Japanese railway operator to license maglev tech to US for free
asia.nikkei.com
asia.nikkei.com
As an example, I just took the Amtrak train from NYC to Montreal to attend PyCon (which is awesome!), which took all in all 11 hours to cover a distance a little over 530 km. For comparison, going from my hometown Saarbrücken in Germany to Paris (which is about the same distance) takes less than two hours (1:40h to be exact) with TGV or ICE trains. Arguably for the latter there is no border to be crossed (OK actually there is but none that is patroled) but still, this kind of makes you wonder why a high-tech nation like the USA doesn't have a similar system of high-speed trains in place, and I think that the answer has more to do with political unwillingness and lobbying than with lack of technology.
BTW, in Germany there once was an attempt to build a Transrapid (our version of Maglev that is deployed in Shanghai, developed by Siemens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid) track to connect the Munich airport to the city centre (see "Munich Link" section in the article above), but calculations showed that the achievable time saving compared to the latest generation of ICE high-speed trains would be only 3 minutes, whereas the additional cost would have been around 3 BN €, which lead to the project being eventually ditched.
In e.g. Berlin (for SXF at least), Frankfurt and Munich there's only the fantastically slow S-Bahn, with ride times around 40-60 minutes.
*the announced opening date of the new airport has been delayed by several years to the point where it's questionable if it will ever open...
I think it is a bit less nefarious than that. The simple fact is that there is not a whole lot of demand for these services. The major corridors are covered just fine (planes, trains and automobiles) and building a high speed train wouldn't really offer too much benefit and the cost would be astronomical.
I understand though that in the US planes and automobiles are considered viable alternatives to trains, especially considering the average distances between cities here, which tend to be much larger than in Europe.
High speed trains don't solve the problem the average worker has and never will. They do not spend nearly the time traveling the "jet set" does. The type of trains they can benefit from, both light and heavy rail, are localized and definitely not sexy.
Besides, as technology ramps up the need to travel for business goes down, let alone automated automobiles, electrically powered, and solar charged, will about end the need for trains except for cargo. US uses trains more than most countries for moving cargo.
-To my knowledge it's still a completely hypothetical technology without an existing proof-of-concept prototype, so it's unclear how fast it could be brought to maturity.
-Supposing it could be realized as planned it's still unlikely that the initial cost-effectiveness would be better than that of existing, alternative solutions such as the Maglev, Transrapid or even conventional bullet trains, which haven't yet reached their theoretical limitations in speed and efficiency.
An example: At an hypothetical average speed of 960 km/h (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop), the Hyperloop could traverse the distance between LA and SF in about 30 mins. For comparison, the current speed record for a TGV is 560 km/h, which yields a theoretical travel time of slightly less than 1 hour for the same route. I think it's questionable whether the 30 minute gain in travel time would justify the large amount or R&D necessary to make the Hyperloop a reality, let alone make this a viable economic undertaking. Of course this doesn't mean that it's impossible (it is not), just that I think it won't become a reality in the near future (but then again, people tend to be horribly wrong when making predictions about this kind of stuff).
It should surprise no one that it is less expensive to build a track which avoids crossing two mountain ranges--yet Musk compared the cost of building a hyperloop in the central valley to that of a building a conventional train from LA to San Francisco. When you compare apples to apples (conventional vs. hyperloop in the central valley), conventional rail comes out much cheaper.
That route, picturesque though it is, is also not remotely economically viable. The parts of New York state it connects to are very poor compared to the endpoints, and it just doesn't get enough passengers. New York subsidise it to provide those communities with some links. (A drive through more remote parts of NY can be really depressing, but the Adirondacks are amazing).
The simple reality is an improved normal speed train service wouldn't make a difference, but the cost to build high speed is ridiculous either because the distances are too large or you're in already built up areas.
Maybe it will work out better in the future.
The biggest problem I see is that the gains of this technology would be rather small anywhere with conventional high-speed rail or existing infrastructure that can be upgraded to that. With Maglev everything needs to be built from scratch. That’s just not very attractive for any place that has consistently expanded its rail network ever since the height of the industrial revolution.
And for what? A 180km/h faster train? I personally very much want that, sure, but is it worth it for anyone building it? I’m pretty sure I know the answer in Western Europe (though I can always hope that maglev has a future there), I’m not so sure when it comes to the US.
The route is just too winding for those speeds in so many places and you end up going 60MPH for much of the trip.
The best views going north are past the Connecticut river, rolling through Niantic, to New London and the small coastal villages like Mystic, and heading south the rail bridge that runs next to the Triborough gives you a fantastic panorama of Manhattan's east side.
I love the train.
Never heard about having dedicated rails. It would be nice, since the FRC requires any train that travels on track shared by freight to be basically built like a tank, which makes them much more expensive to make an operate.
For anyone else interested, that's the Hell Gate Bridge[0]. It's odd, I'm in the generation that will always think of the Triborough as the Triborough, not the RFK, the same way others still think Interboro, not Jackie Robinson.
And a big advantage of rail is that the trains can just run on conventional track and progressively go faster while portions of the track are converted to high-speed, while maglev needs a complete run of maglev track before it starts being usable.
A closely sitting and smooth train wheel gets damaged pretty quickly traveling on track that is accustomed to freight traffic. That now-damaged wheel then goes on to damage the polished high speed track, which then further damages other trains' wheels in a vicious circle.
China's new high speed train network, for example, is almost all dedicated track (a large part newly constructed routes) with existing track used only where there are space constraints (for example, a city centre station).
In the US, the railway system was developed for freight primarily, and is not suitable for high-speed rail. So, if you want faster trains, you have to lay new track regardless. In that situation, maglev is not necessarily a terrible choice.
Going an extra 110mph(180km/h) would be a huge win. It greatly extends the distance where a train wins over a jet.
Also consider, for instance, in the NYC area, you could live 100 miles away from Manhattan and easily commute to work. That means you could live in downtown Philly and work in Manhattan, 30 minutes away. The world becomes a lot smaller.
The article mentions Washington to Baltimore as the first segment to be built. The existing rail lines pass over a number of level crossings, and pass under some bridge spans that are fairly snug for the existing track. And the mile or two before you get to Baltimore's Penn Station are in tunnel. I doubt the tunnel has much width to spare--how much would it cost in 2014 to widen a couple of miles of tunnel under a densely built city?
73 miles of track, 40 stations, 26 miles of tunnel under London. £16bn ($27bn-ish). So, for your project, I'd handwave at $1-5bn.
Not really, because jets will go much more places that your single maglev line ever will. That's the problem with hi-tech trains. They are extremely costly to deploy in terms of infrastructure, they go over land that could be used for other purposes, and because of the large investment required they only go in very few places. Jets win everywhere else.
Of course they don't. Getting to an airport 60-90 minutes before a flight that's only 60-90 minutes doesn't make much sense
But the requirement to arrive 90 minutes before departure time is not a problem with the vehicle but the bureaucracy and security apparatus around it.
True Story: while I like to arrive well before a flight (just in case) when I was younger it was not unheard of to arrive at the airport _minutes_ before flight departure and simply stroll down the causeway, and onto the flight.
And the british airways cream tea was amazing as it should be for >£200
This is not a good thing.
● Both are extremely expensive per mile compared to HSR (high speed rail). Sure it's faster than high speed rail but a technology doesn't make it because it's better, but because it's more practical to implement.
● Service is not as tried and trusted as HSR. Germany's test facilities have been torn down after the Shangai maglev was built and Japan's maglev hasn't been expanded. On an emotional human level it just doesn't feel trustworthy. If you're not growing you're dying.
● Both technologies are proprietary whereas HSR has more companies and manufacturers to chose from.
● HSR could probably compete with maglev speeds by building a wider gauge track, using larger wheels, and implementing more aerodynamic designs to reduce drag and power consumption.
● Germany and Japan are pitching their maglev trains while they themselves aren't avid users of them.
=== Lessons ===
If you want something to succeed sometimes you have to set it free.
If you're not expanding or growing you're dying.
If you want people to use your solution, instill trust by investing in and using your own solution.
As if late, traditional HSR is getting a lot of competition (in Japan at least) from domestic flights that cost almost exactly the same and take about the same amount of time. This has led to a resurgence of the "old" airports in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.
Oh, and don't trust any taxi driver who speaks English, you're extremely likely to be scammed. Don't ask me how I know.
Let me give you an example...in the midwest USA there is a short commuter line called South Shore that runs from SouthBend Indiana to southern shore of Lake Michigan and up to the Loop in Chicago
Most of the stations on the South Shore are either blocks apart or a few miles apart..which negates a high speed rail solution