A group in Maryland is promoting magnetically levitated trains in the New York-Washington corridor. “Superconducting” maglev, says the group, is the “next generation of transportation.”
Superconducting maglev train being tested in Japan. Wikimedia commons photo by Yosemite.
Get real. Japan is proposing to build such a line from Tokyo to Osaka: 320 miles for a mere $112 billion. That’s $350 million per mile, or twice as much as the current estimated cost of California high-speed rail boondoggle (about $100 billion for 440 miles). Except for contractors, nobody is too happy about the cost of that line.
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Some people wonder why the United States isn’t building a maglev line similar to the one planned for Japan. After all, says Slate staff writer Will Oremus, we spend more than $112 billion each year on highways. Yes, but unlike a 320-mile maglev, our 4 million miles of highways, roads, and streets go just about anyone someone could want to go.
Maglev supporters think that transportation issues are questions of technology, so that any new gee-whiz technology will somehow solve the problems. In fact, real transportation issues deal with convenience, cost, and speed. A 300-mph train doesn’t do much good if it is inconvenient and costly. A 500-mph airplane is far more economical because it requires less infrastructure, while a 60-mph car is both economical and convenient. New technologies will compete only if they are more economical and either faster or more convenient. Trains meet none of these criteria.
Cars are economical and convenient for short distances; planes economical and speedy for long distances. Rail advocates fantasize that there is some intermediate distance that is the sweet spot for high-speed rail, where it is enough faster than cars to overcome its inconvenience and enough more convenient than flying to overcome the hassle of going to an airport and dealing with TSA. But there isn’t, which is why trains have an insignificant market share in virtually every corridor in the world. (Yes, they may have a larger share than flying in some corridors, but–except in countries too poor to have significant auto ownership rates–not larger than driving.)
The big objection to trains is their cost: the huge amount of high-priced infrastructure that any kind of trains require makes them non-competitive with other modes over any distance. Maglev doesn’t solve that problem; it makes it worse, for a relatively minor increase in potential speeds.
Amazing photo, is that a “switch” on the track? Looks like a 50 foot long secton of the mag-lev track has to move to “switch” from one rail to other. Taking into account all the moving parts on that one switch, and considering the tolerances required to line that massive concrete mag-lev track up, and add-in that all of it is exposed to the weather, I’d say we’re looking at a whole new level of Operations and Maintenance spending and headaches. How many duplicate systems must there be on that switch to ensure it “fails safe”??? Boy, looks to be a really expensive design/construction/operations/maintenance track segment. THE MONEY!!!!
More from the Washington Post: Organizers line up big names to push new high-speed rail line linking D.C. to N.Y.
The Northeast Maglev, the 25-employee company founded in 2010, is looking to develop a high-speed magnetic levitation system that would bring passengers from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes and to New York in 60 minutes, at speeds of 311 miles an hour.
The company, which according to its chairman has raised $50 million in private funding, plans to announce today it has enlisted several of the region’s business and political leaders to join its advisory board: Under Armour founder and chief executive Kevin Plank; former chief executive of Northwest Airlines Doug Steenland; former transportation secretaries Mary Peters and Rodney Slater (now a lobbyist at Patton Boggs); and George Pataki, Christine Todd Whitman and Ed Rendell, former governors of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively.
The board is being led by former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who is now an adviser at DLA Piper, the international law firm that the Northeast Maglev has hired to lobby on its behalf before Congress.
OFP2003 wrote:
Boy, looks to be a really expensive design/construction/operations/maintenance track segment. THE MONEY!!!!
Rent seeking. On steroids.
Actually, maglev supporters understand that transportation issues are not really questions of technology, but — after politics — must be concerned with overall convenience, cost and speed.
The current U.S. transportation infrastructure will need to be improved over the coming years to deal with congestion and the inevitable aging of surface transportation modes. Maglev is one option that’s proven to have technical merits over conventional rail. When private initiatives such as the come along they should be encouraged, not called out as silly.
CPZ: Thanks for sharing the quote from the Post. It’s a textbook example of corporatism.
larry2372 wrote:
Maglev is one option that’s proven to have technical merits over conventional rail.
How are maglev trains superior to travel by airliner?
When private initiatives such as the come along they should be encouraged, not called out as silly.
Do you really think there are investors willing to front their own cash to build such a thing?
Frank wrote:
CPZ: Thanks for sharing the quote from the Post. It’s a textbook example of corporatism.
You are most welcome.
How are maglev trains superior to travel by airliner?
Studies over the years have shown that 300-mph maglev outperforms aircraft in point-to-point trip times for trips of 300-500 miles in length. Some say the reduced stress of train-like travel is also a plus.
Do you really think there are investors willing to front their own cash to build such a thing?
All I know is what I read. In Japan, Central Japan Railway Co. is supposedly planning to underwrite the Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka line to the tune of 9 trillion yen ($90 billion), so maybe similar plans might unfold here in the States.
“Studies over the years have shown that 300-mph maglev outperforms aircraft in point-to-point trip times for trips of 300-500 miles in length.”
Links?
And outperforms by what margin? At what cost per passenger mile?
Of all the problems in the world, the desire of the wealthy-but-not-quite rich people to get from NYC to DC faster than Amtrak but not on a plane has to rank way down on the list.
Does anybody even dare to dream any scenario that this does not require a massive subsidy? And that if the user fees had to cover the cost, that the riders would never think it was worthwhile?
A few selected links for maglev vs. air comparisons:
– “High Speed Train VS Airplane,” at http://www.techthefuture.com/mobility/high-speed-train-vs-airplane
– “Maglev Reduction in Air Travel and Greenhouse Gases,” p. 9/20, at http://www.kci.com/projects/case-studies/maglev-reduction-in-air-travel-and-greenhouse
– “Report to Congress: Costs and Benefits of Magnetic Levitation,” p. 8/76 and other references, at http://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/Details/L02518
– “Dispelling Myths about Maglev technology,” in Slide format (pp. 8/20-9/20) or White paper format (para. 3, p. 2/7) at http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/maglevq.htm
Some studies cited above include work done as early as 1989.
First link is a blog, not a study.
The second is a summary of part of an older feasibility study. It mainly focuses on CO2, although creation of CO2 through construction of such a massive system is not discussed, nor is the amount of time for the system to be carbon neutral after construction. I’m skeptical of the time tables listed. There is absolutely no mention of cost per passenger mile. Nor is there a cost/benefit analysis.
The report to Congress concludes that “Maglev technologies are expensive, with high per-mile costs.” It reports that capital and maintenance costs are uncertain, but given what we know of rail, probably quite high. Existing infra in high-density corridors casts doubt on cost/benefit that relies primarily on time savings: “In the densely populated corridors where Maglev has the greatest potential for yielding significant transportation benefits to recompense its costs, existing development, environmental concerns, and other practical constraints would make it very challenging to acquire and develop an alignment that permits current Maglev technologies to fully achieve their trip time improvement capabilities.” In other words, suggested top speeds are highly unlikely.
Didn’t get to the last link. Thank you for linking. From what I read of the information provided, and from what I’ve learned about rail cost/benefit over the last six years, I’m highly skeptical of the feasibility and cost effectiveness of maglev. If private firms want to sink their own money into such a project, great. But private business and government collusion hint at a boondoggle that benefit the 2% and which would probably require massive subsidies just to break even. Given that we are bankrupt on every level, maglev seems a massive waste of resources.
It’s no surprise, given this blog’s philosophy, that you remain “highly skeptical of the feasibility and cost effectiveness of maglev.”
Oh well.
More from the Baltimore Sun.
Maglev proposal continues legacy of costly transportation projects –
Talks are underway for a Maglev train in the U.S., but the effort would cost billions of dollars.
A proposal to run a maglev train in the Northeast comes with a hefty price tag — approximately $10 billion just for the segment between Baltimore and Washington. Though the technology holds the promise of transporting passengers from one city to the next in 15 minutes, promoters will have to overcome the legacy of other promising projects that busted their budgets or turned out different than they looked on the drawing board.
larry2372 wrote:
It’s no surprise, given this blog’s philosophy, that you remain “highly skeptical of the feasibility and cost effectiveness of maglev.”
Fixed-guideway transportation projects in the U.S. have a legacy of massive capital cost overruns and patronage that is usually less (and sometimes far less) than what was predicted.
While the idea of a maglev line is fun (1950’s Popular Science type fun) , am I the only one who sees potential problems with unanticipated technical problems (or anticipated problems swept under the rug while the boosters get the government to supply the funds)?
We know what happens when a train jumps the tracks. Not good.
What happens if a 300 mph maglev hits an electrical surge or interference from electrical transmission towers etc? Since it is already literally flying in mid-air (and- unlike a flying airplane – probably close to a lot of structures and people) it seems reasonable to assume the (bad) results could be massive.
John1000, you’re not the only one who sees potential problems with (un)anticipated technical problems for the high-speed maglev. I’m sure that engineers and planners in Japan have been studying (and nullifying to the best extent) the potential effects of lots of things — earthquakes, lightning strikes, collisions with other vehicles or various obstacles on the guideway, onboard fires, evacuations in tunnels, passenger medial emergencies etc. — for many years.
Further, before such a system could be allowed to run in the U.S., the federal government would first perform a series of detailed safety assessments in Japan to confirm the system’s durability in future commercial operations.
For more on this topic, get a hold of “Rail 300” by Murray Hughes. It was published back in 1989 but has an excellent chapter called “The Elusive Cushoned Ride” that touches on some of the shortcomings of maglev and other gadgetbahn technologies. Since the book was published, several maglev projects, like Hamburg-Berlin have vanished in a puff of reality.