instead of driving it into Minneapolis (55 miles), then shipping it via train to Dallas where a local truck would take it to a warehouse for store distribution.
There are diesel-electric/electric locomotives:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-diesel_locomotive
They use them quite a bit in Europe. Europe also has a plethora of voltages (and a choice between 0Hz, 16.7Hz and 50Hz depending on the line). There are locomotives that can tap into any combination. The general trend in the Europe is for electrification reduce the noise and raising the voltage to increase the available power.
...except GE is now making (and selling) a "true" hybrid locomotive. Yes, it has a big battery pack. It's intended to run on batteries for starting out in urban areas and storing some of the energy currently radiated away from regenerative braking.
I think GE and EMD are working on hybrid switchers, too, but along the line of the Chevy Volt: engine runs generator, which keeps battery pack charged, or can provide additional on-demand electrical boost, but running on battery is main source of power, which is opposite of current car hybrid systems, where the battery pack provides the boost.