Chinese MagLev Train Opens Next Week 392
lupa1420 writes "The Guardian reports on the launch next week of the world's fastest train, 430kph, in China, which uses magnetic levitation technology. Includes instructions on how to make your own maglev demo at home."
Maglev has been running for a while (Score:5, Informative)
Alas, the maglev's official home page [smttc.com] (I think; at least they sell tickets) is all Chinese and out of date to boot. In the meantime, the best place to go is Wangjianshuo's blog [wangjianshuo.com], in particular the well-illustrated Maglev in depth [wangjianshuo.com] story.
Things that suck about the maglev:
- It only runs every half hour, which kind of defeats the point of having a superfast train.
- Tickets cost 75 RMB (~$9) a pop, this in a country where 800 RMB a month is considered a decent wage.
- It doesn't go into the city, you have to transfer to a subway and ride another 6 stops just to get on the Puxi side of the river.
Not that any of this will stop me from going for a ride next time I'm in Shanghai!Cheers,
-j.
Re:PDA/Disks/MP3-players at risk? (Score:5, Informative)
"RF shielding is the protection of sensitive electrical equipment from external radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic radiation by enclosing it in a conducting material. RF shielding is a refinement of the principle of the Faraday cage, which protects equipment from electric fields such as those from electrostatic discharges."
TGV (Score:5, Informative)
French TGV does 515 km/h [sterlingot.com].
Re:PDA/Disks/MP3-players at risk? (Score:1, Informative)
And this is magnetic fields we are talking about, not EM radiation.
Print-friendly version before the site goes down (Score:5, Informative)
China's superfast express launches next week. Sean Dodson reports on a revolution in public transport
Sean Dodson
Thursday January 15, 2004
The Guardian
On the southern bank of the Yangtze river, about 30km north of Shanghai, lies Pudong international airport. Since it opened its first terminal in 1999 it has served China's irrepressible 21st-century megalopolis with nothing more futuristic than a fleet of taxis and a schedule of buses.
If you are lucky, and the roads are clear, you can be in the city centre in 40 minutes. But as of next week, to coincide with the Chinese New Year, passengers arriving at Pudong will be able to reach the centre of town in a fraction of the time.
The world's first commercial high-speed maglev now connects Pudong with downtown Shanghai in a very, very nimble seven minutes 20 seconds. Shanghai's new express can reach a top speed of 430kph (267mph) in just under two minutes.
Maglev - shorthand for magnetic levitation - is basically a train that floats on an electromagnetic cushion, which is propelled along a guideway at incredible speeds. Magnetic levitation has been a long-standing dream of railway engineers - the first patent was issued in 1934 - but the first new mass transit system since the advent of the aeroplane has suffered more delays than the average London commuter train.
Little wonder. At first glance, maglev technology appears extortionately expensive when compared with conventional rail: a mile of track costs at least 3.5m to build and that's not including the cost of the giant electricity substations. But, say its advocates, the long-term benefits are many. Not only can it cut journey times in half, maglev is cleaner and cheaper to run than passenger aircraft. According to Transrapid, the German manufacturer of the Shanghai maglev, the technology uses five times less energy - per passenger mile - than jet aircraft. Maglev trains cost a few million pounds per vehicle, compared with $200m for the average Boeing 747.
Moreover, maglev schedules should also be less affected by bad weather or congestion than air travel and are cheaper to maintain. As the maglev has no wheels there is far less erosion of track, radically cutting operating costs. "Maglev offers the prospect of first-class style for a lower cost than economy air travel," explains Robert Budell of Transrapid, "there will be less need to pack you in like sardines".
But for a maglev fast enough to compete seriously with passenger aircraft you must travel to Japan. In the foothills of Mount Fuji, 100km west of Tokyo, lies the tourist town of Tsuru. Why would anyone build a test track for the future of mass transit in such mountainous terrain? "Because Japan is a mountainous country," answers Tadao Okai, a senior engineer for Japan Rail. "The vast majority of 18.4km of our test track is underground because when we come to build the maglev network we must build it beneath our cities."
At Tsuru there is a small observation deck and visitor centre that overlooks the single kilometre where the maglev emerges from its tunnel. In December, the Japanese maglev reached 581kph, breaking its own Guinness World Record of 552kph (with passengers aboard) set in 1999. However, most analysts believe that Japan's proposed inter-city maglev could be decades away from being built. Even in China, maglev has suffered setbacks. Plans for a 1,290km Shanghai-to-Beijing line are officially on hold. While in Transrapid's back yard, plans for a maglev line between Hamburg and Berlin were derailed by the Green Party. As part of Gerhard Schroder's ruling coalition, it argued that the proposed line would damage wildlife with electromagnetic radiation, and that its concrete track-supports would spoil forests.
Part of the problem is that both Japan and Germany already have enviable high-speed rail networks. Japan's pioneering shinkansen - or bullet train - carries 300,000 people every day from Tokyo to Osaka in two hours 30 minutes a
Re:TGV (Score:5, Informative)
Once. On a test-track. This one goes 430 km/h in regular traffic, which is a huge difference. Max speed is >500, too.
Nothing against the TGV, though. Great trains...
Re:is it possible? (Score:3, Informative)
As it is now, it is cheaper to rent a car to travel Fort Wayne to Detriot than to take a bus! (and there isn't train service)
Joe
Re:PDA/Disks/MP3-players at risk? (Score:2, Informative)
It isn't much to look at! (Score:3, Informative)
reason why Transrapid didn't sell in Germany (Score:3, Informative)
All in all it is not a solution, since it costs more to build and to operate. That is why German parliament voted against a German invention and Dutch parliament is also not to keen on it.
Re:TGV (Score:3, Informative)
It wasn't on a test track in the sense that it was only used for this speed record. But this section of the Atlantic line was specifically build for high speed test, meaning even less curve radii than on the standard 300km/h-high speed tracks. And also on this track, they had to do some alteration [unipi.it] specifically for the ultra high speed runs, namely increasing the tension of the electric wire by more than 50%.
And the TGV train was heavily modified [unipi.it], including being shortened from ten trailers to four, bigger wheels and the removal of one pantograph. This speed record is an awesome achievement, but to reach it once under special test conditions is still different then reaching these speeds on regular service.
In USian terms ... (Score:5, Informative)
Boston to NYC: 211 miles / 50 minutes
Boston to Washington, DC: 465 miles / 1.75 hours
Boston to Orlando, FL: 1,320 miles / 5 hours
Los Angeles to San Francisco: 387 miles / 1.5 hours
NYC to Washington, DC: 258 miles / 1 hour
Stupid maglev... (Score:5, Informative)
I had friends over for Christmas in Shanghai, and we all planed to ride the maglev when they left. Thing is, the cost is not only prohibitive for locals - it's also ridiculous to charge 75 RMB per person, when you consider a taxi ride from Puxi is approximately 180 RMB. Cram 4 people in a taxi, and you get there for half the price. (And considering how the taxis drive in SH, thrice the excitement!)
I also heard you can get 'luxury' tickets for 150 RMB/person. Why you wouldn't endure an 'economy' ticket considering the ride takes 20 minutes and is bumpless, is, well, not entirely beyond me considering how people will pay for such useless nonsense.
In the end, we took a cab to the airport, and as the driver was driving down the highway at 120 km/h, we saw the maglev zip by us as if we were immobile. It looked like something out of Star Trek... Damn impressive... from the outside.
Transrapid technology (Score:5, Informative)
- There are many advantages for Transrapid tracks:
- Steep slopes: Transrapid trains can easily climb 6 to 10 percent slopes (6-10ft height difference on 100ft), because the magnets are strong enough to pull the train up and there is no limit posed by the rail-wheel contact.
- Small curves: The Transrapid train can travel in curves with 2km (1,3mls) radius at 200 kph (130mph), in curves with 2,5km (1,6mls) with 250 kph (160mph), because the track can be slanted up to 12 degrees. Normal rail tracks can't use those slants, because you have always to consider the possibility, that a train may have to stop there.
- The track doesn't need much space of the landscape, because it runs mostly on pylons. You have to found those pylons every 100-200m (300-600ft), but you don't cut the landscape in half as with traditional tracks. People and animals can roam freely around the track.
- With the above cited properties you can build Transrapid tracks in densely settled environments like cities and thus build the train stations in the town centers. So you don't need to provide extra means to get to the stations, quite different than with airports, which consume much space and thus need to be built outside the towns.
With all those advantages: Why don't we have plenty of Transrapid tracks? There are two principal answers:- Maglev trains like the Transrapid are VERY expensive to build. Basicly the whole track is a continious bridge, this makes the construction not even cheap. Switches between tracks are even more complicated, Transrapid for instance uses a 250m long steel frame which can be bended over the full length to provide smooth connections from one track to the next.
- Maglev trains are yet another infrastructure completely independend from the existing infrastructures for roads, tracks, rivers, channels and airports. You can't use anything already existing, you have to start completely anew. That means even for a single relation you have to put a complete chain of constructions in place, starting from power substations and tracks to maintenance buildings and passenger access. This makes the initial investions high without guaranteering an early return on investment. It also means that in the beginning without a complete net of relations the passengers have to use at least one other transport system for their travel, thus making it necessary to connect to the existing transportation infrastructure.
Maglev trains fill a very small ecological niche fitting inbetween conventional trains and airplanes. To get a sufficient amount of revenue you have to look at potential relations that are insufficiently served by current systems, where the conventional systems can't simply be expanded. The Pudong-Shanghai relation was such an example: The busses and cabs are at their capacity limit due to traffic jams, a conventional train was not available for the whole distance, and it was not easy to connect the old train tracks to the town center.Maglev trains may be also an option for emerging economies, which don't have yet a complete traffic system in place, especially if airports and rail tracks are missing. Here you could put a system in place that serves both: commuter traffic and long distance travel. It would be more expensive than conventional trains. But it will be much cheaper than trains+airports, and sooner or later you will need both of them.
Re:Help an American out... (Score:2, Informative)
It's lovely stuff, I've made all kinds of things from it over the years, its easy to cut and drill, and a lot less likely to shatter than polycarbonates. And no, I don't work for them!
Re:Transrapid technology (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I think it was an act of brilliance not to construct a completely new transportation infrastructure in Europe, but to advance the existing train technology to run up to 300km/h (186.4 mi/h) and then some on specific tracks.
The French started somewhat over 20 years ago with the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse, Very Fast Train) and then Germans (being the greatest engineering nation in the world, although they made a fatal engineering mistake [germnews.de] in this case) couldn't stand back and developed the ICE (Intercity Express). There where multiple generations of both trains and their major advantage is that they run just fine on the existing tracks, alas not with 200 miles.
You point out a lot of great arguments for the Maglev technology. So why am I such a luddite?
It's the practical implementation. From Paris to London: ~3hrs, Paris Bruxelles: 90 minutes, Zurich Frankfurt ~4hrs, Bruxelles London 3:30hrs.
The network is extensive and frequent and it's far more pleasurable and relaxing to board a train (even though the TGVs doesn't offer lots of space) in the center of a city and being in a different city center some two hours later instead of the horrors (not to mention delays) of flying. Such an extensive network would have never been possible with a completely new technology and infrastructure. So from the usability perspective this was a very smart decision.
That doesn't mean that I think Maglev technology doesn't has its nishes (sp?). For example this would be great to connect Tokyo to Narita (~50 miles and 200$ by taxi). But I don't see it's place in a vast, interconnected network as we are lucky enough to have in Europe.
Re:demo? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Stupid maglev... (Score:4, Informative)
Not really.
China is a very large country with a not so great infrastructure. They are now in the process of trying to decide how to do build it and how to do it best. This is a test bed for a much longer system (thousands of kilometers). Just as the USA built the highways (which help make our economy), they are thinking that for a long haul of using these, with biking in local commute.
To be honest, I think that China is doing it right. The USA is afraid of making an investment into this, yet it is killing us not to do so. We use the roads, but our traffic is at 60 Miles/hour (100 kph) which is actually damn slow today. If we built one of these, we would see the advantage of it and move rapidly to it.
If the government could get past their hog trough, they would realize that the best place to put is from New York to milwaukee via pit, detroit, and chicago. The airlines, ships, buses, rail, and trucks make more money on this route than any other going (save NY to LA). Yet it is a small route.
The only other good route would be S.D. to LA to S.F.. But not as much moves there as between the first route.
Re:is it possible? (Score:3, Informative)
Unless long stretches of the track are straight or near-straight, the trains will never be able to reach their highest speeds. Most existing tracks, originally built for diesel engines hauling freight 100 years ago, are not straight enough. Even Amtrak's Acela trains, capable of impressively high speeds, cannot travel above ~60 mph for much of their routes due to the layout of the tracks they run on
Re:Transrapid technology (Score:2, Informative)
On the other hand the TGV from Bordeaux to Paris goes almost straight with 300 km/h taking about two hours. And that was even 10 years before the ICE.
Another thing are the TGV toilets which look like on an airplane. Did you ever have a dump while travelling with 300 km/h? That's progress
Annoyance with transrapid technology (Score:3, Informative)
I've been fascinated with Maglev technology since I was a kid, though I admit I haven't followed it closely lately - I didn't know a functioning passenger transrapid had been built in China.
Anyway, I have long been extremely annoyed that Transrapid's maglev technology has been the one to catch on the fastest, because as I see it, it has some major drawbacks relative to other maglev designs.
The primary problem is that the transrapid system [transrapid.de] uses magnetic levitation in attraction mode -- meaning you're not floating mutually repelling magnets, you're wrapping a part of the train under the track and using magnetic attraction to pull it upward.
There are some huge basic problems with this strategy. To start with, magnetic attraction is dynamically unstable - the closer you get, the harder it pulls, until you stick to the track. Transrapid deals with this by detecting the gap and constantly adjusting the current to the electromagnets with a fast computer. Magnetic repulsion, on the other hand, is dynamically stable: float a magnet over the other one and it will simply sit there, so fast computer needed. The Japanese design [rtri.or.jp] functions this way: the train sits in a U-shaped track, repelled on three sides.
There are some other serious advantages of repulsion-mode maglev:
The major downside of the repulsion design is that it requires superconducting electromagnets on the train, and they're very expensive (for now) and can cause interference problems if not properly shielded, as someone noted above. But I see that as a technological problem that will be solved eventually and it would be better to work on that now than to saddle ourselves with a standard that has the fundamental problems of attraction-mode maglev design. Sixty years down the road when superconducting magnets are cheap, we might really regret that.
There's another minor downside to repulsion maglev as well- it only levitates when the train is going fast enough to induce currents in the track, so the train has to settle onto wheels as it rolls into the station. (or have supplementary electromagnets in the station).
Both the Japanese and transrapid designs have one other problem: the tracks have to pre-define the angle of the train as it rounds corners (the japanese track is a square "u"). You determine the speed beforehand and angle the track so that the force vector on the passengers is "down" with respect to their butts. This means you can't change the speed of the train later without making it ride like a roller coaster, so no faster trains down the line, and no adjusting speed for current conditions. And it means you have to manufacture very carefully-designed track segments at precise and constantly-changing curvatures. You either have standard track segments and limit the curves you can build, or build a lot of custom track segments. This gets expensive.
IIRC, there was a design done by a team in the US two decades or so ago that used a curved U-shaped track in repulsion mode that had the benefits of the japanese de
One word: Eurostar (Score:2, Informative)
(This might have changed recently, they were talking about new tracks, I certainly hope so. It was a pain to use it 5 years ago.)