Maglev Train Seen Making Washington-to-Baltimore Trip at 311 MPH | Hacker News Reader

Maglev Train Seen Making Washington-to-Baltimore Trip at 311 MPH

bloomberg.com

32 pointsforrest_t50 comments

"Seen" making? I think they mean "imagined" or "might make" or "in the wild imaginations of someone looking for funding".

'To imagine as possible' is a common meaning of 'see'. It's obviously not 'perceive with the eye' in this case.

Definition 3d here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/see

I understand the possible use of 'seen' in the headline but in this context it would be taken by most readers as 'observed'. Sloppy sub-editing at best.

Not really... it's just a "form" of the subjunctive... "Maglev train _could be_/_would be_ seen making ..." You can leave the would/could be out from a stylistic point of view imho, but you normally don't do that out of context (as it is unfortunately done here)....

It would be one thing to hear a person say colloquially "I could see Barack Obama doing stand up comedy" but quite another for a headline to read "Barack Obama seen doing stand up comedy"

"Barack Obama seen doing lecture circuit" would be less unlikely around the end of his term.

But hey, if it's confusing to enough people I suppose it's a bad headline.

Common, yes, but not the most common, and not what I assumed. And apparently I'm not alone. I found it confusing.

How is it "obviously" not the perception sense unless you already know the relevant facts? A headline that's only informative if you've already read the article is pointless.

Yeah. Totally inappropriate title.

It's crappy headline-ese. There are certain words that have been chosen more for length than for literal meaning. These old print-isms persist online. Don't give it to much thought or we're going to have a row: cops.

See what I did there?

This impresses me as someone chasing Federal funds and trying to PoC maglev in the US, not a solution to any real problem.

>'A maglev train may help ease traffic that has made roads in Maryland’s Montgomery County, which lies between Washington and Baltimore, the fourth-most-congested in the country, according to digital-mapping company TomTom NV. (TOM2) Washington ranks seventh.'

Not really.

Prince Georges, Anne Arundel and Howard lie between Baltimore and DC, hence the existing MARC lines running through them [1]. Any new lines would undoubtedly follow those paths.

It's not DC <-> Baltimore that's miserable it's Northern VA <-> North / East DC suburbs. Transit in the DC area is built around bringing people in and out of DC, not from suburb to suburb.

People who don't take MARC for the DC <-> Baltimore now aren't doing it for time, they're doing it because they don't want to ride the MARC, deal with the bottleneck of Union Station then ride two Metro trains and a bus to get to work in VA. Swapping MARC for Maglev won't change that, but it will cost a lot of money.

Improving the existing infrastructure and/or figuring out how to draw more business into DC proper would be a better use of any funds.

1: http://mta.maryland.gov/sites/default/files/MARCsystemmap.JP...

I don't think there is now, or will be anytime in the foreseeable future, the demand for 300mph service between DC and Baltimore. The only possible driver for this would be for affordable housing. Home prices in and around DC are exorbitant, but they are relatively affordable around Baltimore. So this would have to be a 300 mph commuter train. And commuter trains make a lot of stops, meaning it wouldn't approach anything close to that speed.

Bullet trains would only make sense over long distances. This won't happen. What we need is more commuter rail capacity, and more lines, so the trains can make fewer, faster stops. We need to move more people more efficiently, not just faster.

Yes, the commuter railroads are already at capacity in the DC metro area. Simply increasing the old fashioned rail capacity by adding more tracks to the MARC trunk lines would provide far, far greater bang for the buck. See: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/20426/marc-backs-aw...

Faster trains can support more trips per day on the same track. Now, the problem is that people generally want to leave at the same time, but if the journey time was say 15 minutes, you could do 5 minute frequency during peak with a few trains.

There would have to be few stops...even point to point, for this to work though. Think Shinkansen.

We don't need more trains per day. It only matters at rush hour. The MARC trains probably aren't even moving at full speed during the morning and afternoon rushes. We need more trains during peak times and the existing lines probably can't support that.

We need more lines going to different places, which would allow people to drive shorter distances to get to the stations, decreasing road traffic, and also helping with crowding on the trains themselves.

I make the commute from Baltimore to DC every day, and I absolutely agree. The Northeast Regional averages about ~90 mph between Baltimore and Wilmington. If it did the same from Baltimore to DC, it'd be a sub-30 minute trip. The only reason it can't is the lack of capacity through tunnels in Baltimore, tunnels into DC, and at DC Union Station. Heck, the biggest bottleneck is probably the single escalator in Union Station leading down from the MARC/Amtrak concourse to the Metro station.

Or maybe DC - Baltimore is the best place for the first phase of a DC - Boston high speed corridor, since it's short.

But nobody would use it as just one leg. It would be completely impractical for commuters, and nobody needs to get to Baltimore in 10 minutes—at least not enough to support this. They'd have to be building multiple legs in parallel, not slowly building their way north to Boston.

A Maglev train would be more logical between San Jose and LA.

Boston to Washington with stops in NY and Philadelphia would also make some sense. Save a lot of flying.

Los Angeles and Las Vegas makes a great deal of sense too, and would be a shorter (and MUCH cheaper) route.

It would make sense it would also be very diffuclt. Maglev's expect flat and straight.

The Baker Grade outside of Baker (small town with the Greek Resutrant and literally nothing else, you've ate their if you went to death valley). Is one of the stepest grades in the nation, rising ~6,000ft in ~19 miles. Overall the course will drop you as low as 100ft above sea level, and see you rise to 6,400ft. With minor peaks and vallies dropping as low as 500ft, rising back to 4,000ft.

Source: A lot of automakers vet transmission designs on that highway.

Surely the point of using a super-fast transport method is in order to traverse long distances. Say for example that the 40 mile journey could be done by a 60mph train in 40 minutes, whereas this new train will take 15 minutes. That's only a saving of 25 minutes. If the train is only running once every half an hour or once an hour, people will end up waiting around for a train for longer than sitting in it.

Run this over a 400 mile journey, and yes I'd say it was worth it.

There's already a super-high-speed transit route between two major cities about 400 miles apart (e.g. Washington and Boston). It's called an airplane -- takes about 75 minutes, plus airport-related overhead on either end. This is the would-be 400-mile maglev's competition, not existing train service.

And yes, I'm sure the maglev would be more convenient and nicer and otherwise objectively Better in a variety of ways, but the capital expenditures needed to make these incremental gains happen is huge.

> If the train is only running once every half an hour or once an hour, people will end up waiting around for a train for longer than sitting in it.

No, people don't generally treat commuter trains the same way that they treat subway services and the like. They try to show up for a specific train at a specific time.

> No, people don't generally treat commuter trains the same way that they treat subway services and the like. They try to show up for a specific train at a specific time.

If they come in on a connecting service, they sometimes don't have a choice.

Agreed about the airplane, although airport-related overhead is usually quite a bit more than train station-related overhead.

If you think you're going to drive 60mph the entire way from DC to Baltimore, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Wouldn't super high speed make more sense over long distance? Could you not solve lots of the yield issues by optimizing express trains into the mix for commuter rail? So that you could reduce BWI-DC transit by 15 minutes perhaps, but really just add a few sections of secondary standard tracks?

$10B seems exhorbitant for a 40 mile stretch of track + trains etc.

>'$10B seems exhorbitant for a 40 mile stretch of track + trains etc.'

Perhaps, but it's right on par with the cost of the recent Metro extension which cost $6.8B for an 11.6 mile extension running on existing tech.

Successfully building an entirely new Maglev line for 'only' $10B would be a steal relatively speaking, but I don't see that happening.

More likely, I'd expect the planners want Government buy-in because they recognize how susceptible the Government is to chasing sunk costs and covering all the difference when the project predictably balloons to 5x what was proposed.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Line_(Washington_Metro)

The Silver Line is pretty expensive for what it is, but I think you're overstating it. If I understand the Wikipedia page correctly, the $6.8 billion figure is for the full 23 mile extension, not just the 11.6 miles built so far. That cost also includes constructing all of the new stations. The urban nature of the line also means a substantial elevated section and a tunnel, both of which will increase costs quite a bit compared to an inter-city line.

Given that the Silver Line is proving extremely useful by finally hooking up Tysons Corner, a major city center, to the DC metro system, and given the general uselessness of shaving a few minutes off the existing Baltimore-DC routes, I'd hardly call $10 billion for a maglev line a "steal".

>"The Silver Line is pretty expensive for what it is, but I think you're overstating it. If I understand the Wikipedia page correctly, the $6.8 billion figure is for the full 23 mile extension, not just the 11.6 miles built so far."

You're right, I did mistate the length.

In general though, I think you're misunderstanding my thrust here. You're talking about value, I don't think this project is a good value at all, quite the opposite [1].

I'm just thinking about engineering and construction...

The Silver Line is a demonstration that building 23 miles of 45 mph commuter rail line costs at least $6.8B despite the benefit the benefit of 40 years, 100+ miles and 90 stations worth of experience doing the same.

Given that, actually building a first of it's kind 40 mile 300 mph rail line through the same sort of aerial and tunnel requiring [2] suburban counties around DC for 'only' $10B seems completely implausible.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8492525

2: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-maglev-train-i...

I find it interesting how much of our infrastructure is being funded, at least in part, by foreign investors and governments. I can't find a source for this atm, but I've hear rumors that Chinese investors are the ones footing a large portion of the bill for subway station WiFi and cell services being added in NYC. Through the EB5 visa program, foreign investors can essentially purchase a green card by investing in US-based infrastructure or services creating jobs. This includes shopping malls, housing complexes, schools, etc. Here, Japanese investors are looking to begin funding railways in the US. Ultimately, I think it's a positive development since it enables so many projects that would be otherwise impossible, but it certainly raises the question of how much of our infrastructure will actually be owned by us in the future.

Foreign infrastructure funding has been going on for a while now in the form of toll roads. Particularly, there is a Spanish group called Cintra who does a lot of business stateside. See these articles for more information. [1] [2]

[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-15-u.s.-h... [2] http://www.examiner.com/article/texans-call-for-boycott-of-f...

It is not obvious that Baltimore <-> DC is the right place to start, but I think the US needs more high speed rail, and if this is the gateway to that program then I support it. If the plan is anything other than starting here and then extending to NY and then Boston then it is useless.

> A maglev train may help ease traffic that has made roads in Maryland’s Montgomery County, which lies between Washington and Baltimore, the fourth-most-congested in the country

No...this wouldn't do anything for Montgomery County, which is mostly northwest of DC and not at all on the way to/from Baltimore. Driving to DC from Baltimore you pass through Prince George's County. Unless maybe they expect people are going to move from Montgomery County to Baltimore? That seems unlikely. The type of person who wants to live in Montgomery County does not want to live in Baltimore.

I live in Montgomery County and I would live in/around Baltimore. I'm completely priced out of the non-stabby areas of DC if I want to send my kids to public school. I probably wouldn't send my kids to Baltimore public schools either, but at least I could afford the private ones there.

During the NASA AMES open house this Sat (10/18) I came across Skytran http://www.skytran.us/ which is a maglev 2-person per shuttle personal rapid transport (PRT).

Per the person there they seem to have some plans to deploy in Israel in next 1-1.5 year. Washington to Baltimore using something like this could make a lot more sense, and is much cheaper.

What is interesting is that almost no one seems to have heard of them when they seem to have some real technology. Elon's hyperloop theoritical proposal got more publicity.

“We hope the U.S. government will be submitting some of the funds to finish it out.”

LOL. Thanks for the comedy this morning. I'm guessing they're looking for somewhere around $5B (half of the proposed cost). As nice as it would be to see something like this, the US government has no designs on dropping a fraction of that money on any kind of rail system. They can't even pay for the current road infrastructure.

If Amtrak is any indicicator, the US government does NOT know how to run a railroad. They are the last partner you would want on such a project.

I'm not sure I'd really call Amtrak a railroad in the conventional sense of the term. With a few exceptions [1] they neither own nor lease trackage, and merely have legal access to trackage on fairly low-priority terms (the track controllers give them something like "best-effort" access, with no teeth in what constitutes a good effort). They're mostly a weird conglomeration of the former passenger services of a bunch of railroads, which were glued together and dumped on the government in the '70s in order to keep them on life support, but with no mandate to do much of anything but run the former services glued together on top of the trackage that was retained by the former operators.

[1] The exceptions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Tracks_owned_or_leased_...

I mean they own the majority of the track on the Northeast Corrider line including both the tunnel under the hudson river and the east river tunnel in Manhattan. This is their most heavily used line, and they have priority through those tunnels over LIRR, NJ Transit, and MetroNorth.

That's the main exception, yes, and that one has much better operation compared to the rest of the lines.

I am not so sure. The US government subsidizes Amtrak [1], and if you want to start a new rail line that is probably exactly what you are looking for.

[1] to the tune of $1.4B last year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Public_funding

Do you ever feel like we're having the same conversation over and over and over and over and over and over again? Someone really needs to do an FAQ.

You do understand that Amtrak is profitable in the Northeast?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/01/a...

They can pay, they just don't.

The problems posed here already been solved by the TGV model. Why Maryland needs a maglev system confuses me.

Where is the economic benefit except for those two cities? Do a bunch of politically connected people have homes in Baltimore? High speed trains do little if nothing to ease commutes for the middle and lower classes, if anything they serve the rich while acting as political landmarks and budgetary landmines.

Considering the track record they have big projects in that area, namely Boston's Big Dig, and how much money alone gets blown on light rail where estimates are wholly inadequate, this seems like political grandstanding or distraction.

Concentrate on creating jobs for those who need them, this is not something HSR will do.

That's the thing—there is no economic benefit. It's not like DC and Baltimore have a symbiotic relationship, other than the fact that some people live in Baltimore and commute to DC (although far more people live between DC and Baltimore).

Wouldn't it take a ton of energy to hold a whole train against the force of gravity for any period of time? (or am I misunderstanding the physics?)

Doesn't take any energy to hold a book on a shelf. Same kind of thing. It takes energy to move across the gradient of a field (like gravity or magnetism). If the train doesn't move up or down, no net energy required.

311 MPH is about 500 KPH.

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