70 years after big oil and GM decided to kill light-rail in the United States, we are seeing a resurgence in demand and effort in deployment of the technology across the country.
Wired has an excellent article covering the building interest and governmental funding building behind the efforts to deploy Maglev trains in the US.
Magnetic levitation technology has long been seen as the primary mechanism by which fast rail transit could be rolled out. The first proposal for the technology was 1966, positing the technology as the most affordable way to ship large amounts of cargo due to the frictionless travel. The amount of energy required to move a traditional train as comparable speeds, overcoming the wheel-track friction, is enormous — as evidenced by France’s 25,000 HP TGV train line. Maglev trains would allow for the building and deployment of trains traveling 150+ mph; connecting disparate cities, towns and counties with each other.
(See Wired for full map)
The Obama administration has agreed to an $8 billion dollar infusion into the development and deployment of the fledging infrastructure in the US hoping to encompass California, Texas the Midwest, Northeast and Florida with maglev-based train networks.
(PDF of Official CA Maglev Plans)
California has been dabbling with the idea of a state-wide maglev train-system nearly 30 years. Unfortunately the deterring factor has always been the cost of developing and deploying the train system — some say to the tune of $40 billion. With the renewed public interest, private interest and especially federal interest it looks like the money might finally start to leak out of the wood-work and get some of these projects going.
With a good number of successful maglev systems (both large and small — e.g. theme parks to transit lines) deployed around the world, it seems the technology has been vetted and ready for mass deployment in the United States if funding agrees.
Maglev trains deployed in the United States would likely change the face of the country over the coming decades. With already-operational maglev trains operating at over 300 mph (Shanghai Transrapid) imagine what that would do to morning commutes, inter-state travel and vacationing. For example, it would be nothing to live in the outskirts of Las Vegas but work in Los Angeles, 266 miles away, with an hour and a half commute in the morning reading the newspaper, having coffee or playing on your smartphone — but not sitting in traffic.
Initial plans for the United States networks put completion dates for most of the projects in roughly 2020-2025 timeframe at an average of $20 billion each (California’s “ultimate” plan of Sacramento to San Diego tops out at $45 million). This won’t be a cheap project and during tough economic times could prove to be big red targets for lawmakers being pushed to cut budgets.
The reality is that the United States has been sorely lacking a sufficient mass-transit system for years; and understandably so. The US is huge, sprawling anything across it at the tune of $12 million per mile is either never going to happen or take half-a-century to build out.
I think we’ve waited long enough and seeing these efforts move forward is really exciting, especially when you think what kind of opportunities it opens up for our country as a whole — things like affordably distributing domesticly-created goods and services as humans will be able to get around more readily. Opening up channels of transit into land-locked cities allow the intense population to disburse a bit without adding significantly to pollution, road-rage or transportation times.
All good things.
I know of no cent going towards the deployment of Maglev technology in a national HSR system. In fact, in one case (in Pennsylvnia) an application for the use of Federal HSR funds for the development of a Maglev system around Pittsburgh was DENIED!
Let me clear this up for you: the national HSR program is not going to be building a Maglev system at all (for a number of very excellent reasons, inclusive of: parity in cost (Transrapid technology would cost essentially the same, mile-by-mile, as a new El); the proprietary nature of Maglev (inability to link corridors together due to the need to transfer at every terminal would prevent the emergence of unforseen ridership trends and thus undercut the profitability of the line); the ability conventional rail–but not Maglev–has to access conventional rail terminals in major cities (instead of having to build all terminals anew); and the proven conventional-rail technologies employed in Europe and Asia and built by Alstom, Siemens, Talgo, Kawasaki, Hitachi, AnselmoBreda, Rotem, and Bombardier, among others (as compared to the fact that only Transrapid and Kawasaki currently have any experience building Maglev).
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hammersklavier,
I appreciate your followup to this story — the tone set in the Wired article really did seem to make the whole thing sound like a “done deal” but a lot of the points you bring up are things they didn’t touch on at all — for example, the cost and reality of rebuilding entire terminals and hubs for this new system of transportation.
I was having this discussion with someone else and they brought up what this 100 billion could do if applied to the *Existing* train infrastructure instead of trying to reinvent the wheel at a cost so astronomical it could like freeze up in a few years if the money isn’t there to keep it going.
I also brought up that sinking huge sums of money into projects like this could just be a subversive way to keep the economy floating… so I could see reasons to push the “all new train system” forward.