Prospects for intercity transport technology

Magnetic levitation has been dismissed as unproven, too costly, or pie in the sky. It's time to reappraise it

With the unveiling by China (see News section, page 10) of its own, home-grown magnetic levitation train, it would be odd if politicians, policy-makers and the ITS industry did not want to take a closer look at the 'unproven' technology that is magnetic levitation. Fortunately, doing so is easy. The non-profit International Society for Maglev Transportation (The 800 International Maglev Board) has an extremely informative website aimed at anyone who would support a constructive, critical discussion on the prospects and limitations of available intercity transport technology.

With the Chinese announcement, and the success of the system operating in Shanghai, the most frequent reason for discounting maglev technology out of hand as 'unproven' cannot be sustained.

Since the 762 Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Company (SMTDC) introduced China's first high-speed commercial maglev train, a total of 33 million passengers have been transported by the system, travelling daily at speeds of 430km/h (267mph) and with 99.97 per cent on time reliability. So the German (189 Siemens/1894 ThyssenKrupp) 765 Transrapid technology has undeniably and comprehensively been proven throughout years of day-in, day-out commercial operation.

This year, work will begin on extending the Shanghai maglev line to the tourist city of Hangzhou, some 200km (124 miles) away.

Journey time will be just half an hour.

If the Chinese experience of transporting 33 million passengers by maglev debunks the 'unproven technology' contention, then what about the next most popular reason - cost - that has been used to dismiss it? Again, the Shanghai experience debunks that argument. The entire 30km Shanghai maglev system, including vehicles, maintenance facility and stations cost US$1.2 billion, despite being built on very unstable soil that required extensive pile driving. Since its construction in 2001, new designs, materials and construction techniques have lowered the guideway costs by a whopping 30 per cent. In other words, current deployment costs for maglev need to be reappraised. As has happened in the UK.

The UK Government is currently reviewing a report from 1995 HS2, a company it established to look into much-needed high-speed intercity rail links. Costs to build a proposed link first from London to Birmingham and then to Scotland, would be some US$92 million per km, which is in line with what the recently completed high-speed rail link from London to the Channel Tunnel cost. UK Ultraspeed, has provided cost breakdowns showing that a maglev system, based on the German Transrapid technology, would cost half that: $46 million per km. (www.500kmh.com). It has also presented detailed and cogent explanations of the operational and maintenance benefits of maglev compared to wheel-on-rail technology.

Meanwhile, in California, the proposed DesertXpress 'high-speed' rail link between Victorville (some 60km from Los Angeles) and Las Vegas wouldn't actually qualify as high speed. (The internationally recognised standard for high-speed rail is a cruising speed above 240km/h (150 mph)).

Kevin C. Coates, an active International Maglev Board member, transportation & energy policy consultant and the CEO of the 1997 North American Maglev Transport Institute, has been scathing about the proposed project in articles published on the International Maglev Board website.
"Why build a slow, noisy, polluting and expensive-to-maintain train - a throwback to the 19th century - when we can build a sustainable high-tech bridge to the 22nd century?" he asks. "Maglev is the most cost-effective high-speed system ever invented because of its extremely low maintenance and low lifecycle costs. In other words, maglev is the perfect definition of 'sustainable', both from a maintenance and economics standpoint." It is also a new technology that will build the foundation for the next era of economic growth in America, Coates believes.

Which brings us back to the developments in China: according to an International Maglev Board statement, China's unveiling of its own maglev train signals a predictable shift in its interests from simply being a user of foreign technology to becoming a manufacturer with unique and sellable know-how.

"Having apparently mastered the manufacturing and assembling of vehicles and many of their internal components, the next step is to gain the engineering expertise to reproduce the all-important levitation, guidance and propulsion functions, not just building the mechanical subsystems, but testing and integrating them for reliable operation in daily service at worldclass speeds. To date, only Germany and Japan have mastered the art and science of high-speed maglev," the statement adds.