“superconductive magnetic levitation railways at 500 km/h”
With the Shanghai maglev in 2001, it looked like this was a given.
Instead, it’s still too expensive?
Anyone predict the US still wouldn’t have a bullet train in 2025?
With the Shanghai maglev in 2001, it looked like this was a given.
Instead, it’s still too expensive?
Anyone predict the US still wouldn’t have a bullet train in 2025?
This sort of technology would be significant if widely adopted.
It makes more sense to focus our money on slower speed trains that are still fast enough and use much less energy.
Maglevs that went smoothly at 62mph (100km) would be a big improvement.
Medium speed maglev trains are also a thing: https://crrczelc-europe.com/medium-low-speed-maglev-changsha...
Where do you get maglevs ant low speed are less efficient? They are frictionless. Of course, I don’t even care if they are. You know what they’re more efficient than? Cars!
Building medium-speed and high-speed maglevs are part of the solution to getting people out of cars.
They are building them in China. Let’s see how far they get.
China built almost 30,000 miles of HSR before the US finished any.
Maybe maglevs will turn out to be one of those things that just doesn’t work in America but works everywhere else.
I predict the US will still not have a bullet train in 2055 either. The US just has very little institutional ability to build new/improved infrastructure.
That I'm only willing to predict one section and not the enough to be useful proves your analysis of why is correct.
Another factor in the US is that our railroads are generally freight oriented. Routing to have three ground based networks is challenging (road, freight rail, passenger high speed rail), especially in urban areas where right of way is expensive and also over mountain passes. A lot of urban freight rail lines are currently unused; some of them become greenway rail trails, others sit unused and may be at risk of encroachment, but often the alignment isn't useful for high speed rail anyway.
In some places you might have shinkansen, multiple private narrow gauge networks, metro and regular roads going through the same piece of land.