Transrapid (MagLev) Test Successful In China: 405 317
theBunkinator writes "Use your favorite translator (+ unit converter) to read about the first successful beyond 400km/h (~250MPH) test of the MagLev train in China. News Blurp in German at tagesschau.de. The offical Transrapid site is bilingual, with choice of German/English. Pictures & Video, too. Beats the Autobahn any day. Probably beats a plane in many situations as well."
Magnets: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Magnets: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Magnets: (Score:2, Insightful)
About the magnetic fields affecting credit cards - I really cant imagine that the magnetic field would be strong enough to matter as it would make such trains of very little use - so I would guess they have solved it some way!
All in all - Be happy - MagLev is nice!
Re:Magnets: (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no magnetic field in the cabin, credit cards, etc are safe.
Re:Magnets: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Magnets: (Score:3, Informative)
Autobahn? (Score:2, Interesting)
But, but Autobahn is a highway... Besides, the Autobahn does carry more people per hour and kilometers than does this train any time soon.
Re:Autobahn? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Autobahn? (Score:2)
> Err, what do you think powers the magnetic coils?
> Fairydust? Nope
> electrical generators.
But.. the commercials on CNN, they say coal is an increasingly clean source of energy that will be nearly pollution free by 2010! It's on CNN, it must be true! They even have a website: http://www.balancedenergy.org/
Yeah right, they are going to be increasingly nothing with Bush crippling the Clean Air Act. A look at their site reveals them to be the RIAA of the coal industry, and just about as clueless.
In general trains are a more energy efficient way of moving large quantities of stuff around. But as long as the power source providing the electricity for the magnets runs on dirty energy sources, pollution (air, water, heat, or radioactive waste) is going to be present.
"Is Godzilla showing his hatred toward man-made energy?"
Shinoda, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Re:Autobahn? (Score:3, Informative)
This amounts to a throughput of 5754 persons/h.
For a single lane Autobahn: 130km/h, distance between two cars, 170m. This amounts to 765 cars per hour. A typical car carries up to 4 persons.
3060 persons/h.
A typical Autobahn has at least 2 lanes, several have 3.
This makes roughly 6kP/h or 9kP/h. So one could say a Autobahn with 3 lanes has twice the troughput than the Transrapid.
But, this is the theoretical limit. The numbers for the Transrapid is devised from the implementation with two trains on the tracks.
Double the number of trains you get the the same throughput.
170 meters!? (Score:2)
More like 60-80m (use the two-second rule!) (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I don't know about germany, but here in america we certanly driver closer then 170 meters! Perhaps 170 decimeters :P
Ever learn the two-second rule for driving? The trick is, you're supposed to always be at least two seconds behind the car in front of you, three or four seconds if the roads are slippery or it's raining or dark (or all three).
You measure this by using bridges, signs, etc. as benchmarks -- wait until the car in front of you has passed the landmark, count "one-onethousand two-onethousand", and only then should you reach the same landmark. If you pass it beforehand, you're too close.
So suppose you're driving 120 kph (the usual speed limit on the Autobahn, if there is one defined). 120 kph ~= 33 m/s. So by the two-second rule, you'd have to be at least 67m away from the car in front of you.
Suppose you're doing a more typical speed on the Autobahn (even when there's a speed limit, it usually is roundly ignored). Most people drive around 140 kph (though you usually are getting run over by Mercedes and BMWs doing 200). That's a minimum distance of about 78m, assuming it's a bright sunny day with dry roads.
If it's raining, you should double that; near or below freezing, at least double that again; low visibility, double that once more. IOW if it's raining, freezing and foggy, you probably shouldn't be on the road at all. ;-)
Seriously, if you follow the two-second rule and keep in mind that you're supposed to double it in some circumstances, you're never rear-end anyone, and probably never get rear-ended either (since the person behind you *also* has more warning as a result).
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
IHBT...but whatever (Score:3, Insightful)
Feeding the troll...
Are you for real?
Er, well, yes...
Having passed the advanced drivers test in the UK I can assure you that hardly anybody drives the two second rule in the UK and now I am in the states I know nobody does it here. The UK drives at about one second gaps and the Us less than that.
In some areas of the US, yes, that's true. But not all. And the question was, how far apart do cars drive from one another? Well, they are supposed to drive two seconds apart. What they really do is of course another issue entirely.
Yes, I stick to the two-second rule anyway. (It's called defensive driving.)
The problem is at motor/highway speed two seconds leaves enough of a gap for some dofus to pull into. There goes you're breaking distance and you're wonderful two second rule. Fall back and the next dofus does the same. Repeat ad nauseum until you get a clue that nobody else respects you're breaking distance.
Yes, people do jump in front of me -- but they also jump in front of you when you only leave one second (or less!). The point is, why not leave yourself and them enough space to do it safely?
Additionally, if you follow the two-second rule, once they jump in front of you, they will already be farther away from you than otherwise -- so you don't have to brake (just let off the gas a little). And if you don't have to brake, neither do the people behind you, and behind them, and so on (the good old accordion effect).
As an added bonus, you'll run far less risk of rear-ending someone -- and the driver who rear-ends another car is almost always at fault and has to pay the damages. So not only do you save risk in terms of safety, you save risk financially as well.
The key to safe driving is to be courteous, don't hurry and keep your distance (the two-second rule is to guide you in that). If you take the attitude that everyone else is automatically a doofus, and that it's your right to tailgate and drive over the speed limit, then you're clearly driving aggressively and contributing to the problem.
As an aside, I just *love* it when I see people getting out of their wrecked cars (where they had been speeding and tailgating) after rear-ending or spinning out or whatever, and protesting to the cops "I'm a really safe driver! All my friends say so!"
On crowded roads the two second rule is not possible to implement.
The hell it is. All you have to do is back off.
If traffic is only moving at 30 kph, like in a traffic jam, then the two-second rule says you should be 16m away from the next car -- a little more than two car lengths. That's not really that much. If you're only moving 10 kph, then it's about 5m. BFD.
Instead you pay far more attention to what's going on around you constantly have the escape route planned.
And guess what? The two-second rule gives you a built-in escape route automatically and buys you some split-seconds in which to make a decision when things get critical. That can mean the difference between a close call and a totalled car (and injuries).
It also helps to have the largest newest vehicle you can afford.
Ah. I see. Peace through superior firepower...yes, let's all get bigger cars! That'll solve everything!
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
Re:170 meters!? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have driven in Germany many times, and can attest to fellow North Americans that the Germans take their driving far more seriously. They obey the speed limits right down to the km/hr., where they exist (secondary and city roads and many parts of the Autobahn), and on the stretches of Autobahn that are unregulated, they obey rules very carefully about slower traffic keeping to the right, proper signaling, passing etc. North American driving looks very sloppy in comparison. The sections of the Autobahn that are unregulated are (by comparison to here) beautifully engineered, built and maintained (flat, smooth, properly banked turns, etc.).
A few years after the wall came down, I drove from Berlin to Bavaria through the former east (Leipzig, etc). There was massive Autobahn (and everything else) reconstruction was under way. There were sections of new road that were like a glass table interspersed with sections that were like an old washboard - quite a difference. Oh, and there were a lot of Trabants on the road in the "former East". For those who haven't seen them, picture a small toaster on wheels with blue smoke billowing out the back (2-stroke engines) and a top speed of about 80km/hr. (~50 mph). I remember seeing a Trabant pulling a trailer that had a brand new Mercedes 500SEL on it and thinking it ironic. After passing another Trabant on a slight curve on the Autobahn, I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw its passenger side door fly open. The car is so narrow that the (large) driver was able to reach over the passenger, grab the passenger door handle an slam the door shut while still steering the car.
Interesting curiosities: I was told that in Germany, if you come up behind another car and want him to move over, you can be charged for flashing your lights at him and that you can also be successfully sued for giving another driver the middle finger gesture.
Driving in Germany (Score:3, Interesting)
I have driven in Germany many times, and can attest to fellow North Americans that the Germans take their driving far more seriously. They obey the speed limits right down to the km/hr.,
Uh, what part of Germany was that? I *rarely* see Germans pay much attention to the speed limit, unless of course they know there's a radar camera nearby (in which case they slow down for maybe a few seconds).
I've lived in Germany now for almost ten years (Hannover-Hamburg area) and speeding (and trying to run red lights) seems to be the national sport.
where they exist (secondary and city roads and many parts of the Autobahn), and on the stretches of Autobahn that are unregulated, they obey rules very carefully about slower traffic keeping to the right, proper signaling, passing etc.
That I agree with -- indeed it's often a shock to be back in the States and drive there, where passing on the right is pretty much normal (even if it's technically illegal).
OTOH it's not that big a deal, since the speed differential between any given car and the average speed is *far* lower (cars in the States drive about 70 +/- 10 mph; in Germany it's about 85 +/- 30 mph because of varying speed limits by type of vehicle) so passing on the right isn't that big a deal.
North American driving looks very sloppy in comparison. The sections of the Autobahn that are unregulated are (by comparison to here) beautifully engineered, built and maintained (flat, smooth, properly banked turns, etc.).
Yup, it never ceases to amaze me how perfectly built the Autobahnen are. But OTOH think about it this way: with the high speeds, you *have* to have a perfect surface -- otherwise the car would go flying at the first pothole (or take out the whole suspension).
Interesting curiosities: I was told that in Germany, if you come up behind another car and want him to move over, you can be charged for flashing your lights at him and that you can also be successfully sued for giving another driver the middle finger gesture.
Yes, both are true. Honking or flashing your lights at someone to get them to pull over is called "Nötigung" (basically means "forcing") and is punishable by law. Tailgating is also considered a mild form of Nötigung. In both cases you're encouraged to take down the license plate and turn them in (though I don't know if the plaintiff gets anything for doing it).
However, the converse is also true. If you're in the left lane and only doing 80 kph, others can sue you for blocking the road.
Using the finger is an offense in Germany on or off the road, actually, as is insulting someone (calling someone an a**hole is subject to fines). This results in rather interesting twists of conversation -- Germans have gotten rather good at verbally assaulting and insulting people without ever actually calling them anything...
Cheers,
Ethelred [grantham.de]
Re:Autobahn? let's add some facts here! (Score:3, Insightful)
1. There are no single lange Autobahns, at least not in Germany. (They might have em in Poland, but as far as I remember, there are no designated lanes anyways and, secondly, that's not called the Autobahn.)
2. The average car does not transport four people, but around 1.3.
3. Serious (empirical!) studies give us better numbers for the number of car throughput: A Swiss study [statistik.zh.ch] mentions up to 115 000 cars / day, 4800 per hour. According to guidelines used in planning of roads, the acceptable throughput for a 2x2-lane Autobahn is 20.700 to 70.000 cars/day, so it's far less than the figure mentioned. (Source [umwelt-verkehr.de]) That's data for both directions.
4. Assuming 40.000 cars/day (in accordance with the guidelines), we end up with 2166 persons per hour.
Re:Autobahn? (Score:2)
A bold statement.
Let's calculate: The autobahn has usually 2 lanes in each direction. If the drivers keep a distance of 2 seconds, we get one vehicle per second - maximum.
Optimistically, we assume that each vehicle carries 2 people (in reality this number is much lower), so we get a realistical maximum throughput of 2 persons/second or 7200 persons per hour.
Now let's compare: The Transrapid carries up to 1000 people. If we have intervals of 5 minutes between trains, we would get 12000 people per hour.
Re:Autobahn? (Score:2)
I'm not riding it (Score:3, Funny)
You might not know it (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You might not know it (Score:2)
The expense of converting this backwater to the system of measurement of progress and worldwide commerce would be too great. They'd pass.
Wrong market... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I'm not riding it (Score:4, Insightful)
Does not beat the French TGV (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does not beat the French TGV (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is: the TGV has once reached a maximum speed of more than 500km/h with a specially designed trainset on special rails, while 400km/h is the usual travelling speed for the transrapid. I see quite a difference there. The TGV does not come close to 400km/h, let alone 500km/h in everyday travel..
Re:Does not beat the French TGV (Score:5, Interesting)
And TGVs everyday come 80 km/h close to 400 km/h on the newest high speed line, the LGV Médditérranée where the top commercial speed is 320 km/h (that's exactly 200 miles per hour). And they are routinely tested at 400 km/h, and most journalists invited for the ride don't bother showing-up.
So a pityful maglev is laughable.
Excellent news. (Score:5, Funny)
hey , does that mean i can't (Score:2, Funny)
i mean what if i get stuck to the track ?
Re:hey , does that mean i can't (Score:2)
TGV (Score:5, Informative)
Please note that you can already travel at 300Kmh using the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, 'High Speed Train'), in France, since since 1980...
Not 400Kmh, but it works very well.
More informations can be found here [tgv.com].
(There is a nice flash map of the french railways).
What's the real speed of this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe it's more related with the environment (i.e. "let's not hit a cow") than anything else. So I wonder if they developed a system to allow a constant high speed (other than "we don't care about cows")?
Re:What's the real speed of this? (Score:3, Informative)
Maglev trains usually run on elevated platforms high enough to let roads and the like pass underneath while still low enough to avoid most birds. That, and it simply looks cooler on an elevated platform as these pictures [transrapid.de] show... :)
I've seen this train myself (Score:3, Informative)
Shanghai, BTW, is a very nice city- at least the areas I saw. I got the impression there is, relative to many other Chinese cities, a lot of money there.
Re:What's the real speed of this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Our german system of ICE trains travelling at some 150 mph is just getting reasonably dense to be useful. Ultra high speed like maglev would only be useful for connecting very large towns (e.g. Berlin and Hamburg) some 300 km apart.
By the way: Cows are not endangered by maglev since the rails are several meters above ground.
Re:What's the real speed of this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What's the real speed of this? (Score:2)
Best wishes,
Mike.
And ... ?? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm missing something ???
The French TGV [sterlingot.com] already drove over 515km/h.
And that was in 1990 !!!
Re:And ... ?? (Score:2, Informative)
Travel speed will be about 430 km/h.
515 km/h is a record, not the travel speed!
--
Stefan
DevCounter ( http://devcounter.berlios.de/ [berlios.de] )
An open, free & independent developer pool.
Re:And ... ?? (Score:2)
Not to mention that steel-rail trains are a completely different technology than maglevs. You might as well say, "so what, we've had airplanes that go >450km/h for 70 years."
Re:And ... ?? (Score:2)
Re:And ... ?? (Score:3, Funny)
As you get closer to Mach 1, more and more people will start complaining
HeadLines (Score:2, Funny)
Re:HeadLines (Score:2)
Hope I didn't ruin your joke.
For sake of comparison (Score:5, Informative)
The speed of sound is about 761 mph [fiu.edu] (sea level, bleah bleah.)
Re:For sake of comparison (Score:2, Informative)
Wrong! Sound travels 741.1 [demon.co.uk] mph at STP. I knew memorizing that value way back in 7th grade would pay off some day! I never imagined I'd be able to troll Slashdot with it, though...
Re:For sake of comparison (Score:2)
The boarding time of an average train is less than 30 minutes. The boarding time of an average (non-international) air plane is more than 90 minutes.
The unloading time for the average train is less than 20 minutes. The unloading train for the average air plane is more than 30 minutes.
This means that the train has at least 50 minutes advantage.
Re:For sake of comparison (Score:2)
Ahem. Dunno where you live, but where I live (Germany, UK and NZ) the boarding time of an express train is less than 3 minutes.
Re:For sake of comparison (Score:2)
Which is why the TGV captured such a huge share of internal travel in France.
Not to mention that it looks stunning.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Re:For sake of comparison (Score:2)
May beat the airplane? (Score:5, Interesting)
If anything this thing will make airtravel therefore easier by getting people to and from the airport faster.
I recently had to go to london from amsterdam and checked out the three different methods. Boat, train (via channel-tunnel) and plane. Plane beat the other by a few hours. Mostly because of the number of transfers(?) and the inevitable waiting time this entails, required in the other two.
Re:May beat the airplane? (Score:2)
The train has to go via France. The ferry is, admittedly, slow with the transfers and so forth, but hey, it has two bars and a movie theatre.
But imagine, say, a Melbourne-Sydney train travelling at 400kmh
(The flight is only an hour, but when you arrive, you're at the airport)
Re:May beat the airplane? (Score:3, Insightful)
Reporting from the old days... (Score:5, Funny)
5 or so years ago this would have been reported as
"Under the guise of a civilian transporter the Chinese goverment demonstrated a potentially terrible military weapon, capable of accelerating several tonnes upto half the speed of sound"
Just think, if Iraq had just done this we'd declare war.
Re:Reporting from the old days... (Score:3, Funny)
If Iraq had done this, it'd mean they had an economy.... Can you imagine someone in Iraq in a hurry to get somewhere, except out? So, you're right, the natural conclusion would be that it was military, a step towards a supergun or something. A not-very-practical horizontal supergun, but Hussein probably wouldn't figure that out. Or the hawks.
Not cost-effective (Score:5, Informative)
The Transrapid would've cost us about $38 million per kilometer and additional annual costs of $215K. For comparison, ICE train tracks (Inter-City Europe express tracks) cost $16.5 million per km and around $165K annually.
It gets worse. There's a 30km test track in Emden, and the train has never been up to it's supposed max speed of 500 km/h. The distance from the Munich airport to the city center is only about 20km, and the thing needs 5km just to get up to 300 km/h. Planned costs were set at $1.6 billion (with a "B" as in, "bwooaaaahhh!") -- expected costs around 50% more. Planned completion was 2006 and expected 2008-2010.
Munich dodged a bullet, but now faces over a year of public transport hell as the main through-tunnel for all S-Bahns is upgraded to increase capacity from 20 to 30 trains an hour. (All S-Bahn trains pass through this tunnel, resulting in massive delays whenever there's a problem even near the tunnel, which extends some seven stations, 5 in the tunnel and end points.) To make things worse, the video schedule displays along the lines run Windows and crash at least once a week. Luckily, the trains don't.
woof.
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:2)
A nitpick: ICE stands for Inter City Express. I'm actually quite sad that each European has its own, more-or-less incompatible high speed train system, with the ICE being the German train.
german-french differences (Score:2)
The germans considered the french trains to be awfully fragile. The french thought the german one to be a heavy, unelegant brute
Currently, the french ones are starting to look a bit more solid and the german ones lighter and more elegant...
Reinout
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:2)
German, French, Italian - we don't care, we'd just like something that moves at a reasonable speed.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:2)
Airports take up lots of space and are very noisy. (= even more space made unvaluable. Who wants to life near the airport?) while a train can stop directly in the city.
So instead of city -> airport -> airport -> city you could go directly from city to city. On the same continent, this should always be faster than planes.
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:2)
Please explain how a train with a theoretical maximum standard speed of 500km/h is faster than a plane which cruises at 1000km/h.
For small hops, especially because of travel to and from airports, check-in time, slotting, etc., the train can be faster, but once the distance exceeds about 400km (around 250 miles), the plane starts winning all races.
Amtrak takes three days to cross the North American continent; Delta, six hours. I'm flying from Munich to London Wednesday: two hours, three including intermediary travel. My Sunday return is 28 1/2 hours on four or five trains, plus a subway and a walking connection, and it requires an overnight stop in Paris.
woof.
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:2)
1. You can fly. It takes 15 minutes to get to Heathrow; theoretically you're supposed to arrive 2 hours before your flight, but you could get away with arriving 30 minutes before departure. The flight takes an hour; then if you're very lucky, you might be able to get out of the airport in 30 minutes. Catch a train into central Paris, and you arrive 45 minutes later. Total time: An absolute minimum of 3 hours.
2. Take the Eurostar. From the center of London to the center of Paris, 3 hours.
If you don't want to arrive half an hour before your flight leaves, the train is going to be faster than the plane. Speed up the train a bit -- the Eurostar isn't the fastest of trains -- and it will always be faster than the plane.
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:4, Informative)
If you could take the subway to the rail station, in, for instance, NYC, then take a maglev to chicago (750 miles) at 250 miles per hour, then go from the rail station to downtown on the El, you are talking about a 3.5 hour trip, doorstep to doorstep. As opposed to 5 or 6 on an airplane, even if it only takes 1.5 hours flying time.
I wouldn't want to go from NY to LA on a train, but for transit amonst the centers of the east coast megacity, I don't think they can be beaten- unless airplanes get a whole lot more time-efficient (they may be, in Europe, but they currently suck here in the US).
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:2, Informative)
You state that the maglev needs "5km just to get up to 300 km/h." While correct, you neglect to compare this to ICE, which takes 30km to reach the same speed. Since there's no wheel/rail friction, maglevs can accelerate much more quickly than conventional high-speed trains.
Furthermore, maglev trains use less power than conventional high-speed trains once you get past about 200km/h. At 300km/h, ICE trains use 71 Wh/km. Maglevs use 47 Wh/km; a maglev could go 400km/h on the same amount of power it takes to get the ICE up to 300km/h.
Maglevs are also quieter, safer, easier to maintain (no moving parts!), and so on.
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I think it should be rather obvious that maglev trains are not suited for distances as short as this. It is weird that they would even plan to use it for city-to-airport connections. This is not going to be useful for distances shorter than a few hundred kilometers, but given that these trains can go from city-centre to city-centre, they can shorten the time it takes to travel between cities considerably. Therefore, I would expect maglev trains to eventually be competitive on distances between 400 and 1500 kilometers. But it seems to take longer than I would have guessed 15 years ago.
Which reminds me of a trip I had with one of the newest trains here in Norway. I happened to be seated beside an american who worked in the telecom industry, and he said that before I entered the train, the train had stopped for a few minutes, and they said on the speaker "we are standing still while the onboard computers are restarted". We both went: "Uh-oh, I hope they're not running Windows on those control systems"...
Re:Not cost-effective (Score:2)
If the S-8 is the dead line then I've got at least a 30-minute wait for the next one. I could take an alternative route by U-Bahn and bus and be at work (or home) quicker if the big board in Karlsplatz wasn't showing a GPF window or BSOD dump.
Linux advocacy? Not a chance. There's no way to contact the MVV/MVG (public transport operating companies). Furthermore, they paid big bucks (OK, Deutschmarks) for the Win32 program and aren't about to pay for it all over again on another OS. Even if they were willing, they'd be hard-pressed to explain why they were doing so and why they went with the crappy Win program to begin with.
Yes, they made a mistake, and in an ideal world, they'd admit it. But bureaucracies are not part of an ideal world. The person who admits to doing it wrong -- or who points out his boss or department did it wrong -- has all the job security of a blind photographer.
woof.
NOOO!!! (Score:2)
Before any gets into "why not in US?"... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem becomes one of how you define straight. These tracks need to be really straight for long lengths to get such numbers, and while your typical subway or Amtrak route looks straight, that's only when viewed at lower speeds (under 60MPH). Even then, lots of these routes are shaky. Take it up to over 100 and suddenly, it's not so straight anymore.
Anyone who's taken their car to really high speeds on public roads can usually attest that a straight road at 70 isn't as straight at 120.
Re:Before any gets into "why not in US?"... (Score:3, Informative)
This sectioned construction is, of course, the reason for the familiar "click-clack" noise that trains make as they go along their merry way. It allows for thermal expansion, and makes construction modular and repair relatively easy. Unfortunately, this type of construction isn't suited for traveling at high speeds, the small discontinuity between each section causes a lot of vibration and stress on the train's suspension (see example: Acela).
These tracks are also shared with freight trains, which place a huge amount of stress on the rails when compared to a (much lighter) passenger train, pushing the rails slightly out of alignment and level each time a train passes by, requiring frequent checks and maintenance.
Bullet train systems throughout the world use continuous welded rails (CWR) for high speed travel. This is just as important as long, straight, properly banked tracks for high speed travel. Unfortunately you cannot simply upgrade freight tracks to CWR, because the frequent mainenance required would become more difficult and expensive. High speed trains in other countries do travel on regular tracks in some places, but they cannot approach the "normal" cruising speed that they can on their dedicated, continuous tracks.
I seriously think that the best solution for the US is a whole new rail network for passenger traffic. Expensive, yes. But the benifit of having an alternative transportation system is worth the increase in cost over upgrading an interstate highway from 2 lanes each way to 4. The price increase isn't even too enormous. For example- a typical interstate improving project, widening I-40 to 4 lanes in Greensboro, NC is costing taxpayers $22m per mile, whereas according to the California High Speed Rail network's homepage, a high speed rail network would cost an average of $38m per mile, including stations and trains.
Maglev is of course another option, but it's largely untested, especially in commercial service. Welded steel rails are, to this day, just as fast, safe, proven, and less expensive. The choice seems clear to me.
Re:Before any gets into "why not in US?"... (Score:3, Informative)
Additional dings against rail in this country are mostly political.
Most of the "middle of nowhere" stops for Amtrak were due to pork-barrelling in the 70's to get Amtrak approval. With Amtrak bleeding cash, it becomes less clear whether rail is a business or a public service. Nobody asks the CTA in Chicago, for example, to be fully self-sufficient (heavy subsidies).
Roads and air travel are also heavily subsidized, but those subsidies are buried deeper and aren't as apparent. For example, the millions of dollars spent in widening an expressway leading to an airport might be paid for with not only gas taxes, but also general taxes diverted for the purpose. United Airlines would have no additional outlay, but would benefit.
The additional bugaboo is that most travel is designed around the car. Suburbs are planted in the middle of nowhere with grocery and retail "a short drive away", but a long and dangerous walk or bike. Similarly, jobs are also being located without other amenities, but simply "cheap land" and "near a highway". It's like building a Sim City with Residential units in one corner and Commercial in the opposite, then connecting them with roads only. People then have a vested interest in their cars (fueled by commercials of people driving badly on empty roads and also low gas prices) and will fight most attempts at rail that don't connect them to their "current" job's doorstep.
This is all well and good, but (Score:2)
Re:This is all well and good, but (Score:2)
No - where did you get this silly idea? Consider - 'so close' being about 6-7 feet above the rails (and your heart and head being even higher than that), and 'extended periods' being anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour? That's nothing.
The real dangers for being close to an energy source come from really high frequency stuff - radio (and not AM even, mind you - FM, VHF, UHF, Microwave, etc.) Those will cook you, and the higher frequency stuff is going to do it faster.
I'm a broadcast engineer, and whenever we have someone climbing our tower to work, we have to lower power on our FM as they pass that region, by FCC reg... but even then, some tower guys are willing to and have been known to work on towers without lowering power. They figure they aren't up there long enough to cause damage.
Note, this doesn't include AM, which they will happily climb live... as long as they can get onto them without first forming a circuit to ground (zzzzzzzzot), nor does it include microwave - get your head in front of a transmit dish, and turn your eyeballs into scrambled eggs.
But low frequency AC and magnetism? Nothing.
-T
Why rail is underused in US (Score:2)
Also, the geography of the US does not favor trains. The map is heavily populated on the coasts with little population in between. It is simply easier and faster to do most long distance travel in the US by air. Even in special regions like California that may lend themselves to intrastate rail travel, it is unclear if this will be cheaper than air travel. You can get some incredible bargains for LA-San Fran/San Jose flights, and rail operators of the upcoming line between those two regions will be hard pressed to beat these low fares.
Why no Rail USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not here: Lobbyists. On one hand you have the money-losing Amtrak, on the other the money-losing but politically influential airlines. More important than airlines perhaps are those who really fear roads: the automobile industry. That industry includes not just auto mfrs, but also tire mfrs, gasoline suppliers and vendors, and so on. Rail service has a much smaller umbrella.
America is stalled on rail because for years roads were emphasized, and subsidized. Los Angeles, where I grew up, is the classic example of car dependency and mediocre mass transit. People say that areas such as these are "not suited to mass transit" but forget that the layout of the city was determined by cars. Thus cars lead to more cars. In balncing one form of transportation against another, the hidden cost of pollution and auto fatalities and such are rarely assessed. (Yes, people die on trains, too.)
In the Northeast Corridor, where I now live, trains should totally overcome the shuttle, which offers almost no time advantage for a downtown DC to downtown NYC traveler. The problem facing Amtrak, which is only one of many users of the lines, was to get funds to upgrade and electrify the tracks. Congress resisted, citing their operating losses and thus confusing annual deficits with capital investment. Over $2 billion was required to introduce Acela service, which still can only travel at a fraction of its normal speed over much of the route because of antiquated curves and grading.
I don't endorse Amtrak, but see that its challenges are not fairly apprised. being subject to political control, for example, it must maintain unprofitable routes, while not being able to fully exploit the profitable ones, or develop new prospects. Even if Amtrak is successfully denounced, if anything that strengthens the case for rail by implying unexploited possibilities are there.
I love rail service; you get a first-class (big) seat, can get up and walk around, can arrive 30 seconds before the train rolls, don't have a safety lecture about the motions to go through before you die anyway
US Gov't dropped the ball (Score:3, Informative)
How come there aren't any of these in the U.S? I would have thought that U.S being ahead in technology (or atleast money), they would have one of these running somewhere by now.
I wrote about this in a previous article [slashdot.org] (see the final paragraph). One of the problems (in addition to those already listed by others) is that the US Government wasn't willing to put up any research dollars to fund development of the MagLev train -- the idea for which was actually created at MIT (there's even an old videotape of the minature prototype experiment somewhere). Other governments were more than willing to fund the research even though it was going to benefit private companies. Needless to say, the combination of government money and private companies that look beyond the next fiscal reporting period to determine the allocation of their R&D budgets resulted in the US quickly being left in the dust.
GMD
Transrapid in Germany... (Score:4, Informative)
Germany, being a rather small country, yet with a very high density of population, has a very good and highly accepted high-speed railtrack system. (Japan and France are still far better, but still.) The Transrapid offers very little time benefit per direction, yet requires massive construction work for its tracks. Most people here say - why bother? Why do we have to pay billions of tax Euros for a 30 minute benefit?
The Transrapid consortium has struggled during the last years to find an excuse on where to build its track in Germany and why, and so far, plans are still going back and forth.
Why not an air cushion? (Score:4, Interesting)
The air cushion could be fairly efficient compared to military hovercraft, since the ground clearance could be an inch or so, instead of feet. Your track could be prepoured concrete instead of electromagnets.
I'm probably missing something.
Jon Acheson
Re:Why not an air cushion? (Score:2)
Re:Why not an air cushion? (Score:2)
Can a WIG fly low enough to physically follow a track? I thought they flew at 15-30 feet off the surface. If you lose the ability to run along the track, and only along the track, it's really not a train any more.
Jon Acheson
Re:Why not an air cushion? (Score:2)
Re:Why not an air cushion? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but I'm willing to believe.
There are a few things to consider:
1) hovercrafts' design requirements make them very un-aerodynamic
So design for negative lift, and keep the air cushion as thin as practical. Don't use a fan for propulsion: drag the thing behind drive wheels.
2) reaching speeds of this magnitude (while factoring in the aerodynamics) would require a lot of energy
A lot less than lifting the thing on electromagnets, I'll bet. Especially when you can fill the cushion by scooping in air from outside.
3) the air cushion is a very imprecise and unstable way of keeping a (moving) vehicle a certain distance from the ground
Are you saying this based on experience? It seems like it would be extremely straightforward to me, compared to trying to synch the magnets in the track for a maglev.
4) magnetic levitation is quieter (and thus more comfortable for the passengers)
I agree, this would definitely be a problem to overcome. I would try to make the air cushion as thin and its surface area as small as possible.
5) the constant magnetic field of the levitation part is the source of on-board electricity (a conductor moving perpendicular(ly?) to the magnetic field has electricity induced in it), which would be hard to compensate for in a hovercraft considering extra weight required
This is a solved problem: use a third rail. Your drive wheels will have to be in touch with the surface anyway.
I could prolly think of a few more, but my brain hasn't recovered from the weekend yet.
I confess, I'm not an engineer, but I'm still wondering if the concept would work. Someone posted a link to a French design effort, and I'm planning to read it later (Le francais c'est sympa!).
Jon Acheson
TGV is faster, but only in test conditions. (Score:4, Informative)
This story implies that the maglev was running at the same speeds it would operate at commercially. There's a big differance between that and the world speed record. To quote TGV themselves from their site [unipi.it]
"Running at over 500 km/h (311 mph) with a specially prepared trainset on brand new track is an accomplishment, but one should not expect such speeds to be possible in commercial service anytime soon."
If the maglev speeds are reproducable in a production - ie passenger carrying - environment then this is a major achievement and certainly seems to be what they are aiming for.
Money (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Or about Soviet Union building up satellites and sending the first man to Space...
Besides, the train AFAIK is built in one of the richest parts of China. And China is quite big and possesses a huge contrast in cultures, economies and resources. So I don't see a reason why they wouldn't loose some money to build a Maglev.
If you consider that they should "feed the poor and then think about progress", I sincerly consider it populist demagogy. No country has ever solved this question by putting its feet into the swamp of development. On the contrary, most socialist countries who tried to follow such path went nearly bankrupt. The only way to give people a better living is to push every possible path of development forward. Wealth does not rise from "more equal distributions among the people" but from the development of infrastructures with far-reaching effects among the population. And Maglev is one such infrastructure. This system allows common citizens to have a better and speedier means of transportation. This system demands better enginners and technicians. This system is a challenge for lots of classical means of transportation. This system is a path to new scientific and technological researches. And more, this system allows people the use of faster travel, which may be much more economical than other means with the same speeds and approximatelly the same service.
So this might be one of the things that may rise their GNIPC a few dollars more.
Oil == Crack (Score:5, Insightful)
An advanced rail system like this might be slightly ahead of its time for China if the marketplace alone were determining when some company would build it.
It's kind of sad, though, that here in the United States we probably won't see anything like this for many more years.
It's strange, though. The Peoples Republic of China is a mixture of a market-driven and command-driven economies.
Likewise in the United States, where heavy government subsidies in the 1950's built up the interstate highway system.
Now, of course, the automobile dominates passenger traffic and the trucking industry dominates freight and our potentially efficient rail infrastructure is a government-subsidized crumbling ruin that neither the auto, trucking or oil industry is interested in seeing re-emerge.
But railroads will re-emerge as the most efficient means of transportation for people and freight. Computer controls for regulating rail traffic will succeed sooner than they will for automobile and truck traffic.
All it will take for the re-emergence of rail in the United States is some painful increases in the price of oil. Then we can go to Europe, Japan and now China to learn the technology that we've been neglecting.
At least... (Score:4, Funny)
404: Maglev not found
Probably does beat a plane... (Score:3, Interesting)
I myself have discovered (by living in São Paulo and having a girlfriend in Rio de Janeiro) that traveling by bus is already better for me than traveling by plane.
First, it's much more comfortable. The buses have seats that are much bigger and much farther apart (front-to-back) than airplanes. I am not a big person (173 cm and about 65kg, or about 5'8" and around 145 lbs) and I feel cramped in commercial airliners. Imagine tall and/or heavy people!
Besides that, on a bus, the seats really recline (not the almost imperceptible 5 "recline" of an airplane seat), making it possible to sleep, which I now cannot do on airplanes (I used to be able to, but they are forever cramming more and more seats in, and thus limiting more and more the space each passenger has, and they have now surpassed my comfort limit). Additionally, there is no limitation on when you can recline the seat (there is no takeoff and landing) or on what kind of electronic devices you can use (it's nice to be able to use my cell phone to make or receive calls while en route) or when you can use them (again, no takeoff and landing).
Also, you don't have to pass through really invasive security procedures to get on a bus. I also discovered something surprising: even though the bus travels much slower than a plane, I don't lose much time taking a bus. In fact, it's much better. Let me explain.
If I take a plane, I have to get to the airport first. And I have to be there at least an hour before the flight (it would be 2 hours if I were in the US, but I am fortunate to live in a free country... if anyone thinks this is a troll, I'll be happy to discuss it with you. But basically, I enjoy many freedoms I couldn't dream of having in the US). After standing in a line to check in, I have to answer stupid questions, show ID, and check my luggage. Then I have some time to kill before the plane leaves. I usually get some kind of soft drink in the departure lounge (waiting area). Oh yeh... I have to show ID and my ticket to get in there. With all the noise and hurrying people around, it is all but impossible to make any kind of use of this waiting time by, say, reading. Then they call us to board. I then have to get in another line, present my ticket, and go to the plane. I then find my seat and sit down. I can try to read during this time, but again, there are people all around making a lot of noise and hurrying and arranging their stuff. Then the plane takes off. I can now try to read, but within a few minutes, the flight attendants come around with drinks. In the case of the São Paulo to Rio flight, the whole flight lasts only about 40-60 minutes (depending on direction, weather conditions, and air traffic at the destination). In the case of longer flights, the attendants come around several times to offer drinks and/or food.
After the plane lands, it taxis to the gate. This can add another 5-15 minutes, depending on traffic. Then we are released into the terminal, which usually involves another wait while people block the corridor to take down the 74 bags they just couldn't check and had to bring on board. The one time I saw a flight attendant enforce the limit on the number of bags a couple could carry on, I literally applauded, and did I ever get dirty looks from the couple.
Next we all go to baggage claim, which can take anywhere from seconds to forever. After that, either I meet my ride or go to car rental to get a car.
In the end, I don't really save any time taking a plane instead of a bus, even though the flight part of the journey by plane takes 40-60 minutes and a bus trip takes 5-6 hours. Taking the bus has the added advantage that I can arrive at the bus station without a reservation, buy a ticket for the next bus, go down and wait a few minutes (not 45 like in the airport, plus buses are rarely late, while airplanes always seem to be) before getting on the bus. I can than either sleep (not possible in the airplane due to comfort and time constraints) or actually do some work or just relaxing reading. If I had a laptop, I could do work too. Also, buses have much more flexible hours. In the Rio-São Paulo example, the last plane (and you've gotta reserve that several days in advance) leaves around 10:00 PM. There are buses leaving with relatively high frequency until about 1:30 AM, and there are others that leave at even later hours, though not as frequently.
Now imagine a train, which can offer all the advantages of buses, plus it doesn't get affected by traffic and can travel at 400 kph (about 250 mph). Add in that it can be much more energy-efficient than a plane, has an even lower risk of accidents, and (Steven Seagal movies aside) an even lower risk of hijacking than a bus, since it has very limited possibilities in terms of alternate routes (i.e., it can only go where there are tracks) and basically cannot be used as a weapon (except possibly against a vehicle on a road at a train crossing or another train). Basically, there's no comparison. A maglev train would blow away an airplane for everything except trans-oceanic travel. And best of all, it would probably be much cheaper than an airplane flight. I started taking buses because my girlfriend and I couldn't really afford to be flying back and forth every weekend, and the bus is a much, much cheaper option. I expect a maglev train ticket would be more expensive than a bus ticket, but less expensive than a plane ticket. I traveled extensively in Europe by train, and the prices were quite reasonable, even for the TGV (Train de Grande Vitesse (or sumfin' like that), which just means "high-speed train" in French) between some Swiss city (Geneva?) and Paris. And if you think about it from a business point of view, the marginal cost of adding space for more passengers (by adding more cars, not by cramming the passengers in like sardines like the frickin' airlines insist on doing) is very low. So if there is less demand, you send less cars. If there is more, you add some. So the "full flight" problem is reduced without large additional costs... wow.
If I were a stockholder in a major airline, I would be even more worried now than before thinking about high-speed maglev trains... as a consumer of mass transport, I am definitely more happy than before thinking about these things because of the
The transrapid system just *rules* (Score:3, Insightful)
Better in more ways (Score:3, Insightful)
While it may now be technologically practical, it remains impractical for political reasons.
Re:Better in more ways (Score:3, Funny)
But a little more difficult to fly into towers
Re:Better in more ways (Score:2)
Frankly, I don't know where you are from. But I think that the middle of the XIXth century had lots of these examples all around the world:
Wide-road bandits in post-Napoleon Europe - they were so terribly popular that there are several folk stories about these people. Some of them were no less monstruous and blood thirsty than some modern terrorists.
North American Wild-West - Well, we all heard about this...
Pirates sacking ships crews and passengers in Indian and Pacific Ocean.
Armed groups in Afghanistan, India, North Africa - Several novels and historical records, remind us how dangerous was travelling through the parts of the world.
Latin-America and its colonial/civil wars - While the Banana Republic is more a thing of the XXth century, its main travelcard, the lawless of officers and locals, was a product of long years of political chaos and colonial dumbness.
Now pick up these facts and tell me how many people died during these times? Thousands and thousands. Well, in Europe we could reduce it to a few hundreds but in North Africa we are forced to rise things up to the thousands. British "tried" a solution for Afghanistan but the result was tens of thousands deads for both sides and a complete chaos in the region that we can see even now... In the US we had even some nations that were wiped out from the face of the Earth...
So, is travelling more risky than those days?
Maglev: a solution in search of a problem. (Score:2, Troll)
What would you trust more, a well developped and well researched almost 200 year old technology (the first steam train ran in 1804 [schoolnet.co.uk]), or a new, extremely complex technology that has yet to carry it's first passenger???
Re:Maglev: a solution in search of a problem. (Score:2)
It's called progress
You need to research before you post (Score:3, Informative)
You really need to learn more about the MagLev train and what advantages it would offer over "200 year old technology" before you post (and someone mods you as Insightful???). Here's a very brief primer on MagLev [mit.edu] that will hopefully help you realize the importance of MagLev. You should do a google search and find out more.
What would you trust more, a well developped and well researched almost 200 year old technology (the first steam train ran in 1804 [schoolnet.co.uk]), or a new, extremely complex technology that has yet to carry it's first passenger???
Who the hell modded this as Insightful? Sheesh!
GMD
Worthwhile (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a typical german thing all the way through (Score:5, Insightful)
That been said, it shure is an engineers wet dream and a beaty in means of transportation. I'd love to see this baby ready for use throughout central europe. Cars are outdated. Germans, for instance, spend 4.5 billion man-hours in traffic-jams per year! It's really time we got puplic transport to be the way to travel.
Another juicy terrorist target (Score:2)
The Chinese may be able to afford a guard every 3 eters of track (although making the guard unbribable is a problem), but much of the rest of the world cannot.
A new technology that should continue development (Score:5, Insightful)
To declare the maglev dead on the basis of the costs and untested-ness of the first designs is ridiculous. The first commercial jet airplanes were expensive and guzzled fuel -- and the industrial infrastructure wasn't yet there. Many years later, with successive refinements in technology, and gearing up of supporting industries, modern jetliners have pushed down the costs of travel and transport to incredible new lows.
When the Havilland Comet and the Boeing 707's first came they were immediately popular, but had their share of detractors. It took successive generations of planes, notably the popular 727's and the 747's to really show off the potential of jetliners.
And then there's the fleets of 737's that let's us now freely move about the country on low-cost airlines.
Granted, train tracks are fixed and can not be "rerouted" to quickly adapt to changing markets. But where there are markets with enough current air/car traffic (Eastern sea-corridor being the obvious one; So/No. California and Las Vegas being a likely candidate), the maglev is a potential optimization.
I for one would love to use the Maglev to go from L.A. to S.F. Trains are likely to have higher up-time and lowered cycle time compared to airplanes, and would more likely have last-minute "walk on" convenience (even in today's security-minded environment).
Let's just be glad the Chinese are willing to take the first-mover disadvantages on new technology problems and costs (they clearly want the first mover advantage on prestige and willing to pay for that). From their experience, only improved systems can result!
Amen to that (Score:4, Insightful)
High-speed trains? Don't expect my support until the NJ Transit Raritan Valley Line is electrified and goes direct into NYC. (A much easier project than building a maglev or upgrading tracks to high-speed capability).
I have a train line 10 minutes from my house. It's great, despite being a non-direct diesel. The Northeast Corridor is faster and would be nice, but the NEC is "fast enough" without having super-expensive upgrades being done.
Also, for long distances, trains just don't compete economically in the US. Amtrak (the only long-distance provider) has prices that are on average equal to or greater than air travel. In a number of areas you can compare Amtrak prices directly to local commuter rail - On the Northeast Corridor in New Jersey, NJT does New Brunswick, NJ to NYC in only 10-20 minutes more than Amtrak. NJT's round-trip price is 1/4 that of Amtrak's one-way.
The problem is that Amtrak has to use their profitable lines (NEC, etc.) to subsidize the much less profitable (in fact, overall money-losing) Midwestern lines.
I think the solution is to give up on rail where it won't work - For long runs in the Midwest, air has won and trains can't compete. For selected areas (Northeast Corridor, i.e. DCNYCBoston), form smaller companies to operate those lines. They can probably offer the service at much lower prices then, which will provide a large gain in ridership for those lines.
Unfortunately, thanks to Amtrak's prohibitive cost, it's cheaper to hire a limo service to go from central Jersey to Washington, DC (Yes, people do this. Apparently a significant portion of the business of many of the area's limo services are now for DC runs). It's faster to drive than take the airplane, and while the train is the fastest, it isn't worth the insane cost. Train travel could easily beat air travel in the Northeast, but it has to be reduced in price so that it can compete first.
Re:Beats the Autobahn any day... (Score:3, Insightful)