One important advantage of the electrodynamic system not mentioned is that the track tolerances are far lower compared to EMS, making the system more resilient to ground movement. Currently, the high speed maglev projects are focused on dense travel corridors, but as the technology matures, the supply chain develops, and the general economic condition improves, this should become more widely adopted. Inductrack technology should prove more suitable for lower speed lines.
@@alw7315the few companies that haven't "given up" on the idea are grifting various government agencies around the world without actually building or designing anything. The idea is fundamentally flawed and will never be in commercial operation. Also it's literally just a maglev train in a (near-) vacuum tube.
Maglevs can work but people have to stop treating them like trains and more like ground hugging point to point airplanes. Their best use, in my opinion, is as part of a hub and spoke network where you take a maglev between two major transit hubs, get off, then take more conventional transportation to your final destination.
Yeah, normal trains are pretty much compatible with any track. You just need to standardize the track width and gauge. With maglev there's so much more lock-in to a specific design that it's a hard sell to use it for anything other than individual routes.
Sure, but, well... Airplanes can do that, without the need of investing into tracks The problem of maglevs is, that they lack a use case which justifies the investment
@@frankkoboldairplanes have A LOT of disadvantages over maglev: - They cost way more per unit traveled - they are a lot less comfortable to be in - airports have lengthy check-in and boarding procedures so you spend a lot of additional time - they have way way lower frequencies and as a result way lower peak capacity - they are a lot worse for the environment There is a good reason Japan is building the Chuo shinkansen on their most congested medium distance route. It's the perfect use case for maglev: between 200km and 500km with few stops. Also Tokyo airports are congested already, it's not like they could fly more planes anyway. Yes the initial investment is downright absurd, but long term it's better than adding more planes. Most governments and companies just aren't willing to think beyond the next election or quarter respectively.
@@NeXtdra42 ah, it's less "not thinking long term", but it's a topic of risk as well as how much you can afford now. Would it have been long term better, that I would have bought an apartment while I was studying instead of renting? Ofc, but there is the risk of me moving later on plus I simply didn't had the money. What if one village disagrees with building the tracks (which are also not good for the environment) near them loudly & publicly? What if a economic crysis leads to massive increase in cost? So ofc running cost are better even with a maglev, but the cost (incl risk) of Capital is just too big. Ofc you have examples like Japan, where it just worked out. But that are very specific conditions which have to be fulfilled, which are rare, so no benefits through scale. Even your 200-500km example: if you have a few stops, why not normal trains with higher speed, which can also be used by other local trains & also cargo? After all, you won't have the tracks occupied the whole time. And if you need for 500km 2h or 1h just doesn't make a big difference. Tldr: cost & risk of capital too high, really far away planes ofc, and on the distances where maglevs would be ideal/better, normal (high speed) trains are an acceptable alternative with higher flexibility & better economy of scale (of the infrastructure to build the tracks etc)
At first sight that looks smart, but in detail almost only those who only want to travel from one hub to another (or nearby) are benefiting. The others will lose time while waiting for their connections at the hubs. Or even worse wasting more time by travelling in the opposite/false direction to reach the hubs or their destinations. So you're about to spend a huge amount of money for maglevs for the benefit of few. While spending the same money on a grid of regular trains would benefit a majority. What is more economic or democratic? "Fun fact" from Germany: the high speed trains in Germany (ICE) are able to travel with almost 300 km/h. But the German operating company (Deutsche Bahn) has redused the actual speed of the trains to a maximum of 250 km/h. Reason: a higher speed is a waste of money. For a higher speed more energy is needed but in return the travellers don't see any benefits. Cause the maybe saved 5 minutes at the train vanishs when you look at your travel time as a whole (traveling to and from the train station, waiting for connections). So speed is not all, there are other things that have more impact.
The Japanese one mentioned last is different from all the others in a significant way. Not just that such a long line (compared to other maglevs) is already under construction. The main difference is technological: first time superconducting magnets are used for a maglev train. This further increases the upfront cost in the hopes of decreasing the later running costs. So kind of a maglev on steroids in this aspect. But I really like the way the guidance left/right/up/down is passive in this system and get stronger and stronger with speed increasing. And the superconducting magnets mean stay strong for a long time after external power to the system is lost. So for this to have a crash you have to physically destroy a long enough section of the track in front of it. For us technically minded this really seems like it is at least as safe at 500kph as a regular HST on wheels is at 250kph. I really hope they overcome the red tape and financing issues.
@@hebijirikI believe they are permanent magnets which floats train and requires no power. Due to this reason, it is not moving that fast. As for superconducting magnets maglev, China did test a high-temperature superconducting maglev system half a year ago.
@@prastagus3 it will be interesting to see where it goes. The Japanese SCMaglev uses regular proven superconductors in the vehicle, similar to what is used in particle accelerators and tokamaks but they have some clever tricks there to keep the cooling system power consumption as low as possible. The track has very simple figure 8 shaped passive coils in the walls that passively create guidance and levitation when the strong SC magnets fly along them. The bottom of the track is just regular linear motor. What I find fascinating is that none of this requires any new or even young technology to work. It is all put together from long proven technologies that are just used in a new application. That is probably why they already got it to over 600kph with people on board. I don't know anywhere near this much about the effort in China but their history with the Shanghai maglev makes me a bit skeptical of their ability to successfully deploy a maglev based on relatively new things like high temp superconductors into a working successfull mass transit system. Nevertheless I would like to be surprised. If they make it work well then that is and advancement for all of us.
I worked in Shanghai during the week and commuted home to Singapore on weekends for 18 mths in 2009/2010, and used the Maglev for the trip to/from Shanghai Airport into downtown Shanghai. Was an awesome period in my career
but if you carry a lot of luggage it is actually not convivence, the terminal station is not really connected to the subway, at least that's what happen 10 years ago, not sure if there is any update, our bosses taking limo to that station just to try the maglev to the airport
the one in shanghai is just a test track and only goes as fast as a bullet train, the chuo shikansen is longer alone in the test track and will go all the way to nagoya in a couple years and is twice as fast
Whoever edited this video.. I LOVE YOU. The sponsor spot volume was reduced at least 30%, and as a thank you- I sat through the whole ad and let the video play 3 times through (was alt-tabbed doing other stuff) I wish more creators were thoughtful enough to do this.. such a small thing that makes a huge difference to we headphone users.
I rode the Maglev a few days ago for the first time in Shanghai. What an experience. Watching the train lower before opening the doors was incredible. The track also tilts at points
I rode the German Transrapid on the test loop back in the mid 2000 when I was a minor and even then it was a proven and ready to implement technology. It was a joy to ride, flying through the landscape at 400+kph effortlessly. It was quiet, fast and relatively versatile with higher possible ramp angles, higher throughput and a relatively simple carriage design. The problem was always cost of adoption and the difficulty of switching track economically and safely.
" problem was always cost " Wrong, cost was never the problem: " difficulty of switching track" The test track swich track 4 times every lap of the track "safely" Safty was never a problem . The accident happen with the system tunred of, that only could be done because it was a protoype track
@@matsv201 they are more expensive then normal trains so of course cost is a problem. That's also why the Concorde stopped. It was feasible to make but the cost just didn't make sense
One thing worth mentioning in the case of the vacuum tube version (like swiss-metro) cooling becomes a big issue, as your train is basically in giant thermos bottle. There might not be any engine on board, but you have all the passenger equipment, and all the passengers which are probably producing 50 Watt per person of heating.
People should forget about the vacuum tube train ideas. It's fundamentally flawed beyond issues with thermals. Look at the hyperloop to see an example of why it cannot work.
@@TheExileFox I once did some calculations on separation distances they'd need in hyperloop, in order for pods to be able to be brought to a safe stop in the event of a pod having an accident. It's a very long distance, and would fundamentally limit the capacity of the hyperloop to ridiculously low levels. A vacuum tube breach is another hyperloop nightmare. There's a real problem with what to do, if it happens. If the tube is fully cut open, the best thing to do is to bleed off the vacuum along the entire length as quickly as possible. An alternative is to have slam-doors that close, to stop the whole tube's vacuum being filled. Trouble is, as the vacuum is filled via the breach the air pressure wave that is filling the tube will push debris through the tube, and this will hit the slam door at about Mach 1. If you make it too light it might fail when the debris hits, and now you've got a slam door + debris travelling down the next section of tube at Mach 1. And so on.
at anything less than 300km/h vac trains aren't worth bothering with. Tunnels aren't fully evacuated in any case so active cooling does work (we're talking pressures equivalent to 1-200k feet altitude, not full space vacuum for supersonic transit and commercial airliner altitude for subsonic speeds)
@@abarratt8869 "vacuum" handling is easier than you think. It's reduced pressure (not no pressure) comparable to extremely high altitude flying and we've been making stuff like this with "controlled leaks" for years, plus you don't rely on "one" vacuum pump but have them spaced out perhaps every 50 metres (you'll need to power the entire track length anyway for linear motor coils). In essence if the power goes off they return to atmospheric pressure relatively quickly (less time than the backuppower supplies of the pressurisation kit in the pods) and pressure-sealed escape doors can be fitted to the tubing (essentially a reverse of airline fuselage plug doors, but without the weight considerations) The controlled leak ensures than a pod entering lines approaching a damaged section will essentially air-brake. You're unlikely to see a clean break in the tubes as we're talking steel section several inches thick (weight isn''t really a consideration for fixed infrastructure - you build bridges to account for it) that - like nuclear containment - is essentially terrorist/airliner-resistant (When french terrorists tried firing anti tank weapons at the French nuclear plants it annoyed the administrators because they'd just painted the buildings and it meant a repaint was needed to get rid of the scorch marks) Your bigger danger is earthquakes but on the other hand there are various ways of dealing with potential movement at strike-slip interfaces already and levitation systems can easily cope with 1-2gs of acceleration (this was what was recorded at Christchuirch in 2011 and amongst the highest ever recorded) if they happen to be directly over the epicentre I know I'm being handwavery about this, but maglev vac trains were considered technically feasible in the late 1960s and a planned USA rollout in the 1970s dodn't go ahead for financial reason (this backfired thanks to the 1973 oil crisis) As I've said elsewhere I think these systems will only prove feasible if they can carry cargo in standard shipping containers and compete head on with airfreight/travel, _NOT_ trains Airfreight mostly still uses the "wagonload" concept despite using LD3 containers - cargo is (un)loaded into containers at airports, which are not used end to end. Wagonload (boxcars) has been an obsolete method for railsystems (except in exceptional cases) for several decades (ditto marine transports. Dockside cargo unloading went away a long time ago too for virtually everything except bulk carriers - containerload transport (shipping of complete prepacked units) is what kept rail economically viable and is why shipping runs to a few cents on most finished items right up to the local distribution stage (One case I know - from the 1990s was a friend of mine who was transporting the same items by sea for a landed-in-his-warehouse cost of around 8c/device, but thanks to logistical issues had to airfreight a couple of containerloads to satisfy demand - at a cost of $10 per device Yes, the differences really are that stark
Yes, when I was in Shanghai more than 10yrs ago, I think every journey ran at 430km/h. Now it seems it no longer does that speed. Then what's the point of having the Maglev there in the first place.
Glad to see the Birmingham Airport Link Maglev shown here, often forgotten , a collaboration of GEC, Metro-Cammell and others. I was fortunate enough to see the Japanese prototype Maglev at a Science Institute when I visited Japan in the 1990's? The thing that most people do is overestimate the friction of steel wheels on steel rails, actually quite low, and underestimate the energy required to suspend a 300 tonne train. Plus the Elephant in the Room is the cost of replacing thousands of miles of current rail infrastructure. A factor more per mile than even HS2!
The low friction is also one of the reasons it takes a train forever to stop. (And the massive mass involved of course.) IIRC Maglev should be better at that. Sadly I missed the chance to ride the Chuuou experimental track. Guess I'll have to wait until it's opened for real. And yes, the investment costs are mind staggering.
The other issue with maglev is that the system has to be built entirely from scratch. A regular high speed train can operate on the new high speed tracks but also extend service onto older tracks and stop at existing stations.
Im looking forward to what japan will do, they are willing to go there to the end just like high speed rail. Everyone thought they were stupid doing that when the rest of the world still had steam lokomotives, cars and planes. I trust the japanese the most to make that viable, build it and get it to run because they dont bullshit around with their work. I just have to look what the mess the deutsche bahn in germany is. We cant even build an airport here...and in asia they create entire islands out of nothing to build an airport ONTOP OF THE ISLAND THEY JUST BUILD!
Maglev is the future, just like how train tracks had to be built on dirt- maglev lines will be built on rails and former road corridors, or between them.
I believe the Birmingham maglev wasn't just replaced with a bus. They now use a similar transportation system using the same track except its cable powered.
I rode on the Birmingham system once; I wasn’t flying anywhere I just went there to try it. It was sometimes out of service, not because it was particularly unreliable I think but because it was totally non-standard so if it did break down it could take longer to source parts and repair it than for a more conventional system. I think this was the main reason it was taken out of service. It was directly replaced by a bus while converted to a more conventional People Mover type system which I believe is still in use today. It is not cable hauled but uses driven wheels like a conventional train or tram. A recently opened system at Luton airport is cable hauled.
i used to ride the old maglev in the school holidays, that was 80's entertainment for a kid! go see the plane hanging from the ceiling in the terminal then ride the maglev a few hundred times
One aspect not mentioned is the network effect. Conventional high speed rail can tap into an existing network, and be it only for the ‘last mile’ into a city center. Sure, if you want to add capacity, you might also need new tracks into city centres or even new platforms. But HSR often might just replace older lower rail. And HSR can easily be built in stages, HS2 in the UK for example allows train to continue to run further north, even after only the first phase has become operational. You can’t do that a Maglev. And in the same way that HSR requires certain population densities and distances to work best (and thus be the most economical option), Maglev also has an optimal distance, which is longer than for conventional HSR. And given that a longer distance means a larger upfront investment, it is more difficult to finance it.
That depends _how_ you finance it. The underlaying point is that it's a competitor to airlines, not railways and airlines are currently extremely heavily subsidised (both directly and indirectly by using airspace and subjecting populations to noise pollution) whereas railway budgetting has to pay for EVERYTHING including the track (roads are invariably also heavily subsidised, which is why road traffic grows at the expense of rail) As fuel costs skyrocket this will change. Electric aircraft might be able to puddlejump but they can't do long distances and never will as nothing comes close to the energy density of liquid fuels (let's not fly nuclear aircraft. apart from shielding issues, splattering one across the countryside would be highly antisocial) with the added complication that aircraft will always be taking off close to MTOW no matter how short the flight (enhanced wear and tear). Additionally, the cost of retrofitting airport aprons - and paying for dedicated HV feeds to provide sufficient energy to be able to turn around flights within 2 hours or less (ie recharging) will make the £4.3 billion cost of Heathrow terminal 5 look like chicken feed (it would probably be easier to build dedicated nuclear power stations beside each major airport) - and this WILL be passed back onto fliers, making flying mostly the preserve of the wealthy (again)
Depends on how the HSR is planned out. While something like the German ICE does run on conventional rail lines. The Shinkansen lines in Japan are all purpose built tracks just for the high speed trains with no other trains using the tracks, including the tracks into the city center and station platforms. While the second one does cost more, it is also considerably safer. High speed trains on conventional tracks that are shared have the risk of colliding with non high speed rail trains as has happened multiple times with the German ICE trains and the French TGV. Outside of cities, standard tracks also have road crossings which is another failure point that leads to collisions. The UK high speed rail system is a joke anyway. HS1 is not particularly fast with the speed limit they have to follow, and HS2 is ridiculously expensive for what it will deliver.
@@cidiracing7481 "Shinkansen" literally means "new line" - the existing JR network is 3'6" cape gauge and patently unsafe at higher speeds. The JR New Line HSR network is standard gauge (you see sections of dual gauge in some areas such as the tunnel from Honshu to Hokkaido) Because of the gauging issues, curve radius requirements (no tilting trains in 1964) and heavily used existing network the Shinkansen network had to be built as an end to end complete line. That's not the case in areas with standard gauge throughout the network The Japanese Maglev _does_ have rails and wheelsets, used below 150km/h (90mph) and as such can be moved on the existing Shinkansen lines (as rolling stock, not self-propelled) however that network is extremely busy (It also means that trainsets can be shunted, parked and switched on conventional lines, which greatly reduces complexity of the maglev network - however I doubt that any kind of switching of passenger-carrying trains would occur even at reduced speeds)
@miscbits6399 Yes, generally, other trains use narrow gauge in Japan and run around mountains instead of using more direct and straighter routes than what a high speed train needs. But they could have still built a cheaper network on standard gauge that can be also used by non high speed trains and phase out portions of the narrow gauge train services to make the Shinkansen lines economically more appealing in exchange for the highest safety standards. Freight transport was at some point considered in their original plans before they built the line. Instead they went with lines that are only for high speed train passenger transportation and with a setup that is considerably more expensive, but ensures the highest safety. Best example is that they deliberately built all lines so there wouldn't be a single level crossing even though it adds quite a bit to the construction costs than just building all lines at ground level. Germany could have eliminated level crossings over time for their ICE routes. It wouldn't be cheap and it would cause disruptions, but it would be possible and eliminate one of the biggest safety issues. Regarding the Maglev low speed operation. That is on rubber wheels, it does not use standard train wheels to get up to speed. So at least the L0 would not be able to operate on any Shinkansen line outside of the one that is being built currently between Tokyo and Nagoya and the later expansion to Osaka.
When would you ever add a high speed track and not need more capacity. Also, you actually can´t do that, becasue there are incompabilties between high speed rail and freight rail, you have to seperate them
I've ridden on the Transrapid twice: once at the test track in Lathen (late 80s, I think), and once in Shanghai in 2018. Both rides were amazingly quick and smooth! It's so sad that maglevs haven't seen more adoption, considering that they have some real benefits: they can climb hills 10 times as steep as a regular train, when the track is monorail style, they interfere much less with the surrounding environment (farming below), they're more energy efficient, lower maintenance, and on top of it all, faster than an airplane at medium distances (no cumbersome airport wait times)...
Elevated grade is pretty much irrelevant, you can do that with any method. The energy efficiency is an odd argument If you intend to run them at high speed metal rail speeds, the projects aren't worth the initial outlay for the marginal gain. Even considering the energy costs to build the track, it's unlikely you'd ever get that back. If you intend to run them at closer to the maximum reasonable for maglev, then the air resistance is going to eat up that energy efficiency entirely. Maintance is usually measured in cost, and the cost of bespoke systems is always going to be higher than bog standard ones. So while they might theoretically be lower maintenance in a shiny future, they aren't now. Classic french or spanish style High Speed Rail gives you the faster-than-an-airplane at medium distances as well at lower costs. So the net result is that you get a sort of marginal speed boost for a huge outlay. And this is why they haven't been adopted. The promise of upping speeds by around 100mph or so does have benefits for trunk lines. So I'm not saying that it's without point or value, only that if we're realistic about the tradeoffs, we can see why it hasn't been heavily pursued so far. The noise levels and speed are obvious plusses, but historically it's never been cost effective. I'm hoping that the Japan project can turn this around. And I'm talking about total cost vs total societal benefit here, the way any transportation project should be measured.
@@jsrodman Actually, in future the ability to climb more elevated grade may be one of the most interesting properties. Problem with standard train is, they rely on friction of the wheels against rails. Typically you want it to be just enough... with elevated grade it must be actually very high. Trains weigh a lot... and on elevated grades, friction on rail simply might not be enough to overcome weight of the train pulling it "downhill". Next level problem happens, if train stops in slope. There is very real possibility it wouldn't be able to start moving upslope again. And this is not technology limitation... it's basically physics and you can't do much about that. If this was not a problem, why do you think there are so many tunnels built (which is typically very expensive and potentially dangerous endeavor).
@@jsrodman Those are fair points - the up front cost to establish this new tech is a poison pill, given that it represents an incremental improvement. Though high speed train tracks are not “bog standard” - they’re usually already kept to higher standards than regular tracks, and not used for other applications such as freight.
@@PetrSojnek Exactly - the need for fewer tunnels and bridges means much lower cost when introducing high speed rail to new areas, where those tunnels haven’t already been built. For the same reason (physics, friction), maglevs can accelerate and decelerate much faster. So not only are they faster once at full speed - for the same distance, they stay near their top speed longer.
As you said, if you can't built HSR properly (USA, UK etc.) don't even THINK about Maglev. Leave it to the Japanese and Chinese to develop the tech and prove it out while we try and just get some basic trains that work. Maybe in 100 years we can start thinking about Maglev. lol. But....even then I don't think it'll catch on big. It's quite a niche solution that only really works for linear corridors over long distances. It can't interface with existing tracks, so it'll always be it's own dedicated high speed thing, rather than a full network.
I remember taking the maglev in Shanghai in 2004, shortly after it had opened. At the time there was a lot of hype and the local English newspaper even said that a new line to Hangzhou would be available in time for the 2010 World Expo. That never happened. Plans to extend that line to downtown also didn't go anywhere. Many locals are actually wary of it going through their neighborhoods, as some think that the maglev is too noisy and some even told me that they thought the magnets could cause cancer. I am no position to say if they are right or not, but I do know that it has been nearly 20 years since the Pudong airport line opened and it remains unique and largely unprofitable.
The original plan was to run the maglev at least between the two main airports with a stop in town centre and a right-of-way still exists. The NOISE was the driving factor of oppostion. As soon as locals found out how loud a 500km/h train is they started pushing back _hard_ against the local government (Contrary to perception, whilst the Chinese government is authoritarian, they know better than to piss off hundreds of thousands of people at once, over a single issue) Ok, it's quieter than a jet fighter making a low speed pass (or even a conventional high speed train), but it's still _really_ loud and to make it worse it's a thump you can FEEL from over 100m away) "High-speed maglev noise impacts on residents: A case study in Shanghai" is worthwhile reading The economic case for the maglev is somewhat undermined by the Shanghai subway only taking ~40 minutes to city centre from either airport and being 1/10 the cost. As much as I wanted to ride it, the potential screaming match with my wife about the ticket price difference was not worth it (Never mind that we could easily afford it and I had budgetted it in, she blew her stack when she saw the price vs taking the metro. Persisting would have been "most unwise") WRT magnetic fields or radio emissions causing cancer: Inverse square laws apply to both and in most cases unless you're sitting ON the magnet or antenna, it's not going to affect you (and almost certainly has no effect whatsoever beyond a couple of metres)
@@miscbits6399 I definitely remember the complaints and fears about the sound too. When I arrived in Shanghai in 2003 from France, the metro line 3 had just opened and it still sold paper tickets. Now they are literally building the line 23 near my apartment. It is MUCH more convenient now than it was then.
@@miscbits6399 Yeah once they extended Line 2 from Zhangjiang Hi-Tech out to PVG, most people just switched to taking the subway since it was much cheaper and could get you directly into city center or even all the way out to Hongqiao Airport/Shanghai Railway Central without the need to switch. I did take it once though on my way out, was a cool experience for sure.
At 20m15s you talk about the L0 Maglev, while showing a regular N700 Nozomi Shinkansen, also a fun and fast train at 275 Km/h between Tokyo & Kyoto, takes only about 2h20m as we recently experienced 😊 Tom Scott was at the experimental Maglev track in Japan for a video.
Considering the new CR450 conventional high-speed train will have operating speeds of 400 kmh or 249 mph, it's is not far off the current Shanghai maglev.
I pass under the Linino tracks a couple of times a month on bicycle tours. I had always assumed that it used a linear motor but rolled on wheels; but I checked their website, and yeah, it's a maglev. So fancy that, and thanks for including it.
you have not mentioned the one in Changsha, China. It is has been running for a few years and quite successful commercially. total length 18.55km $749 million USD cost. Top speed at 140km/h 40million USD per km isn't that expensive compare to average cost of subway line in China which is between 82-121million USD per km.
We loved the Birmingham maglev. When we visited the NEC, adjacent to the airport and International rail station, we used to ride it, it was free, unmanned and fun. Incredibly comfortable and almost silent. We were gutted when it closed
One further point : Maglevs need a dedicated line, without points/crossrails en-route. Conventional trains can switch routes across vast networks (e.g. in the UK) which makes them a very flexible option.
I live between Baltimore and Washington DC and I am one of those opposed to the project. As pointed out in the video, the ultimate goal is to build a Maglev train in the Northeast Corridor and the officials in Maryland were the only ones who were willing to consider allowing a smaller demonstration project in their state. The selling point was getting from DC to Baltimore in 15-20 minutes, with a stop at the airport in between. Aside from the cost - both for the line and compensating people who will lose their homes - the problem is there is no real local need. There are already 2 separate commuter train lines serving the route, along with 2 major highways connecting the cities. Based on where I live I will still need to take the older train as there would be no local stop. Residents realize this isn't for them it's for a larger project that they will not see benefits from.
The Birmingham Maglev was near me and I went on it not long before it closed when I was 4/5 years old. It was stopped for a while and now replaced with a cable drawn people mover which also may change or be part of a link to the HS2 station.
Great episode! It's fascinating how difficult it seems to be to get even traditional trains to work really well, despite having some significant potential advantages over road traffic, and maglevs having significant potential benefits over traditional rail, seems to be even harder to produce good versions of. Those are high costs, but then again, as potentially society altering megaprojects go, a few billion dollars isn't that much, especially the quoted estimates. I mean, if something sounds to good to be true and all that, applies very well to cost estimates for massive and highly advanced infrastructure on the same order of magnitude of what it takes to maintain the streets along the planned route during the time it actually will take to get the new infrastructure up and running.
I have ridden the Pudong maglev. On the day I travelled it reached 435kmh. Quite impressive. However, the ride wasnt as smooth as say Shinkansen, Eurostar or CHSR.
I'm surprised that you did not mention the development of "High-temperature superconductors" in connextion with the maglev projects. To me, that looks like a real game changer.
Main reasons why maglev hasn't and never will catch on are: 1 Maglev would a brand new infrastructure system, one that would instantly collide with the already existing rail network. 2 Standard rail systems are way more modular, and by that I mean . . . just about everything. From types of cargo to the freight cars used to transport said cargo and the rail yards themselves. 3 Cost of building the network. Be it electrified or non electrified, it's waaaay cheaper, faster and simpler to lay down 2 pieces of rail, connected by some ties than it is to build a whole concrete structure that spans god knows how far. Sinply put, Maglev is a wonderful idea but it will never replace the train. Trains are cheaper and more modular
All the above reasons can be shortened to maglev is way too expensive. 1) Expensive new infrastructure system. 2) Expensive to convert cargo and freight cars. 3) Expensive to build the network
Maglev will replace the train in areas that can afford them because of the long-term benefits of power efficiency, easier maintenance, and faster speed with them currently building ones that can go faster than a plane.
I travelled on the original Maglev At Birmingham Airport in 1981. I was an electronics apprentice at the time. It was quiet but a bit shaky I thought. Very Heath Robinson.
You forgot two key issue with maglevs nowadays that are also connected. 1. Maglev trains use closed designs. That means the whole system aka the train and the rail come from one company. Thus, you cannot buy trains from another company to run on your tracks. This limits competition. 2. Each system uses a unique design. While on standard rail, you can use the same parts for a wide variety of trains and have some economy of scale, this does not apply to the different maglev concepts. And this is much more complicated than just having a different gauge. Major components have to be switched. Thus, making it less likely to have multiple companies building trains for different types a tracks. In addition, steel wheels already have low friction so the benefit is not that big for most operations. If you get faster, the air resistance is also the main contributor of friction. You can integrate high speed rail with slower rail in train stations easily, which you cannot do with maglev. And railways are better equipped to carry high and varying cargo weights. They are easier to distribute. Thus, you need definitely rail and a separate maglev track and there is no space left in many urban areas. And there is one more thing. They require much more rare materials to work than conventional trains that are also harder to recycle. Old rails and wheels can be completely recycled and made into new rails and wheels.
I remember times when the Swissmetro was looking for a country where first shorter section of the (now known as) Hyperloop would be built to serve as a proof of conception to measure construction and maintenance costs. Over 20 years ago they proposed such investment of underground rail to some cities, including the Polish city of Cracow (Cracow-Zakopane tourist metro line, 12 minutes ride @ 500 kph). Cracow refused to participate in the investment, believing it to be a "white elephant" project. Back those times (20 years ago) the cost of building Lyon-Munich-Vienna Swissmetro line was estimated for 40 bn EUR (some 80 bn EUR today I believe).
Maglev lines sound like they work better the longer the train has to travel, which economically is a tad counterproductive Chile would be great for that tho 1with only 15 stops, also Chile is a long straight chunk of land
Thanks for that explanation. I always figured the reason all countries don't have them now is just because they're expensive. Now I realize that although the upfront cost is expensive, that's the least of it.
@@flybobbie1449A few years ago I heard of a similar story in Germany where they had some sort of headline power issue and they actually relied on some heritage steam trains to haul cargo for a few days until the power was fixed. Kinda cool to think about but nowadays it comes with it's own issues, primarily water on the stops. Not many modern station have the infrastructure to fill up a steam locomotive with water. And that becomes a bit of a problem when your engine uses it as the main power medium...
@@pbworld7858 There's been a proposal for a Sydney-Melbourne (via Canberra) HSR line as long as I can remember (at least the late 1960s) and distances in Oz are so great that it's usually better to fly (definitely safer and usually significantly cheaper) It's nearly 600km between Sydney/Melbourne by the _shortest_ road route.(350 miles) and a smidgen over 900km (550 miles) to Brisbane whilst Melbourn to Adelaide is 720km and Adelaide to Perth is 2700km. Australia is BIG (much bigger than all of Western Europe combined) and population densities outside the SE coastal strip are more easily measured in square miles per person than people per square mile HSRs are expensive to build and maintain. This may change (in relative terms) as oil prices keep climbing and carbon emission requirements become more stringent but Australia most likely needs to cconsider nuclear power rather than continuing expensive "backing store" projects like Snowy 2.0 (or even more expensive battery projects which give less runtime)
1:10 - Chapter 1 - How it works 4:30 - Mid roll ads 5:45 - Chapter 2 - Design & development 11:00 - Chapter 3 - Maglev in practice 15:55 - Chapter 4 - State of affairs
The place that could really use mag lev, even at regular train speeds, is Chicago. A very quiet train line could improve property values and living conditions along the L. It’s loud as hell.
This is the actual future of maglev, as low noise and vibration urban rail lines. The biggest problem with maglevs to date is that they are all effectively monorails with monorail track switching problems. To switch a regular train between tracks your just have to move two narrow steel beams (rails), to switch a current monorail/maglev between tracks you need to often move a massive heavy concrete beam with a system that is much more prone to breaking down and slow to boot. If you can't switch tracks quickly and cheaply you cannot run as many trains and have to provide a much lower level of service. The Delft Hyperloop project is looking at using magnetic track switching (this part of the project is good, the vac tunnels are silly). In China they have built a maglev that uses a combination of permanent magnets and electromagnets for suspension. Put these together and you could have something quiet and practical. An advantage of maglev trains not mentioned in this video is that they can be much lighter than regular trains, meaning putting them on elevated viaducts can be much cheaper. They are lighter because they do not need to be heavy to make low friction steel wheels on steel rails work without slipping. Cheaper elevated rail is needed in cities as tunneling is so expensive.
moving to rubber tyres would solve most of the noise problems (French solution) far more cheaply than maglev, and doesn't have the switching issues (I'm pointing to the French solution as thia was specifically a conversion from rail to tyres+rail whilst most others would require the entire system be rebuilt from scratch)
Just as early airlines carried mail as a reliable revenue stream, maglev lines could find niche freight haulage of containers along high-demand routes to be profitable. The trouble with high-speed *passenger* rail service is the need for frequent stops at local stations. Maglev could be seen as a pseudo pipeline for containerized cargo on routes where they could out-compete trucks on freight volume and timely delivery. The weight and logistics may not work out favourably except for high-value goods on single-client routes. It would be informative to analyze all the numbers on energy input, maintenance, labour and infrastructure investment compared to regular rail and OTR trucking. Walmart could investigate a network from The Port of Long Beach to several inland logistics depots versus their current fleet of trucks.
The Birmingham Airports Maglevs track is still in use just with what i think is a cable drawn train on it now. Birmingham Airport is directly connected to over 100 towns and cities via Birmingham International Station and the 'Air-Rail Link' monorail system
Simon it's so nice to hear your voice again. Are you not going to do TopTenz anymore? Literally my favorite thing to listen to while driving any distance.
Maglevs are amazing and can still become much faster. But right now we need to mention that the speed record of 600 km/h isn't that fast. The TGVs record is 575 km/h, a much cheaper conventional train.
Except the GatPort Airwick maglev interport train. The high speeds seen by maglev trains are largely due to the dedicated and expensive track. As to the quality of the ride, the UK's HS2 and the Chunnel running on welded rails is very quiet and smooth.
Would loved to have learned more about the economics of maglevs. What are the upfront and operating costs Vs HSR? What is the ideal length of a Magelev vs airplane or HSR? Is there an ideal length or route that optimizes maglev over other options?
I have travelled on the maglev train in Shanghai. It only goes a relatively short distance from the city centre and Pudong international airport, so it is more of a tourist ride than a practical application of the technology
the shanghai maglev is very impressive but it didn't run at full speed for all services. One of the drawbacks of the train is that the length of track just isn't long enough for it to viable to run it at full speed all the time. By the time it reached full speed it would be very close to the time that it needed to start decelerating. Most of the time (at least at the time that I had ridden it), it was run at around 250kph or so.
Old Dominion Alum and Norfolk city resident here! I always saw the Maglev tracks as our white elephant, although I remember it fondly The technology is fascinating, but not very practical; especially after the TransRapid accident spooked off a lot of interest.
Switzerland had a plan to build maglev in low-pressure tunnels like the Hyperloop to reduce the freight on their overcapacity roads. Would make lot of sense there
Here in Australia, our now dismissed P.M., Morrison, told us, we couldn't have high speed rail services between Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, because the technology didn't exist to build high speed trains. He's a committed member of the Hillsong Church. Tells you a lot. Founder busted for child molestation, for starters.
The cost of building and running magnets that are large enough to levitate and propel a passenger train are enormous! Also, mag-lev trains need long runs to make their much higher possible speed make sense. In Toronto, we had the Scarborough LRT. It wasn't mag-lev, but it used a linear motor that was built into the tracks. It was supposed to be super-fast and fully automated. As soon as the thing got into opperation, the residents complained about the noise. That was the end of super-fast. Before the thing ever made it's first run, the TTC driver's union insisted that each train had a live operator at all times. So much for fully automated. To make things worse, the engineers that designed the thing failed to take damp, cold Toronto winters into account, so the thing was broken down about 20% of the time during winter. I don't live in Toronto anymore, but I heard that the Scarborough LRT has been scrapped.
With a top capacity of only 10 000 passengers per hour* the Chūō Shinkansen will be a somewhat sad addition to the travel market in Japan. Especially considering the high demand route it is a part of. The Tokaido Shinkansen of today has a peak capacity of 42 000 passengers per hour and it will obviously remain the absolute backbone of the route between Tokyo and Nagoya (and Osaka a few years down the line). That's a lot of money for little use. *5 trains per direction and hour with a seating of 1000 passengers each **16 trains per direction and hour with a seating of a little more than 1300 passengers each
I like how you just dropped in "the hyperloops of tomorrow" at the end, implying that they're the natural, inevitable future of train travel. When in reality hyperloop is little more than an impractical (at best) gadgetbahn that shows no sign of a practical application being developed. The challenges of conventional maglev are nothing compared to the challenges of running a train through a vacuum tube hundreds or even thousands of km long at twice the speed. Unlike hyperloop, maglev actually has a future.
This video reminded me that the Alberta government was talking at one point about a train between Edmonton and Calgary. I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be a Maglev but I should look into what happened to that
Since room temperature magnets can only float up to 1cm, in earthquake-prone Japan, they succeeded in floating the car body 10cm by using superconducting magnets that generate a strong magnetic force by cooling the magnets to absolute zero. This makes it possible to prevent contact with the guideway even when traveling at 500km/h. Superconducting magnets are used in medical equipment such as CT and MRI, but Japan is the first country to use them in high-speed trains.
Quick correction: the Japanese maglev line is not called "CHO"(超 - super) but "CHOO-OH"(中央 - Central) Shinkansen. Though calling it "Super Shinkansen" instead of "Central Shinkansen" sounds like an actual upgrade of the existing shinkansen system
There are many mistakes here. Friction is not a speed issue for wheeled vehicles, even very heavy trains. At high speeds air drag dominates the frictional costs of steel wheels on steel rails. The French TGV wheeled train had an experimental run at over 550kph. The issue with the wheels is mostly track and bogey maintenance. Those costs grow as the third to fourth power of the wheel loads. The fact that they could be better climbers is irrelevant for high speeds as the passenger comfort issues are the same whether the acceleration is lateral or vertical. High speed vehicles with any suspension and drive train require tracks with little lateral or vertical direction changes. Straight and flat = expensive and huge right of way acquisition costs. Maglevs have had limited penetration because they are about fixing the wrong problems, while introducing their own intrinsic issues like needing some form of linear motor versus just turning a wheel. We know how to do the latter really well. Good roller bearings used in roller blades are capable of more than 30,000 rpm so a 16 centimeter diameter wheel would support a linear speed of 900kph.
One problem, as in the Birmingham maglev was snow. Back in the early 80's we had discussion on why the track bed couldn't be a triangle. Snow would fall off, the sides of triangle would house the coils and triangle would stop train falling off.
The only high-speed maglev, in Shanghai, doesn't actually even make sense. It runs for 18 miles and take 7.5 minutes, more than half of which is acceleration, and doesn't stop anywhere. For comparison, my old commute was 13 miles, stopped at 6-8 stations, and took ~20 minutes, if it didn't have to stop it would have been more like 15 minutes. The Shanghai maglev, realistically, shaves maybe 5 minutes off the time of just using a fairly boring train (not even a fast one). It serves no real purpose except to be able to point and say "look what we did". What is missed from the film is one of the major reasons why they don't exist in a wider context - and it's the same reason that mono-rails are also basically non-existent. They require very expensive, exclusive track, that doesn't deal with junctions very well - i.e. it mostly requires an end-to-end seamless run. That makes them more or less useless across Europe, given the old world nature of the populations and existing infrastructure. China can build them, because they don't give a shit who they disrupt when building anything. Japan have history of using separate high-speed lines, so know how to do it. The US should be the one leading the way with it, given the vast amounts of emptiness and distances between major cities - but they have to fall out of love with cars to gain the apetite.
It amazes me that nobody in North America has built a maglev train yet. The Shinkansen is a major mode of transportaion there. It's so reliable in Japan that everybody simply takes it for granted.
I still have some hope for the tech being used on the busiest corridors in the world. But even then the cost has to come down and that's something that still hasn't happened yet. The Chinese have stated their design is simpler and cheaper but I have yet to actually see # to back that up...
Maglevs real time to shine will be when we colonize astral bodies in the vacuum of space. The speeds maglav can reach in a vacuum would allow it to essentially be a launch sustem for many smaller bodies. It can reach just a few 200 km/h under lunar escape velocity, so lunar lunches would require tiny amounts of rocket fuel, while having a launch system that humans can survive, literally a horizontal launch where the payload just get released from the maglev car and flies off into space.
Snails get somewhere eventually: *Snail who has spent the last hour crawling up my window * me: "back to the garden for you sir". Snail: *distressed writhing* Kinda feels like the Maglev projects. "back to the scifi books for you sir".
No contact with the track and no moving part removes some sources of noise and vibration. But levitation probably makes people think of floating in the air, like on a cushion of air. But the air is not providing any real cushioning effect here. The train is magnetically very tight with the tracking. This means that if the track experiences some deviations from a smooth line, for example some minor subsidence of the ground as can occur over time, those deviations will be mirrored by the train. I would suppose subsidence would lead to some small shifts of the concrete elements supporting the track relative to each other.
@@aphextwin5712 It demonstrates that you can't "just" rely on the levitation but still need a suspension system to soak up ride irregularities The Japanese mmaglev has the same issue and it's mostly in tunnels - Tom Scott published a video on his experience
@@miscbits6399 Well it doesnt helps that it was the first and only line with this system and that the company that designed it isnt around anymore. also chinese quality controll on the track...
@@nox5555 Tom Scott's Japanese experience demonstrates that both your assertions aren't relevant to the bumpiness of the ride. Either the cabins need to be isolated from the external environment or something like air-sprung seats need to be used - and given the comments he made about noise levels, it's likely to end up being the former over the latter, if a decision isn't make to partially evacuate the tunnels This is a complex set of issues (to say the least) and in all liklihood some combination of solutions will be used. Shinkansen riders have become used to extremely smooth rides and the current maglev ride quality will be intolerable to the average Japanese passenger
You don't mention the massive engineering needed for track switches or points. Not nearly as simple as moving a couple of steel rails by a few cm, you have to move the entire track bed and all the electronics needed to move the train
Well, the general logistics of plain tracks is also a big cost factor, you are basically competing with two steel bars screwed into concrete blocks and an electric wire. Hard to get cheaper per unit of distance …
@@domp2729 Beam replacement switches are constructed of reinforced concrete and do NOT bend. The straight section swings out of the way as the curved section swings in to take its place (or vice versa). The entire process takes about 12 seconds. Rotary switches are faster and also do NOT bend. Segmented switches (such as those used in many Japanese transit monorails) APPEAR to bend from a distance but the individual segments they're made of are reinforced concrete and not bendy at all.
I was taken to the transrapid in germany on a school tour and it wasnt working that day either, to enter the park you had to drive under a section of the track which that day just so happened to have a badly damaged rear section of the train stuck on the tracks, it turned out earlier that morning the two sections of the train had seperated that morning and only one section continued home to a kind of main test/station building where we were all emptied out of our bus, i think we were all happy to not be going on it and the teachers spent about an hour trying to get their money back. we were given a terrible 10/15 minute talk on the train by some guy who looked like some transrapid fan rather than a staff member and we were promptly told to get back on the bus.. lol
There was also a proposed maglev train between Denver and Glenwood springs that would have a spur down to Aspen and up to steamboat springs. That was turned down by the voters before it could ever get started
The problem with maglev is not simply its cost, but where its cost comes from. Maglev track is extremely expensive on a per-mile basis and can't be shared by any other vehicles. In contrast, a length of high-speed conventional track is relatively affordable and can be used by low-speed local trains when not needed for the high-speed service, and a high-speed train can travel at low speed on low-speed track to integrate with existing infrastructure. So, because maglev expenses scale rapidly with the size of the network, they're really only suitable for the rare cases where you need to connect relatively distant cities with fast, high-volume service that can't be supported by aircraft, slower trains, or road vehicles. So certain cases like the Shinkansen make sense, but -- as you noted -- city center to city center transit is very difficult to retrofit into an existing city. Digging them through tunnels just exacerbates the per-mile expenses, so even that isn't really a solution. It's a great idea, but you would have to build your country with this transit system in mind, or else have a strong-to-tyrannical government capable of forcing the city restructuring needed to accommodate it over any objection from the residents. (Looking at you, China.)
The german company Max Bögl has made a proposal to build the Third Line / Metropolitan Train in my city, Santo Domingo using the Maglev technology. However, it looks like our government will probably choose Alstom´s trains, since we are currently working with them on our existing lines + a Monorail that´s being built in our second largest city, Santiago.
Think of a maglev track as the stator of an electric motor and the train being some kind of the unrolled rotor. Now in order to cope with all kinds of external impact factors, the flight height must be something like 15-20mm, meaning we have an air gap of 20mm between stator and rotor. A typical electric motor has an air gap of less than 1mm which makes it far more efficient. Additionally, the maglev needs energy to lift off and stabilize during flight which also impacts efficiency.
13:44 ahem, the city of Sydney in Australia used to have a monorail system that took a route throughout the city… It has since been removed and replaced with multiple light-rail/tram lines… But kinda poor form to have left it out - it was even featured in the power rangers movie from the 90s
Nice video. It could have been a lot better if you had interviewed some engineers who have worked on mag-lev projects and asked them the simple question: Why are maglev trains so expensive? The follow-up would be then "For what problem in this area is a technology break-through most needed to reduce its cost?" The answers to those questions could, perhaps, end up inspiring up-and-coming engineers to focus on those areas and make this sci-fi fantasy a wide-spread reality, eh?
Interviewing is fundamentally different from what Simon does. He hires writers for multiple channels and basically acts as a reader and the face. Sometimes his writers do reach out to experts and other people, and they will include that in the piece, but conducting an interview is entirely different type of journalism with different ethical standards and requirements. I’m sure interviews exist if you’re interested in hearing one
I think it's very understated how much of a problem regular stops are. If you gotta stop every few kilometers, high speeds make very little sense. Also, normal high-speed trains can get to pretty impressive speeds already, close to the comfortable speed limit where passengers would still be comfortably. The French TGV travels up to 320 km/h, the German ICEs aren't that far behind. And that's already pretty near the limit of comfortable travel. Maglevs sadly don't make too much sense. They would make sense on big stretches without many stops, but there isn't many of those. You don't really wanna build a rail that connects only big cities and skips everything in between.
It's an interesting idea and I'm all for fantastic new technologies. However, given SNCF managed to get a TGV up to 574kph, I can't see them taking off unless they have the possibility of reaching near the 1,000kph mark. At which point are we near the fabled hyperloop?
How fast it can hit in a one time test is totaly irelevant. It also took 150 km to acceleration to that speed and it was down hill. Apart from that they had to straigen the track after and the train was composed of 5 locos and no vagon
Japan's Maglev reached 603kmh which was limited by the length of the track. Transrapid have also stated that 700-800kmh is achievable China is currently pursuing 1000kmh Maglev tech
It ultimately comes down to the fact that laying two steel bars next to eachother on some hardcore is a hell of a lot cheaper than building a complex construction of connected electro magnets that have to be coordinated with millisecond precision. And given that the extra cost increases fairly linearly per mile, and that maglevs work better the further they travel to take advantage of speed, the upfront outlay is always going to be much more, And atm vastly more, than conventional trains. Same reason the hyper loop was a stupid idea. Well, one of the reasons
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talking of hyperloop.. and update of current projects would be nice. :)
Love your Rolex!
One important advantage of the electrodynamic system not mentioned is that the track tolerances are far lower compared to EMS, making the system more resilient to ground movement. Currently, the high speed maglev projects are focused on dense travel corridors, but as the technology matures, the supply chain develops, and the general economic condition improves, this should become more widely adopted. Inductrack technology should prove more suitable for lower speed lines.
Niron magnetics.
Should shake things up.
@@alw7315the few companies that haven't "given up" on the idea are grifting various government agencies around the world without actually building or designing anything. The idea is fundamentally flawed and will never be in commercial operation.
Also it's literally just a maglev train in a (near-) vacuum tube.
Maglevs can work but people have to stop treating them like trains and more like ground hugging point to point airplanes. Their best use, in my opinion, is as part of a hub and spoke network where you take a maglev between two major transit hubs, get off, then take more conventional transportation to your final destination.
Yeah, normal trains are pretty much compatible with any track. You just need to standardize the track width and gauge. With maglev there's so much more lock-in to a specific design that it's a hard sell to use it for anything other than individual routes.
Sure, but, well... Airplanes can do that, without the need of investing into tracks
The problem of maglevs is, that they lack a use case which justifies the investment
@@frankkoboldairplanes have A LOT of disadvantages over maglev:
- They cost way more per unit traveled
- they are a lot less comfortable to be in
- airports have lengthy check-in and boarding procedures so you spend a lot of additional time
- they have way way lower frequencies and as a result way lower peak capacity
- they are a lot worse for the environment
There is a good reason Japan is building the Chuo shinkansen on their most congested medium distance route. It's the perfect use case for maglev: between 200km and 500km with few stops. Also Tokyo airports are congested already, it's not like they could fly more planes anyway.
Yes the initial investment is downright absurd, but long term it's better than adding more planes. Most governments and companies just aren't willing to think beyond the next election or quarter respectively.
@@NeXtdra42 ah, it's less "not thinking long term", but it's a topic of risk as well as how much you can afford now.
Would it have been long term better, that I would have bought an apartment while I was studying instead of renting? Ofc, but there is the risk of me moving later on plus I simply didn't had the money.
What if one village disagrees with building the tracks (which are also not good for the environment) near them loudly & publicly? What if a economic crysis leads to massive increase in cost?
So ofc running cost are better even with a maglev, but the cost (incl risk) of Capital is just too big.
Ofc you have examples like Japan, where it just worked out. But that are very specific conditions which have to be fulfilled, which are rare, so no benefits through scale.
Even your 200-500km example: if you have a few stops, why not normal trains with higher speed, which can also be used by other local trains & also cargo? After all, you won't have the tracks occupied the whole time.
And if you need for 500km 2h or 1h just doesn't make a big difference.
Tldr: cost & risk of capital too high, really far away planes ofc, and on the distances where maglevs would be ideal/better, normal (high speed) trains are an acceptable alternative with higher flexibility & better economy of scale (of the infrastructure to build the tracks etc)
At first sight that looks smart, but in detail almost only those who only want to travel from one hub to another (or nearby) are benefiting.
The others will lose time while waiting for their connections at the hubs. Or even worse wasting more time by travelling in the opposite/false direction to reach the hubs or their destinations.
So you're about to spend a huge amount of money for maglevs for the benefit of few. While spending the same money on a grid of regular trains would benefit a majority.
What is more economic or democratic?
"Fun fact" from Germany: the high speed trains in Germany (ICE) are able to travel with almost 300 km/h. But the German operating company (Deutsche Bahn) has redused the actual speed of the trains to a maximum of 250 km/h. Reason: a higher speed is a waste of money. For a higher speed more energy is needed but in return the travellers don't see any benefits. Cause the maybe saved 5 minutes at the train vanishs when you look at your travel time as a whole (traveling to and from the train station, waiting for connections). So speed is not all, there are other things that have more impact.
The Japanese one mentioned last is different from all the others in a significant way. Not just that such a long line (compared to other maglevs) is already under construction. The main difference is technological: first time superconducting magnets are used for a maglev train. This further increases the upfront cost in the hopes of decreasing the later running costs. So kind of a maglev on steroids in this aspect. But I really like the way the guidance left/right/up/down is passive in this system and get stronger and stronger with speed increasing. And the superconducting magnets mean stay strong for a long time after external power to the system is lost. So for this to have a crash you have to physically destroy a long enough section of the track in front of it. For us technically minded this really seems like it is at least as safe at 500kph as a regular HST on wheels is at 250kph. I really hope they overcome the red tape and financing issues.
China's experimental sky train maglev also use permanent magnets
@@prastagus3 superconductors? Or just regular permanent magnets?
@@hebijirikI believe they are permanent magnets which floats train and requires no power. Due to this reason, it is not moving that fast.
As for superconducting magnets maglev, China did test a high-temperature superconducting maglev system half a year ago.
@@prastagus3 it will be interesting to see where it goes. The Japanese SCMaglev uses regular proven superconductors in the vehicle, similar to what is used in particle accelerators and tokamaks but they have some clever tricks there to keep the cooling system power consumption as low as possible. The track has very simple figure 8 shaped passive coils in the walls that passively create guidance and levitation when the strong SC magnets fly along them. The bottom of the track is just regular linear motor. What I find fascinating is that none of this requires any new or even young technology to work. It is all put together from long proven technologies that are just used in a new application. That is probably why they already got it to over 600kph with people on board.
I don't know anywhere near this much about the effort in China but their history with the Shanghai maglev makes me a bit skeptical of their ability to successfully deploy a maglev based on relatively new things like high temp superconductors into a working successfull mass transit system. Nevertheless I would like to be surprised. If they make it work well then that is and advancement for all of us.
Though for this project, the biggest portion of the cost is tunneling through all that mountain
I worked in Shanghai during the week and commuted home to Singapore on weekends for 18 mths in 2009/2010, and used the Maglev for the trip to/from Shanghai Airport into downtown Shanghai. Was an awesome period in my career
but if you carry a lot of luggage it is actually not convivence, the terminal station is not really connected to the subway, at least that's what happen 10 years ago, not sure if there is any update, our bosses taking limo to that station just to try the maglev to the airport
@@ybingit's connected to the subway system now
@@ybingSounds like your boss just wants to use a limo at company expense. 🤣
@@--enyo-- 🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫
the one in shanghai is just a test track and only goes as fast as a bullet train, the chuo shikansen is longer alone in the test track and will go all the way to nagoya in a couple years and is twice as fast
Whoever edited this video.. I LOVE YOU. The sponsor spot volume was reduced at least 30%, and as a thank you- I sat through the whole ad and let the video play 3 times through (was alt-tabbed doing other stuff)
I wish more creators were thoughtful enough to do this.. such a small thing that makes a huge difference to we headphone users.
I think that still just counts a single view.
@@DouglasLippi increases retention rate which means the TH-cam algorithm will favour it more
I rode the Maglev a few days ago for the first time in Shanghai. What an experience. Watching the train lower before opening the doors was incredible. The track also tilts at points
I rode the German Transrapid on the test loop back in the mid 2000 when I was a minor and even then it was a proven and ready to implement technology. It was a joy to ride, flying through the landscape at 400+kph effortlessly. It was quiet, fast and relatively versatile with higher possible ramp angles, higher throughput and a relatively simple carriage design. The problem was always cost of adoption and the difficulty of switching track economically and safely.
All the reasons stated why Transrapid failed had been a lie.
Edit: kph
@@Noise-Bomb
*quiet
" problem was always cost "
Wrong, cost was never the problem:
" difficulty of switching track"
The test track swich track 4 times every lap of the track
"safely"
Safty was never a problem . The accident happen with the system tunred of, that only could be done because it was a protoype track
@@matsv201 they are more expensive then normal trains so of course cost is a problem. That's also why the Concorde stopped. It was feasible to make but the cost just didn't make sense
One thing worth mentioning in the case of the vacuum tube version (like swiss-metro) cooling becomes a big issue, as your train is basically in giant thermos bottle. There might not be any engine on board, but you have all the passenger equipment, and all the passengers which are probably producing 50 Watt per person of heating.
People should forget about the vacuum tube train ideas. It's fundamentally flawed beyond issues with thermals. Look at the hyperloop to see an example of why it cannot work.
@@TheExileFox I once did some calculations on separation distances they'd need in hyperloop, in order for pods to be able to be brought to a safe stop in the event of a pod having an accident. It's a very long distance, and would fundamentally limit the capacity of the hyperloop to ridiculously low levels.
A vacuum tube breach is another hyperloop nightmare. There's a real problem with what to do, if it happens. If the tube is fully cut open, the best thing to do is to bleed off the vacuum along the entire length as quickly as possible.
An alternative is to have slam-doors that close, to stop the whole tube's vacuum being filled. Trouble is, as the vacuum is filled via the breach the air pressure wave that is filling the tube will push debris through the tube, and this will hit the slam door at about Mach 1. If you make it too light it might fail when the debris hits, and now you've got a slam door + debris travelling down the next section of tube at Mach 1. And so on.
at anything less than 300km/h vac trains aren't worth bothering with. Tunnels aren't fully evacuated in any case so active cooling does work (we're talking pressures equivalent to 1-200k feet altitude, not full space vacuum for supersonic transit and commercial airliner altitude for subsonic speeds)
@@abarratt8869 "vacuum" handling is easier than you think. It's reduced pressure (not no pressure) comparable to extremely high altitude flying and we've been making stuff like this with "controlled leaks" for years, plus you don't rely on "one" vacuum pump but have them spaced out perhaps every 50 metres (you'll need to power the entire track length anyway for linear motor coils). In essence if the power goes off they return to atmospheric pressure relatively quickly (less time than the backuppower supplies of the pressurisation kit in the pods) and pressure-sealed escape doors can be fitted to the tubing (essentially a reverse of airline fuselage plug doors, but without the weight considerations)
The controlled leak ensures than a pod entering lines approaching a damaged section will essentially air-brake. You're unlikely to see a clean break in the tubes as we're talking steel section several inches thick (weight isn''t really a consideration for fixed infrastructure - you build bridges to account for it) that - like nuclear containment - is essentially terrorist/airliner-resistant (When french terrorists tried firing anti tank weapons at the French nuclear plants it annoyed the administrators because they'd just painted the buildings and it meant a repaint was needed to get rid of the scorch marks)
Your bigger danger is earthquakes but on the other hand there are various ways of dealing with potential movement at strike-slip interfaces already and levitation systems can easily cope with 1-2gs of acceleration (this was what was recorded at Christchuirch in 2011 and amongst the highest ever recorded) if they happen to be directly over the epicentre
I know I'm being handwavery about this, but maglev vac trains were considered technically feasible in the late 1960s and a planned USA rollout in the 1970s dodn't go ahead for financial reason (this backfired thanks to the 1973 oil crisis)
As I've said elsewhere I think these systems will only prove feasible if they can carry cargo in standard shipping containers and compete head on with airfreight/travel, _NOT_ trains
Airfreight mostly still uses the "wagonload" concept despite using LD3 containers - cargo is (un)loaded into containers at airports, which are not used end to end. Wagonload (boxcars) has been an obsolete method for railsystems (except in exceptional cases) for several decades (ditto marine transports. Dockside cargo unloading went away a long time ago too for virtually everything except bulk carriers - containerload transport (shipping of complete prepacked units) is what kept rail economically viable and is why shipping runs to a few cents on most finished items right up to the local distribution stage (One case I know - from the 1990s was a friend of mine who was transporting the same items by sea for a landed-in-his-warehouse cost of around 8c/device, but thanks to logistical issues had to airfreight a couple of containerloads to satisfy demand - at a cost of $10 per device
Yes, the differences really are that stark
But Elon Musk said he’d build a hyperloop and he’s never let people down before.
shanghai maglev no longer runs at 430km/hr, top speed was reduced to 300 early this year. Transrapid became defuct so no major maintenance can be done
And that is slower than a 320km/h TGV.
Yes, when I was in Shanghai more than 10yrs ago, I think every journey ran at 430km/h. Now it seems it no longer does that speed. Then what's the point of having the Maglev there in the first place.
@@ymhktravel tech showcase
There’s really no point in traveling that fast.
@@grahamstrouse1165 perhaps not for passengers, but cargo?
Glad to see the Birmingham Airport Link Maglev shown here, often forgotten , a collaboration of GEC, Metro-Cammell and others. I was fortunate enough to see the Japanese prototype Maglev at a Science Institute when I visited Japan in the 1990's? The thing that most people do is overestimate the friction of steel wheels on steel rails, actually quite low, and underestimate the energy required to suspend a 300 tonne train. Plus the Elephant in the Room is the cost of replacing thousands of miles of current rail infrastructure. A factor more per mile than even HS2!
The low friction is also one of the reasons it takes a train forever to stop. (And the massive mass involved of course.) IIRC Maglev should be better at that.
Sadly I missed the chance to ride the Chuuou experimental track. Guess I'll have to wait until it's opened for real.
And yes, the investment costs are mind staggering.
The other issue with maglev is that the system has to be built entirely from scratch. A regular high speed train can operate on the new high speed tracks but also extend service onto older tracks and stop at existing stations.
Yes definitely trains all use the same tracks so cost effective. Maglev is only good for magnetic
The best place to build a maglev would be if you're building transportation infrastructure from scratch, like South Korea's new capital Sejong.
Im looking forward to what japan will do, they are willing to go there to the end just like high speed rail. Everyone thought they were stupid doing that when the rest of the world still had steam lokomotives, cars and planes.
I trust the japanese the most to make that viable, build it and get it to run because they dont bullshit around with their work. I just have to look what the mess the deutsche bahn in germany is. We cant even build an airport here...and in asia they create entire islands out of nothing to build an airport ONTOP OF THE ISLAND THEY JUST BUILD!
Maglev is the future, just like how train tracks had to be built on dirt- maglev lines will be built on rails and former road corridors, or between them.
Alright, what is your point though? Naturally, you can't put maglevs on traditional tracks as that is for the bullet system.
great video as usual, but why would you mention the idiotic scam that is the hyperloop at the end?
Came here to say the same thing!
You made me watch the end of the video again.
"The hyperloops of tomorrow", lol. There is a higher chance that we get teleportation.
@@elisfsharri Well yeah, once you solve the trouble with transporters: th-cam.com/video/nQHBAdShgYI/w-d-xo.htmlsi=m548mDBjjdsxKnIn 😀 ⚡💀⚡😀 ...🤨🤔❓
My thought exactly...
My exact thoughts.
I believe the Birmingham maglev wasn't just replaced with a bus. They now use a similar transportation system using the same track except its cable powered.
I rode on the Birmingham system once; I wasn’t flying anywhere I just went there to try it. It was sometimes out of service, not because it was particularly unreliable I think but because it was totally non-standard so if it did break down it could take longer to source parts and repair it than for a more conventional system. I think this was the main reason it was taken out of service.
It was directly replaced by a bus while converted to a more conventional People Mover type system which I believe is still in use today. It is not cable hauled but uses driven wheels like a conventional train or tram. A recently opened system at Luton airport is cable hauled.
Thats brexit
i used to ride the old maglev in the school holidays, that was 80's entertainment for a kid! go see the plane hanging from the ceiling in the terminal then ride the maglev a few hundred times
If you mean between the Airport train station and the actual airport, yes there is an overhead train. Not sure if that is where the old Maglev was.
follows the same route exactly, just different power now
One aspect not mentioned is the network effect. Conventional high speed rail can tap into an existing network, and be it only for the ‘last mile’ into a city center. Sure, if you want to add capacity, you might also need new tracks into city centres or even new platforms. But HSR often might just replace older lower rail. And HSR can easily be built in stages, HS2 in the UK for example allows train to continue to run further north, even after only the first phase has become operational. You can’t do that a Maglev.
And in the same way that HSR requires certain population densities and distances to work best (and thus be the most economical option), Maglev also has an optimal distance, which is longer than for conventional HSR. And given that a longer distance means a larger upfront investment, it is more difficult to finance it.
That depends _how_ you finance it. The underlaying point is that it's a competitor to airlines, not railways and airlines are currently extremely heavily subsidised (both directly and indirectly by using airspace and subjecting populations to noise pollution) whereas railway budgetting has to pay for EVERYTHING including the track (roads are invariably also heavily subsidised, which is why road traffic grows at the expense of rail)
As fuel costs skyrocket this will change.
Electric aircraft might be able to puddlejump but they can't do long distances and never will as nothing comes close to the energy density of liquid fuels (let's not fly nuclear aircraft. apart from shielding issues, splattering one across the countryside would be highly antisocial) with the added complication that aircraft will always be taking off close to MTOW no matter how short the flight (enhanced wear and tear). Additionally, the cost of retrofitting airport aprons - and paying for dedicated HV feeds to provide sufficient energy to be able to turn around flights within 2 hours or less (ie recharging) will make the £4.3 billion cost of Heathrow terminal 5 look like chicken feed (it would probably be easier to build dedicated nuclear power stations beside each major airport) - and this WILL be passed back onto fliers, making flying mostly the preserve of the wealthy (again)
Depends on how the HSR is planned out. While something like the German ICE does run on conventional rail lines. The Shinkansen lines in Japan are all purpose built tracks just for the high speed trains with no other trains using the tracks, including the tracks into the city center and station platforms.
While the second one does cost more, it is also considerably safer. High speed trains on conventional tracks that are shared have the risk of colliding with non high speed rail trains as has happened multiple times with the German ICE trains and the French TGV. Outside of cities, standard tracks also have road crossings which is another failure point that leads to collisions.
The UK high speed rail system is a joke anyway. HS1 is not particularly fast with the speed limit they have to follow, and HS2 is ridiculously expensive for what it will deliver.
@@cidiracing7481 "Shinkansen" literally means "new line" - the existing JR network is 3'6" cape gauge and patently unsafe at higher speeds. The JR New Line HSR network is standard gauge (you see sections of dual gauge in some areas such as the tunnel from Honshu to Hokkaido)
Because of the gauging issues, curve radius requirements (no tilting trains in 1964) and heavily used existing network the Shinkansen network had to be built as an end to end complete line. That's not the case in areas with standard gauge throughout the network
The Japanese Maglev _does_ have rails and wheelsets, used below 150km/h (90mph) and as such can be moved on the existing Shinkansen lines (as rolling stock, not self-propelled) however that network is extremely busy (It also means that trainsets can be shunted, parked and switched on conventional lines, which greatly reduces complexity of the maglev network - however I doubt that any kind of switching of passenger-carrying trains would occur even at reduced speeds)
@miscbits6399 Yes, generally, other trains use narrow gauge in Japan and run around mountains instead of using more direct and straighter routes than what a high speed train needs. But they could have still built a cheaper network on standard gauge that can be also used by non high speed trains and phase out portions of the narrow gauge train services to make the Shinkansen lines economically more appealing in exchange for the highest safety standards. Freight transport was at some point considered in their original plans before they built the line. Instead they went with lines that are only for high speed train passenger transportation and with a setup that is considerably more expensive, but ensures the highest safety. Best example is that they deliberately built all lines so there wouldn't be a single level crossing even though it adds quite a bit to the construction costs than just building all lines at ground level. Germany could have eliminated level crossings over time for their ICE routes. It wouldn't be cheap and it would cause disruptions, but it would be possible and eliminate one of the biggest safety issues.
Regarding the Maglev low speed operation. That is on rubber wheels, it does not use standard train wheels to get up to speed. So at least the L0 would not be able to operate on any Shinkansen line outside of the one that is being built currently between Tokyo and Nagoya and the later expansion to Osaka.
When would you ever add a high speed track and not need more capacity.
Also, you actually can´t do that, becasue there are incompabilties between high speed rail and freight rail, you have to seperate them
I've ridden on the Transrapid twice: once at the test track in Lathen (late 80s, I think), and once in Shanghai in 2018. Both rides were amazingly quick and smooth! It's so sad that maglevs haven't seen more adoption, considering that they have some real benefits: they can climb hills 10 times as steep as a regular train, when the track is monorail style, they interfere much less with the surrounding environment (farming below), they're more energy efficient, lower maintenance, and on top of it all, faster than an airplane at medium distances (no cumbersome airport wait times)...
Elevated grade is pretty much irrelevant, you can do that with any method.
The energy efficiency is an odd argument If you intend to run them at high speed metal rail speeds, the projects aren't worth the initial outlay for the marginal gain. Even considering the energy costs to build the track, it's unlikely you'd ever get that back. If you intend to run them at closer to the maximum reasonable for maglev, then the air resistance is going to eat up that energy efficiency entirely.
Maintance is usually measured in cost, and the cost of bespoke systems is always going to be higher than bog standard ones. So while they might theoretically be lower maintenance in a shiny future, they aren't now.
Classic french or spanish style High Speed Rail gives you the faster-than-an-airplane at medium distances as well at lower costs.
So the net result is that you get a sort of marginal speed boost for a huge outlay. And this is why they haven't been adopted.
The promise of upping speeds by around 100mph or so does have benefits for trunk lines. So I'm not saying that it's without point or value, only that if we're realistic about the tradeoffs, we can see why it hasn't been heavily pursued so far.
The noise levels and speed are obvious plusses, but historically it's never been cost effective. I'm hoping that the Japan project can turn this around. And I'm talking about total cost vs total societal benefit here, the way any transportation project should be measured.
@@jsrodman Actually, in future the ability to climb more elevated grade may be one of the most interesting properties. Problem with standard train is, they rely on friction of the wheels against rails. Typically you want it to be just enough... with elevated grade it must be actually very high. Trains weigh a lot... and on elevated grades, friction on rail simply might not be enough to overcome weight of the train pulling it "downhill". Next level problem happens, if train stops in slope. There is very real possibility it wouldn't be able to start moving upslope again. And this is not technology limitation... it's basically physics and you can't do much about that. If this was not a problem, why do you think there are so many tunnels built (which is typically very expensive and potentially dangerous endeavor).
The existing shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka is quicker than flying.
@@jsrodman Those are fair points - the up front cost to establish this new tech is a poison pill, given that it represents an incremental improvement. Though high speed train tracks are not “bog standard” - they’re usually already kept to higher standards than regular tracks, and not used for other applications such as freight.
@@PetrSojnek Exactly - the need for fewer tunnels and bridges means much lower cost when introducing high speed rail to new areas, where those tunnels haven’t already been built.
For the same reason (physics, friction), maglevs can accelerate and decelerate much faster. So not only are they faster once at full speed - for the same distance, they stay near their top speed longer.
As you said, if you can't built HSR properly (USA, UK etc.) don't even THINK about Maglev. Leave it to the Japanese and Chinese to develop the tech and prove it out while we try and just get some basic trains that work. Maybe in 100 years we can start thinking about Maglev. lol. But....even then I don't think it'll catch on big. It's quite a niche solution that only really works for linear corridors over long distances. It can't interface with existing tracks, so it'll always be it's own dedicated high speed thing, rather than a full network.
I remember taking the maglev in Shanghai in 2004, shortly after it had opened. At the time there was a lot of hype and the local English newspaper even said that a new line to Hangzhou would be available in time for the 2010 World Expo. That never happened. Plans to extend that line to downtown also didn't go anywhere. Many locals are actually wary of it going through their neighborhoods, as some think that the maglev is too noisy and some even told me that they thought the magnets could cause cancer. I am no position to say if they are right or not, but I do know that it has been nearly 20 years since the Pudong airport line opened and it remains unique and largely unprofitable.
The original plan was to run the maglev at least between the two main airports with a stop in town centre and a right-of-way still exists. The NOISE was the driving factor of oppostion. As soon as locals found out how loud a 500km/h train is they started pushing back _hard_ against the local government (Contrary to perception, whilst the Chinese government is authoritarian, they know better than to piss off hundreds of thousands of people at once, over a single issue)
Ok, it's quieter than a jet fighter making a low speed pass (or even a conventional high speed train), but it's still _really_ loud and to make it worse it's a thump you can FEEL from over 100m away)
"High-speed maglev noise impacts on residents: A case study in Shanghai" is worthwhile reading
The economic case for the maglev is somewhat undermined by the Shanghai subway only taking ~40 minutes to city centre from either airport and being 1/10 the cost. As much as I wanted to ride it, the potential screaming match with my wife about the ticket price difference was not worth it (Never mind that we could easily afford it and I had budgetted it in, she blew her stack when she saw the price vs taking the metro. Persisting would have been "most unwise")
WRT magnetic fields or radio emissions causing cancer: Inverse square laws apply to both and in most cases unless you're sitting ON the magnet or antenna, it's not going to affect you (and almost certainly has no effect whatsoever beyond a couple of metres)
@@miscbits6399 I definitely remember the complaints and fears about the sound too. When I arrived in Shanghai in 2003 from France, the metro line 3 had just opened and it still sold paper tickets. Now they are literally building the line 23 near my apartment. It is MUCH more convenient now than it was then.
@@miscbits6399 Yeah once they extended Line 2 from Zhangjiang Hi-Tech out to PVG, most people just switched to taking the subway since it was much cheaper and could get you directly into city center or even all the way out to Hongqiao Airport/Shanghai Railway Central without the need to switch. I did take it once though on my way out, was a cool experience for sure.
At 20m15s you talk about the L0 Maglev, while showing a regular N700 Nozomi Shinkansen, also a fun and fast train at 275 Km/h between Tokyo & Kyoto, takes only about 2h20m as we recently experienced 😊
Tom Scott was at the experimental Maglev track in Japan for a video.
Considering the new CR450 conventional high-speed train will have operating speeds of 400 kmh or 249 mph, it's is not far off the current Shanghai maglev.
And the operating cost is significantly lower too.
I pass under the Linino tracks a couple of times a month on bicycle tours. I had always assumed that it used a linear motor but rolled on wheels; but I checked their website, and yeah, it's a maglev. So fancy that, and thanks for including it.
Back in 2004 I was fortunate to be able to ride on the Transrapid at 450 km/hr at the test track in Emsland, Germany.
you have not mentioned the one in Changsha, China. It is has been running for a few years and quite successful commercially. total length 18.55km $749 million USD cost. Top speed at 140km/h
40million USD per km isn't that expensive compare to average cost of subway line in China which is between 82-121million USD per km.
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We loved the Birmingham maglev. When we visited the NEC, adjacent to the airport and International rail station, we used to ride it, it was free, unmanned and fun. Incredibly comfortable and almost silent.
We were gutted when it closed
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One further point : Maglevs need a dedicated line, without points/crossrails en-route.
Conventional trains can switch routes across vast networks (e.g. in the UK) which makes them a very flexible option.
This isnt really a major issue in the scale of the idea, it would be easy to get around by boring a tunnel instead
(or even going over head in some cases)
Note the N700 shown at timestamp 20:15 is a Shinkansen running on wheels put into service in 2007. Looks good and similar but is not a maglev at all.
I live between Baltimore and Washington DC and I am one of those opposed to the project. As pointed out in the video, the ultimate goal is to build a Maglev train in the Northeast Corridor and the officials in Maryland were the only ones who were willing to consider allowing a smaller demonstration project in their state. The selling point was getting from DC to Baltimore in 15-20 minutes, with a stop at the airport in between. Aside from the cost - both for the line and compensating people who will lose their homes - the problem is there is no real local need. There are already 2 separate commuter train lines serving the route, along with 2 major highways connecting the cities. Based on where I live I will still need to take the older train as there would be no local stop. Residents realize this isn't for them it's for a larger project that they will not see benefits from.
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The Birmingham Maglev was near me and I went on it not long before it closed when I was 4/5 years old. It was stopped for a while and now replaced with a cable drawn people mover which also may change or be part of a link to the HS2 station.
Great episode! It's fascinating how difficult it seems to be to get even traditional trains to work really well, despite having some significant potential advantages over road traffic, and maglevs having significant potential benefits over traditional rail, seems to be even harder to produce good versions of. Those are high costs, but then again, as potentially society altering megaprojects go, a few billion dollars isn't that much, especially the quoted estimates. I mean, if something sounds to good to be true and all that, applies very well to cost estimates for massive and highly advanced infrastructure on the same order of magnitude of what it takes to maintain the streets along the planned route during the time it actually will take to get the new infrastructure up and running.
I have ridden the Pudong maglev. On the day I travelled it reached 435kmh. Quite impressive.
However, the ride wasnt as smooth as say Shinkansen, Eurostar or CHSR.
I'm surprised that you did not mention the development of "High-temperature superconductors" in connextion with the maglev projects. To me, that looks like a real game changer.
There is still no room temperature super-conductor, although we hoped to get it since mote than 20 years.
Main reasons why maglev hasn't and never will catch on are:
1 Maglev would a brand new infrastructure system, one that would instantly collide with the already existing rail network.
2 Standard rail systems are way more modular, and by that I mean . . . just about everything. From types of cargo to the freight cars used to transport said cargo and the rail yards themselves.
3 Cost of building the network. Be it electrified or non electrified, it's waaaay cheaper, faster and simpler to lay down 2 pieces of rail, connected by some ties than it is to build a whole concrete structure that spans god knows how far.
Sinply put, Maglev is a wonderful idea but it will never replace the train. Trains are cheaper and more modular
Any fast train needs to be grade separated, for safety and even practicality. So, if desiring high speed, that raised or tunneled way is needed.
All the above reasons can be shortened to maglev is way too expensive. 1) Expensive new infrastructure system. 2) Expensive to convert cargo and freight cars. 3) Expensive to build the network
Maglev will replace the train in areas that can afford them because of the long-term benefits of power efficiency, easier maintenance, and faster speed with them currently building ones that can go faster than a plane.
In other words maglevs need that vaccum tube to make them worthwhile.
True
It's funny to me that you mention the hyperloop at the end. A technology that will never come into existence. XD
I travelled on the original Maglev At Birmingham Airport in 1981. I was an electronics apprentice at the time. It was quiet but a bit shaky I thought. Very Heath Robinson.
You forgot two key issue with maglevs nowadays that are also connected. 1. Maglev trains use closed designs. That means the whole system aka the train and the rail come from one company. Thus, you cannot buy trains from another company to run on your tracks. This limits competition. 2. Each system uses a unique design. While on standard rail, you can use the same parts for a wide variety of trains and have some economy of scale, this does not apply to the different maglev concepts. And this is much more complicated than just having a different gauge. Major components have to be switched. Thus, making it less likely to have multiple companies building trains for different types a tracks.
In addition, steel wheels already have low friction so the benefit is not that big for most operations. If you get faster, the air resistance is also the main contributor of friction. You can integrate high speed rail with slower rail in train stations easily, which you cannot do with maglev. And railways are better equipped to carry high and varying cargo weights. They are easier to distribute. Thus, you need definitely rail and a separate maglev track and there is no space left in many urban areas.
And there is one more thing. They require much more rare materials to work than conventional trains that are also harder to recycle. Old rails and wheels can be completely recycled and made into new rails and wheels.
Does the AGV system in France use magnetic propulsion?
@@thebagelsproductions no this is a "normal" high speed train platform with wheels and rails.
I remember times when the Swissmetro was looking for a country where first shorter section of the (now known as) Hyperloop would be built to serve as a proof of conception to measure construction and maintenance costs. Over 20 years ago they proposed such investment of underground rail to some cities, including the Polish city of Cracow (Cracow-Zakopane tourist metro line, 12 minutes ride @ 500 kph). Cracow refused to participate in the investment, believing it to be a "white elephant" project. Back those times (20 years ago) the cost of building Lyon-Munich-Vienna Swissmetro line was estimated for 40 bn EUR (some 80 bn EUR today I believe).
Thank you for that detailed report. I see a more recent episode about Chinese Mag-Lev.
good you acknowledged Japan's Linimo train. people keep forgetting Japan long had an operational Maglev line before the Chuo Shinkansen.
I rode a maglev vehicle in 1977, when it was demonstrade on IVA exhibition in Hamburg.
Maglev lines sound like they work better the longer the train has to travel, which economically is a tad counterproductive
Chile would be great for that tho 1with only 15 stops, also Chile is a long straight chunk of land
These have also turned out to be *incredibly* experience. And it sounds like this mught actually be better suited for freught trains.
If that was the case, they'd be used as such already.
I wouldn’t say the experience is that incredible.
Thanks for that explanation. I always figured the reason all countries don't have them now is just because they're expensive. Now I realize that although the upfront cost is expensive, that's the least of it.
As a pittsburgh resident I will wholeheartedly agree with your assessment
Turns out the best version of a train is a train.
TopGear proved this along with the firetruck. xD
Heavy snow a few years ago stopped the electric diesel trains. A steam train running a private run continued and carried some stranded passengers.
@@flybobbie1449steam is glorious
@@flybobbie1449A few years ago I heard of a similar story in Germany where they had some sort of headline power issue and they actually relied on some heritage steam trains to haul cargo for a few days until the power was fixed. Kinda cool to think about but nowadays it comes with it's own issues, primarily water on the stops. Not many modern station have the infrastructure to fill up a steam locomotive with water. And that becomes a bit of a problem when your engine uses it as the main power medium...
Until the release of Train 2: Electric Boogaloo
Here in Australia, we can't even get high speed rail up and running, never mind Maglev.
we struggle with low speed rail. maaaaaaaaate!
Surely you have an Australian version of USA's Greyhound or UK's National Express? ;-)
@@pbworld7858 There's been a proposal for a Sydney-Melbourne (via Canberra) HSR line as long as I can remember (at least the late 1960s) and distances in Oz are so great that it's usually better to fly (definitely safer and usually significantly cheaper)
It's nearly 600km between Sydney/Melbourne by the _shortest_ road route.(350 miles) and a smidgen over 900km (550 miles) to Brisbane whilst Melbourn to Adelaide is 720km and Adelaide to Perth is 2700km. Australia is BIG (much bigger than all of Western Europe combined) and population densities outside the SE coastal strip are more easily measured in square miles per person than people per square mile
HSRs are expensive to build and maintain. This may change (in relative terms) as oil prices keep climbing and carbon emission requirements become more stringent but Australia most likely needs to cconsider nuclear power rather than continuing expensive "backing store" projects like Snowy 2.0 (or even more expensive battery projects which give less runtime)
we have a version of England's HST but its only as fast as regular trains...@@pbworld7858
You have the added problem that your upside down.
1:10 - Chapter 1 - How it works
4:30 - Mid roll ads
5:45 - Chapter 2 - Design & development
11:00 - Chapter 3 - Maglev in practice
15:55 - Chapter 4 - State of affairs
The place that could really use mag lev, even at regular train speeds, is Chicago. A very quiet train line could improve property values and living conditions along the L. It’s loud as hell.
A maglev isn't going to do anything for Chiraq. Decades of corrupt and incompetent leadership has left that city a cesspool.
7:57. Speed helps with levitation.
Wheels might still have noise issues.
[time+money+will=innovation].
This is the actual future of maglev, as low noise and vibration urban rail lines. The biggest problem with maglevs to date is that they are all effectively monorails with monorail track switching problems. To switch a regular train between tracks your just have to move two narrow steel beams (rails), to switch a current monorail/maglev between tracks you need to often move a massive heavy concrete beam with a system that is much more prone to breaking down and slow to boot. If you can't switch tracks quickly and cheaply you cannot run as many trains and have to provide a much lower level of service. The Delft Hyperloop project is looking at using magnetic track switching (this part of the project is good, the vac tunnels are silly). In China they have built a maglev that uses a combination of permanent magnets and electromagnets for suspension. Put these together and you could have something quiet and practical.
An advantage of maglev trains not mentioned in this video is that they can be much lighter than regular trains, meaning putting them on elevated viaducts can be much cheaper. They are lighter because they do not need to be heavy to make low friction steel wheels on steel rails work without slipping. Cheaper elevated rail is needed in cities as tunneling is so expensive.
You could probably achieve that with continuously welded rails and modern eclectic motors.
moving to rubber tyres would solve most of the noise problems (French solution) far more cheaply than maglev, and doesn't have the switching issues
(I'm pointing to the French solution as thia was specifically a conversion from rail to tyres+rail whilst most others would require the entire system be rebuilt from scratch)
Just as early airlines carried mail as a reliable revenue stream, maglev lines could find niche freight haulage of containers along high-demand routes to be profitable. The trouble with high-speed *passenger* rail service is the need for frequent stops at local stations. Maglev could be seen as a pseudo pipeline for containerized cargo on routes where they could out-compete trucks on freight volume and timely delivery. The weight and logistics may not work out favourably except for high-value goods on single-client routes. It would be informative to analyze all the numbers on energy input, maintenance, labour and infrastructure investment compared to regular rail and OTR trucking. Walmart could investigate a network from The Port of Long Beach to several inland logistics depots versus their current fleet of trucks.
The Birmingham Airports Maglevs track is still in use just with what i think is a cable drawn train on it now. Birmingham Airport is directly connected to over 100 towns and cities via Birmingham International Station and the 'Air-Rail Link' monorail system
Simon it's so nice to hear your voice again. Are you not going to do TopTenz anymore? Literally my favorite thing to listen to while driving any distance.
Maglevs are amazing and can still become much faster. But right now we need to mention that the speed record of 600 km/h isn't that fast. The TGVs record is 575 km/h, a much cheaper conventional train.
Except the GatPort Airwick maglev interport train.
The high speeds seen by maglev trains are largely due to the dedicated and expensive track.
As to the quality of the ride, the UK's HS2 and the Chunnel running on welded rails is very quiet and smooth.
Would loved to have learned more about the economics of maglevs. What are the upfront and operating costs Vs HSR? What is the ideal length of a Magelev vs airplane or HSR? Is there an ideal length or route that optimizes maglev over other options?
I have travelled on the maglev train in Shanghai. It only goes a relatively short distance from the city centre and Pudong international airport, so it is more of a tourist ride than a practical application of the technology
160kph, I'm amazed it was "only" 23 fatalities...I was expecting "everyone on board...etc"
the shanghai maglev is very impressive but it didn't run at full speed for all services. One of the drawbacks of the train is that the length of track just isn't long enough for it to viable to run it at full speed all the time. By the time it reached full speed it would be very close to the time that it needed to start decelerating. Most of the time (at least at the time that I had ridden it), it was run at around 250kph or so.
Makes the present day unfinished HS2 in Britain look totally Brunel.
Whereas roads are Roman tech... 🤣
Why is it that Simon talked so little about the ONLY Maglev train in operation?
The Shanghai Maglev has been running for TWENTY YEARS, since 2004.
Old Dominion Alum and Norfolk city resident here! I always saw the Maglev tracks as our white elephant, although I remember it fondly The technology is fascinating, but not very practical; especially after the TransRapid accident spooked off a lot of interest.
Switzerland had a plan to build maglev in low-pressure tunnels like the Hyperloop to reduce the freight on their overcapacity roads. Would make lot of sense there
Here in Australia, our now dismissed P.M., Morrison, told us, we couldn't have high speed rail services between Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, because the technology didn't exist to build high speed trains. He's a committed member of the Hillsong Church. Tells you a lot. Founder busted for child molestation, for starters.
Yep even here in the US I knew about those sickos.🙄
The cost of building and running magnets that are large enough to levitate and propel a passenger train are enormous! Also, mag-lev trains need long runs to make their much higher possible speed make sense.
In Toronto, we had the Scarborough LRT. It wasn't mag-lev, but it used a linear motor that was built into the tracks. It was supposed to be super-fast and fully automated.
As soon as the thing got into opperation, the residents complained about the noise. That was the end of super-fast.
Before the thing ever made it's first run, the TTC driver's union insisted that each train had a live operator at all times. So much for fully automated.
To make things worse, the engineers that designed the thing failed to take damp, cold Toronto winters into account, so the thing was broken down about 20% of the time during winter.
I don't live in Toronto anymore, but I heard that the Scarborough LRT has been scrapped.
I wouldn’t hold my breath about „the hyperloops of tomorrow“.
With a top capacity of only 10 000 passengers per hour* the Chūō Shinkansen will be a somewhat sad addition to the travel market in Japan. Especially considering the high demand route it is a part of. The Tokaido Shinkansen of today has a peak capacity of 42 000 passengers per hour and it will obviously remain the absolute backbone of the route between Tokyo and Nagoya (and Osaka a few years down the line). That's a lot of money for little use.
*5 trains per direction and hour with a seating of 1000 passengers each
**16 trains per direction and hour with a seating of a little more than 1300 passengers each
UK will never have a maglev rail line. We can't even build a comparatively slow "high speed" line from Birmingham to the North
I like how you just dropped in "the hyperloops of tomorrow" at the end, implying that they're the natural, inevitable future of train travel. When in reality hyperloop is little more than an impractical (at best) gadgetbahn that shows no sign of a practical application being developed. The challenges of conventional maglev are nothing compared to the challenges of running a train through a vacuum tube hundreds or even thousands of km long at twice the speed. Unlike hyperloop, maglev actually has a future.
I loved the Maglev at BHX it was very convenient- had no idea it had closed down…
This video reminded me that the Alberta government was talking at one point about a train between Edmonton and Calgary. I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be a Maglev but I should look into what happened to that
Since room temperature magnets can only float up to 1cm, in earthquake-prone Japan, they succeeded in floating the car body 10cm by using superconducting magnets that generate a strong magnetic force by cooling the magnets to absolute zero. This makes it possible to prevent contact with the guideway even when traveling at 500km/h. Superconducting magnets are used in medical equipment such as CT and MRI, but Japan is the first country to use them in high-speed trains.
Yes , the Brum maglev , at the former Elmdom airport , maybe the guys at BMC made it , was cool though !
Quick correction: the Japanese maglev line is not called "CHO"(超 - super) but "CHOO-OH"(中央 - Central) Shinkansen. Though calling it "Super Shinkansen" instead of "Central Shinkansen" sounds like an actual upgrade of the existing shinkansen system
The Super New Trunk Line!
LOL, I just saw this comment and had the same thoughts (and commented before I noticed this...) 😅
I swear to god, this guy shows up in every other youtube channel
Lol
There are many mistakes here. Friction is not a speed issue for wheeled vehicles, even very heavy trains. At high speeds air drag dominates the frictional costs of steel wheels on steel rails. The French TGV wheeled train had an experimental run at over 550kph. The issue with the wheels is mostly track and bogey maintenance. Those costs grow as the third to fourth power of the wheel loads.
The fact that they could be better climbers is irrelevant for high speeds as the passenger comfort issues are the same whether the acceleration is lateral or vertical.
High speed vehicles with any suspension and drive train require tracks with little lateral or vertical direction changes. Straight and flat = expensive and huge right of way acquisition costs.
Maglevs have had limited penetration because they are about fixing the wrong problems, while introducing their own intrinsic issues like needing some form of linear motor versus just turning a wheel. We know how to do the latter really well. Good roller bearings used in roller blades are capable of more than 30,000 rpm so a 16 centimeter diameter wheel would support a linear speed of 900kph.
One problem, as in the Birmingham maglev was snow. Back in the early 80's we had discussion on why the track bed couldn't be a triangle. Snow would fall off, the sides of triangle would house the coils and triangle would stop train falling off.
Think the Maglev was based on work by Prof. Braitwaite.
Wrong type.
superb mister
The only high-speed maglev, in Shanghai, doesn't actually even make sense. It runs for 18 miles and take 7.5 minutes, more than half of which is acceleration, and doesn't stop anywhere. For comparison, my old commute was 13 miles, stopped at 6-8 stations, and took ~20 minutes, if it didn't have to stop it would have been more like 15 minutes. The Shanghai maglev, realistically, shaves maybe 5 minutes off the time of just using a fairly boring train (not even a fast one). It serves no real purpose except to be able to point and say "look what we did".
What is missed from the film is one of the major reasons why they don't exist in a wider context - and it's the same reason that mono-rails are also basically non-existent. They require very expensive, exclusive track, that doesn't deal with junctions very well - i.e. it mostly requires an end-to-end seamless run. That makes them more or less useless across Europe, given the old world nature of the populations and existing infrastructure. China can build them, because they don't give a shit who they disrupt when building anything. Japan have history of using separate high-speed lines, so know how to do it. The US should be the one leading the way with it, given the vast amounts of emptiness and distances between major cities - but they have to fall out of love with cars to gain the apetite.
You forgot the ones in Springfield, Ogdenville, and North Haverbtook.
And Disney world.
"Is there a chance the track could bend?"
It amazes me that nobody in North America has built a maglev train yet.
The Shinkansen is a major mode of transportaion there. It's so reliable in Japan that everybody simply takes it for granted.
15:15 - I am from Pittsburgh, and... Yeah, that's pretty much true.
I still have some hope for the tech being used on the busiest corridors in the world. But even then the cost has to come down and that's something that still hasn't happened yet. The Chinese have stated their design is simpler and cheaper but I have yet to actually see # to back that up...
Yes, wheels are surprisingly good.
Maglevs real time to shine will be when we colonize astral bodies in the vacuum of space. The speeds maglav can reach in a vacuum would allow it to essentially be a launch sustem for many smaller bodies. It can reach just a few 200 km/h under lunar escape velocity, so lunar lunches would require tiny amounts of rocket fuel, while having a launch system that humans can survive, literally a horizontal launch where the payload just get released from the maglev car and flies off into space.
You just took the words right out of my mouth!
Snails get somewhere eventually: *Snail who has spent the last hour crawling up my window * me: "back to the garden for you sir".
Snail: *distressed writhing*
Kinda feels like the Maglev projects. "back to the scifi books for you sir".
That train in shanghai is pretty loud and it feels bumpier than a regular train.
Having ridden on the Shanghai maglev numerous times & the Gaotie, (HSR) regularly I'd have to agree with you. The Gaotie is much smoother.
No contact with the track and no moving part removes some sources of noise and vibration. But levitation probably makes people think of floating in the air, like on a cushion of air. But the air is not providing any real cushioning effect here.
The train is magnetically very tight with the tracking. This means that if the track experiences some deviations from a smooth line, for example some minor subsidence of the ground as can occur over time, those deviations will be mirrored by the train. I would suppose subsidence would lead to some small shifts of the concrete elements supporting the track relative to each other.
@@aphextwin5712 It demonstrates that you can't "just" rely on the levitation but still need a suspension system to soak up ride irregularities
The Japanese mmaglev has the same issue and it's mostly in tunnels - Tom Scott published a video on his experience
@@miscbits6399 Well it doesnt helps that it was the first and only line with this system and that the company that designed it isnt around anymore.
also chinese quality controll on the track...
@@nox5555 Tom Scott's Japanese experience demonstrates that both your assertions aren't relevant to the bumpiness of the ride. Either the cabins need to be isolated from the external environment or something like air-sprung seats need to be used - and given the comments he made about noise levels, it's likely to end up being the former over the latter, if a decision isn't make to partially evacuate the tunnels
This is a complex set of issues (to say the least) and in all liklihood some combination of solutions will be used. Shinkansen riders have become used to extremely smooth rides and the current maglev ride quality will be intolerable to the average Japanese passenger
Also Maglev trains can’t use regular rail. It’s a fixed system that can’t use existing infrastructure (yet).
You don't mention the massive engineering needed for track switches or points. Not nearly as simple as moving a couple of steel rails by a few cm, you have to move the entire track bed and all the electronics needed to move the train
You're stuck in a specific design mindset. Think of rotary switches instead.
@@colormedubious4747 It's still more complex than a simple rail switch.
Well, the general logistics of plain tracks is also a big cost factor, you are basically competing with two steel bars screwed into concrete blocks and an electric wire. Hard to get cheaper per unit of distance …
It would essentially work the same way as monorail switches do where the track itself bends.
@@domp2729 Beam replacement switches are constructed of reinforced concrete and do NOT bend. The straight section swings out of the way as the curved section swings in to take its place (or vice versa). The entire process takes about 12 seconds. Rotary switches are faster and also do NOT bend. Segmented switches (such as those used in many Japanese transit monorails) APPEAR to bend from a distance but the individual segments they're made of are reinforced concrete and not bendy at all.
I was taken to the transrapid in germany on a school tour and it wasnt working that day either, to enter the park you had to drive under a section of the track which that day just so happened to have a badly damaged rear section of the train stuck on the tracks, it turned out earlier that morning the two sections of the train had seperated that morning and only one section continued home to a kind of main test/station building where we were all emptied out of our bus, i think we were all happy to not be going on it and the teachers spent about an hour trying to get their money back. we were given a terrible 10/15 minute talk on the train by some guy who looked like some transrapid fan rather than a staff member and we were promptly told to get back on the bus.. lol
There was also a proposed maglev train between Denver and Glenwood springs that would have a spur down to Aspen and up to steamboat springs. That was turned down by the voters before it could ever get started
The problem with maglev is not simply its cost, but where its cost comes from. Maglev track is extremely expensive on a per-mile basis and can't be shared by any other vehicles. In contrast, a length of high-speed conventional track is relatively affordable and can be used by low-speed local trains when not needed for the high-speed service, and a high-speed train can travel at low speed on low-speed track to integrate with existing infrastructure.
So, because maglev expenses scale rapidly with the size of the network, they're really only suitable for the rare cases where you need to connect relatively distant cities with fast, high-volume service that can't be supported by aircraft, slower trains, or road vehicles. So certain cases like the Shinkansen make sense, but -- as you noted -- city center to city center transit is very difficult to retrofit into an existing city. Digging them through tunnels just exacerbates the per-mile expenses, so even that isn't really a solution. It's a great idea, but you would have to build your country with this transit system in mind, or else have a strong-to-tyrannical government capable of forcing the city restructuring needed to accommodate it over any objection from the residents. (Looking at you, China.)
Maybe superconductivity will help !if we ever see it at cheap and easy temps and pressures...cheers.
The german company Max Bögl has made a proposal to build the Third Line / Metropolitan Train in my city, Santo Domingo using the Maglev technology. However, it looks like our government will probably choose Alstom´s trains, since we are currently working with them on our existing lines + a Monorail that´s being built in our second largest city, Santiago.
Think of a maglev track as the stator of an electric motor and the train being some kind of the unrolled rotor. Now in order to cope with all kinds of external impact factors, the flight height must be something like 15-20mm, meaning we have an air gap of 20mm between stator and rotor.
A typical electric motor has an air gap of less than 1mm which makes it far more efficient.
Additionally, the maglev needs energy to lift off and stabilize during flight which also impacts efficiency.
13:44 ahem, the city of Sydney in Australia used to have a monorail system that took a route throughout the city…
It has since been removed and replaced with multiple light-rail/tram lines…
But kinda poor form to have left it out - it was even featured in the power rangers movie from the 90s
Informative and wonderful journal coverage video about Maglev train 🚆 around the world 🌎 practiced in several industrial countries
Monorail! (What's it called?) Monorail! (Say it loud!) MONORAAAAAIL!
Mono... D'oh!
Is it true the track will bend?
Thanx., First time propulsion was explained.
Nice video. It could have been a lot better if you had interviewed some engineers who have worked on mag-lev projects and asked them the simple question: Why are maglev trains so expensive? The follow-up would be then "For what problem in this area is a technology break-through most needed to reduce its cost?"
The answers to those questions could, perhaps, end up inspiring up-and-coming engineers to focus on those areas and make this sci-fi fantasy a wide-spread reality, eh?
Interviewing is fundamentally different from what Simon does. He hires writers for multiple channels and basically acts as a reader and the face. Sometimes his writers do reach out to experts and other people, and they will include that in the piece, but conducting an interview is entirely different type of journalism with different ethical standards and requirements. I’m sure interviews exist if you’re interested in hearing one
I think it's very understated how much of a problem regular stops are. If you gotta stop every few kilometers, high speeds make very little sense. Also, normal high-speed trains can get to pretty impressive speeds already, close to the comfortable speed limit where passengers would still be comfortably. The French TGV travels up to 320 km/h, the German ICEs aren't that far behind. And that's already pretty near the limit of comfortable travel. Maglevs sadly don't make too much sense. They would make sense on big stretches without many stops, but there isn't many of those. You don't really wanna build a rail that connects only big cities and skips everything in between.
It's an interesting idea and I'm all for fantastic new technologies. However, given SNCF managed to get a TGV up to 574kph, I can't see them taking off unless they have the possibility of reaching near the 1,000kph mark. At which point are we near the fabled hyperloop?
Yeah TGV still the fastest non maglev train
Well Hyperloop is just maglev in a vaccum tube so yeah.
TGV current top speed is 300 km/h.
How fast it can hit in a one time test is totaly irelevant. It also took 150 km to acceleration to that speed and it was down hill. Apart from that they had to straigen the track after and the train was composed of 5 locos and no vagon
Japan's Maglev reached 603kmh which was limited by the length of the track. Transrapid have also stated that 700-800kmh is achievable
China is currently pursuing 1000kmh Maglev tech
It ultimately comes down to the fact that laying two steel bars next to eachother on some hardcore is a hell of a lot cheaper than building a complex construction of connected electro magnets that have to be coordinated with millisecond precision. And given that the extra cost increases fairly linearly per mile, and that maglevs work better the further they travel to take advantage of speed, the upfront outlay is always going to be much more, And atm vastly more, than conventional trains. Same reason the hyper loop was a stupid idea. Well, one of the reasons
The shanghai maglev looks awesome