Maglev Maniacs

[kevin_standlee]

Cheryl passes on to me this story about Bavaria building a maglev link to their airport. Upon first reading, you might think I'd say "Great! Another high speed train! Trains are great!" But in fact, I think this one is a really stupid idea, just like the Shanghai maglev referenced in the article. (The CEO of my company has been on that Shanghai system; he was telling me about it a while back when I happened to be seated with him at the Company Christmas lunch.)

I'm lukewarm about maglev systems in all cases, because they can't share existing railway infrastructure. This means you can't build a high-speed line that shares the legacy tracks into existing stations, which significantly increases the cost of construction. Also, thanks to imovements in conventional railway technology, maglev is not really that much faster than existing steel-on-steel high-speed systems. The new TGV line will run at up to 350 kph in opearation, and came close to beating the maglev speed record in a test run earlier this year.

In any event, if you insist on building maglev systems, then why build a system where the stops are so close together that you never get a decent benefit out of it? Maglev speeds are so high that you should be thinking of stops hundreds of kilometers apart, not dozens like an airport-to-city-center line. Although I still think it's a dumb idea, a maglev between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is (ahem) on the right track, distance-wise.

Munich would be better served by a more conventional railway link between airport and city center, running on relatively short headways at fast, but not necessarily hyper-fast speeds.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The USA is a third world country when it comes to rail transport. Our sole "high speed" line is the upgraded Northeast Corridor, which at its best sometimes approaches the UK's East and West Cost main lines. But that's still a generation behind the state of the art, as I'm sure you're aware.

As far as I can tell, the top people in the US government have never seen any political hay to be made from high-speed rail. Airlines and freeways are more interesting to them. Few of the key decision-makers have ever even been on a train themselves, I bet. And the airlines work very dilligently to squash high-speed initiatives that might interfere with them. I reckon Southwest Airlines will throw a lot of money at killing the California High Speed Rail bond if it ever manages to make it to the ballot, for instance.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

It's sad really. I'm in the UK in the second week of October and I need to go to Bath (100+ miles West of London) - it's a 90 minute train ride and a 2+ hour drive. No contest really. It's a little more tricky doing the next leg in the trip, which will be Bath-Winchester, but managable. I'll probably use a car service to actually get me back to Heathrow because it does tend to fall apart at that point.

Winchester-Waterloo-tube-Paddington-Heathrow Express is a little bit too painful for me.

[timill]

Winchester->Woking and bus to LHR? There used to be a connection there.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

If I'm going to have to swap to bus and go via road I may as well get a car the whole way and save myself the hassle. It's a business trip after all.

[timill]

Or Winchester-Basingstoke-Reading-Paddington-HEx?

[fr-john.livejournal.com]

True on the last leg. But it's still possible to do that. Here I can get to SFO by BART, but I have to take a leg on the bus to get to Oakland. It is some two or three miles from here to the nearest BART station and almost a mile to the nearest bus stop. There used to be busses up here, but they discontinued service a number of years ago. To use public transportation to do the occasional business in San Francsico would take about 2 hours each way, as opposed to 45 minutes to drive.

[garyomaha.livejournal.com]

::applauds::

When will you be running on a ticket I can vote for?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Alas, no. The highest political office I've held was my three-year appointment to the Caltrain Citizens Advisory Committee.

[fr-john.livejournal.com]

Most likely Amtrak doesn't have the lobbying dollars.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Like none at all. About all they have is the National Association of Railroad Passengers, which does what it can, but only has a relative handful of members (I'm one of them).