Dreaming Is Fine, But High-Speed Maglev Is Here Now
Elon Musk’s recent Hyperloop proposal resurrects discussion in the U.S. about the advantages of true high-speed ground transportation. The country desperately needs a national consensus as to what constitutes fast and cost-effective HSGT before a single track or guideway is laid, but as of yet the conversation has failed to develop the required consensus for true high-speed ground transportation.
Mr. Musk’s proposal gets the discussion going again.
But as to his proposal, while Mr. Musk correctly criticizes the California high-speed rail proposal for being too slow and too expensive to build and maintain, his own Hyperloop technology is only a concept. U.S. policy-makers and entrepreneurs should instead be contemplating proven maglev technologies, such as those which have been designed and perfected overseas—as was high speed rail (HSR).
The exceedingly high maintenance requirements and costs associated with HSR are due to exponentially increased maintenance at higher speeds—something I call a “speed/maintenance penalty.” This basic fact of physics is the Achilles Heal of HSR business models.
Non-wheeled maglevs are free of this friction, and as such, can more easily attain revenue generator status.
To be clear, I enjoy traveling by fast trains in Germany, France, Japan and China. In November of 2010, I rode the new HSR line between Shanghai and Hangzhou and videoed the speedometer hitting 355 k/hr. (220 mph). I commented then that the Chinese would be forced to reduce top speeds once the maintenance bill arrived.
Less than eight months later was the unfortunate HSR accident between Wenzhou and Hangzhou, caused by a signal malfunction (and poorly designed safety guidelines). The accident forced an operational review, and the train speeds were reduced to 185 mph, which is in line with the speeds of other HSR countries. My Chinese sources admit that maintenance realities and energy consumption also contribute to the new lower speed limits.
It so happens that Shanghai is also the home to the only commercial high-speed maglev line. It runs 19 miles between Pudong International Airport and Longyang Lu subway station on the city’s southeastern perimeter. This totally automated, attractive-force electro-magnet system operates 115 trips daily with 99.97% on-time schedule performance at two different top speeds, depending on the time of day: 185 mph (8 minutes) and 267 mph (7 minutes).
Dr. Guofeng Zeng, the chief maglev engineer at Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Corporation, (SMTDC) informed me during an October 2012 visit that their maglev running at 267 mph consumes the same energy as a train running at 185 mph and emits lower noise levels. He also revealed the striking fact that maintenance on the dual-track guideway over the last ten years required only two week’s worth of labor to adjust support bearings atop two different support columns, and the work was done without service interruption.
Vehicles only require periodic replacement of printed circuit boards and batteries, a relatively modest expense.
As with HSR, the line’s major operational cost is for energy to overcome air resistance, something Elon Musk envisions can be overcome with a partially evacuated tube. This sounds easier than it may be. Just traveling at 267 mph stably and safely every day for ten years is a major accomplishment.
The facts coming out of SMTDC support the idea that high-speed maglev offers a self-sustaining system, covering operations and maintenance costs from the farebox—unlike most HSR lines in the world.
One exception to the many HSR lines operating in the red is the privately held Central Japan Railway, which earns just under a 10% profit each year. CJR’s Tokaido Shinkansen, the oldest HSR line in the world, began operations in 1964. The Tokaido line runs 309 trains daily up to 167 mph. Every night, 3,000 workers descend on successive 12-mile sections of the Tokaido line between midnight and 6:00 a.m., according to CJR and the Japan Railway Technical Research Institute. Frequent high-speed operations require rails be replaced every 3-4 years. Wheels are constantly refitted.
At its own expense and without government funding, CJR is now building the new Chuo Shinkansen line, using repulsive superconducting magnet technology as a replacement for the Tokaido line. This maglev technology holds the train world speed record at 361 mph (581 k/hr.). Because traveling at such high speeds requires a very straight and flat right of way, the first leg of the line from Tokyo to Nagoya is fully 80% in tunnels. The 177-mile route will enable the trip to be made in only 40 minutes.
According to CJR’s Chairman, Yoshiyuki Kasai, dramatically lower maintenance means far fewer service interruptions due to track maintenance exceeding the 6-hour window. Mr. Kasai states that reduced maintenance costs and 40-minute trip times will enable them to recover the total cost of the line, despite the tunneling required.
It is a fact that wheeled train performance peaks out because of limits created by a combination of friction and troublesome dynamic forces. Maglev technologies have no speed maintenance penalty and have evolved into being less expensive to build and operate than traditional HSR, according to Germany’s Max Boegl Company. Boegl is the only company that develops and manufactures both slabtrack for HSR and composite concrete guideways for maglev.
Before Hyperloops or maglevs can be deployed in the U.S., outdated Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) policies and mindset must change. The fact that a financially sustainable, 300-mph maglev project from Anaheim to Las Vegas was thrown under the political bus for an ill-conceived and inferior train technology illustrates my point. The Las Vegas debacle was yet another example of the poorly conceived, lobbyist-driven FRA HSR proposals that cannot attain sufficient ridership to cover operations and maintenance costs.
Political hurdles aside, maglev also is not HSR technology. It requires different engineering, design orientation and unique cost estimating. There is no one currently at the FRA with true HSR experience, much less maglev expertise, which is clearly apparent from the poorly conceived HSR projects the FRA promotes.
New engineers and administrators with appropriate technology experience must be hired before the U.S. can start building true HSGT. Rather than myopically focusing on initial capital costs, life cycle and total ownership cost should be the new benchmarks for evaluating new transportation infrastructure.
Just ask the folks at CJR: they empirically know about maglev’s cost benefits over HSR… and that maglev is far beyond a nascent concept.
Thank you Mr. Musk for helping to get the conversation restarted. Now, lets talk seriously about maglev as a transportation solution that we can implement today.
Kevin Coates works as a consultant for high-speed rail and magnetic levitation (maglev) transport technology. He is currently writing a book on the policies that enable or block the success of innovative transportation technologies.
