Transport System Bögl: a new magnetic rail system
transportsystemboegl.com
transportsystemboegl.com
Max Bögel is the largest family-owned construction company in Germany. They build mainly infrastructure like roads, but where also involved in the Gigafactory in Grünheide in Germany.
So, for them its a new business unit to build more infrastructure as a whole contractor. They can delivery everything, not like it is today in infrastructure projects where you have many different contractors providing different parts.
So, they want to sell more concrete.
For how this can go wrong, look at the story of the Translohr (some sort of guided bus touted as a cheaper alternative to a conventional steel wheel tram), where the cities who bought that system subsequently had difficulties in persuading Alstom (who had bought up the tram part of the Translohr technology and eventually decided to sort of discontinue that system) to continue providing maintenance support or possibly even additional vehicles for the exisiting Translohr installations.
Just wanted to say if the Transrapid consortium with the biggest German industry players and decades of public investment backing could not make it, I would not try again. This is not the SW business where any can start with some resources rented in the cloud. Of course sometimes it's just too early to be right, but wouldn't count on it.
On the anecdotal side my first presentation in school around 1972 was about the German Maglev train project. It did not go as predicted, they sold one minor line to Shanghai decades later.
Context:
The old munich airport in Riem was closed in the 90s. The new airport was very far away. Gadgetbahn Transrapid, running through tunnels and above the remains of the old olympia train line from '72, should save the day. MP Stoiber tries to explain the advantages.
Translation:
If you start from the main station in Munich with 10 minutes, without having to check in at the airport yet, then you basically start at the airport, at the main station in Munich you start your flight. 10 minutes. Take a look at the major airports. If you go to Heathrow in London or anywhere else, Charles de Gaulle in France or in Rome, if you look at the distances, if you look at Frankfurt, you will find that 10 minutes is all you need to find your gate in Frankfurt. If you start from the main station, you get into the main station[1], you take the Transrapid to Franz Josef Strauss[2] Airport in 10 minutes, then you practically start here, at the main station in Munich. Of course, this means that the main station basically grows closer to Bavaria, to the Bavarian cities, because that is obvious, because many lines from Bavaria converge at the main station.
[1] "get into" like you would get into a bus, like if the station actually transports you to your destination [2] Bavarian MP and German Minister in the 60s/70s/80s, Munich Airport is named after him
Braindeadly conservative folks outside of Munich and the other population centers.
Standard not only means you won't get an orphan system, but it also means you as a city can order from anyone. If the company you normally order from is busy with other orders you can buy from someone else when you have need.
Standard means as a manufacture you can afford to invest in more jigs. Jigs are very expensive to make, but they decrease the cost of each whatever built with them. As such the more customers of the same thing the more jigs are worth investing in. Every change the jigs cannot handle is additional cost. (some jigs are adjustable, so within limits you could do things like non-standard wheel gauges - you still shouldn't but you could)
Also, this new system is designed for cruising speeds of up to 150 km/h (instead of 500 km/h).
But in addition to passenger transport, they seem to be able to carry freight as well. Last year there was a demo track for container transport in Hamburg's harbour [1], not sure, if it's still there.
But even that extremely low bar isn't achievable. Meanwhile, local, state, and federal government can find $200 billion dollars a year to spend on roads so we can all be stuck in traffic on good quality pavement...
Off the top of my head:
From their rolling (gliding?) stock concepts it looks like they're targeting the automated metro system market, think London DLR or Vancouver Skytrain. With these system top speed isn't really the issue as you'll be constrained by acceleration and stop spacing. Better gains can be had in this space by building better signalling systems, allowing the trains to run at higher frequencies.
All of their marketing materials show the trains going in perfect straight lines. A lot of other monorail systems are constrained by this, because building switches for monorails is hard. Throw maglev into the mix and I can't imagine the problem gets any easier.
They focus a bit on ease of construction with the elevated rail segments being made of pre-cast concrete sections. I'm faily certain any modern elevated train guideway is also made of pre-made sections on a production line. They're trying to sell normal as some kind of innovation.
All the usual gadgetbahn things seem to apply as well. TSB goes bust? Good luck getting new rolling stock. Want to integrate this service with existing stations and track? Nope, it's all bespoke. Want to get rolling stock from a different supplier that can meet your local needs better? Good luck with that one. Nobody else buys this system, so it remains expensive forever? Sucks to be you.
In the end maglev isn't worth it. It is only marginally faster than regular rail, and a lot slower than flying. You can bring a few cities just outside of regular rail range into train range, but if you just let those people fly you overall have a cheaper system.
Sticking to standard rail means that you can share track with other service. While this isn't easy (you need a lot of people in the office ensuring the schedule works) the options make it well worth it. Even if you only share rail overnight when you are running less service, 24 hour service is something all cities should have on all lines.
The maglev Japan is building between Tokyo and Nagoya (and eventually Osaka) should be productive, but that is more of a traditional high speed one and will have enough traffic to support it.
In the US, we're so far behind that we can just plain copy just about any modern train system. It's not the tech that's the issue, it's the land use, policy, and planning.
On the less sarcastic side: unlike the major partners in the former Transrapid project (Siemens and whatever the current incarnation of Thyssen was called at the time), they aren't a public company but some kind of family estate foundation. That type of organization has far more liberty to follow vanity projects than anything pubic could ever dream of.
This is their test track, on the right-hand side of the road (edit: click on the picture, there's also a 360° panorama of the track)
A prototype was developed in Germany some 50 years ago [1] but never caught on.
But it looks like Japan will be the first with a proper intercity line in 2027-ish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen
I think, they extended the original track later on. But no new one will be ever build.
Trnasrapid seems like a much more mature and capable design than their own. E.g. While Transrapid uses a T-shaped track, Bögl uses a U-shaped track. That's not going to work well with snow or falling leaves, not to mention people on platforms discarding items into the tracks…
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Transport+System+B%C3%B6gl...
Deutsche Bahn have given up the idea that it's something you could advertise for a brighter future with so they must have been happy to get rid of it without getting bad press for destroying industrial heritage.
Max Bögl participated in the construction of the Shanghai line. So I guess they thought it would be nice exhibit of being a global player.
standardization is a very useful thing in the world. Standards mean you can buy from many different suppliers - if one train manufacture is busy find a different. Standards also mean you can share track with different lines spreading construction costs out. (this even includes freight trains) Standards mean manufactures can invest in jigs that are not worth building for custom things that nobody else needs - or worth building but the cost of the jig is spread out across more parts. One special case of a jig is a long assembly line - note that a modern car is very complex and yet new they start at only $16,000. While trains will never be in high enough demand to get that cheap, there is a lot of opportunity to lower costs if only there were more orders of the same thing (like cars you can choose what color paint you want and a few other options)
It's also marketed as a fully turn-key system where everything starting from the design and finishing with the vehicles and operations control will be provided by Bögl, which conversely also means that it's a fully proprietary system and you're dependent on Bögl for continuing support or any future expansions, too.
Downsides are that you need to build completely new tracks with limited curvature (and new stations).
from the website: Cruising speed of up to 150 km/h
I'm guessing that the value proposition of this particular system is that it's cut certain performance corners to achieve a far lower cost while still providing more than adequate speed for the intracity use case.
I can't imagine this in the middle of EU architecture
Or in the middle of Asian temples, or in the middle of a beautiful landscape
They really need better designers
Also the front doesn't look like aerodynamic
Possibly, making the front more aerodynamic has so many disadvantages that it’s not worth it. For example, a train with a long nose means less space for passengers in a given length of train. It also may be a bad choice aerodynamically if you want to have the ability to combine multiple railroad cars into a single train.
"EU architecture" already juxtaposes ornate pre-1900 buildings with brutalist concrete blocks and glass spires, so no change there.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1019_4-Gleisdreieck-... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Model_1000_of_Odakyu...
an example of what's beautiful and modern design (imo) is the Tram in Bordeaux, France
https://www.alstom.com/fr/press-releases-news/2020/2/alstom-...
https://i.redd.it/fbl047w3qdpy.jpg
https://static.actu.fr/uploads/2020/07/tramway-bordeaux-854x...