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Why are maglev trains still rare?
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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What kind of benefits are there to maglev trains that are not cost related?
They're faster and more comfortable than traditional rail. They could help to reduce air and vehicle travel
They're not that faster. Conventional train speed record is 574.8 km/h, Maglev record is 603 km/h. Maglev price doesn't justify diminishing returns.
And how about the actual speeds they are used with? Another poster suggested the maintenance costs of traditional speeds skyrocket as speed increases, while maglev doesn't really have a lot of stuff that wears down in the first place.
All but one operational Maglev lines run at speeds below 160kph. Which is way lower than conventional high speed railways which usually run at speeds over 300kph. Also "non high speed" conventional railways in the UK have a top speed of 200kph, which is also faster than existing maglev lines, lol.
The only exception is Shanghai Maglev, which tops out at 430kph. But that line only exists as a Chinese propaganda tool.
I doubt conventional trains are regularly traveling at the speed record. Thats a poor way to compare the speeds of things.
Regular conventional service is much much faster than regular maglev service. It's not even a comparison at this point.
I would expect a century+ old established wide-spread technology to be able to beat a newer less tested technology in many cases. This doesn't mean conventional rail is inherently superior and especially doesn't mean we should discard the concept. Maglev faces much resistance (such as the cultural resistance evident in this thread), it's time may only be starting now as the automobile age looks to have peaked.
Then it's good that we don't have them, isn't it? Kool_Newt's post implies that it's due to a failing of capitalism, but this sounds like a win to me. I'd rather my money go towards food and housing than a faster or more comfortable experience doing something I rarely need.
One of the most common flights is US west coast to east coast. Normal high speed rail can't do this in a reasonable time frame. We need something faster if we want to get reduce those flights.
One of the features of capitalism is externalizing the costs, especially of pollution.
Ah, that makes sense. So maglev is overall cheaper but still less profitable because the costs are paid where they're incurred.
Cheaper than flights? You'd have to do the math on it. We may have to accept that some things like travel will be expensive. But right now it's not feasible Wrt to time to take a train or even HSR coast to coast.
Sure, but if it lessens the impact on the climate from air travel and vehicles, then it's a good thing. Especially if they can become reliable and convenient enough that people don't need to have their own vehicles to drive everywhere.
That's the dumbest take ever.
Care to explain why?
It is scientifically proven that high quality public transport, and especially train services, improves the lives of people and improves the economy.
Money spent on food is a total waste. No matter how much food you buy for people, they will eat all of it and will ask for more. Simply because you need to eat every day of your life.
This is also true for housing to some extent, as populations generally tend to grow over time, thus more and more houses will always be needed no matter how much you have built already. But houses take a lot more time to run out of as you don't need a new house every day, only once every few years when the population increases.
But you can build a good railway system in the area once and then people will use it to earn their own money, to pay for their food themselves and to buy their own homes themselves. And they will also pay for railway maintenance and bring profit to the budget as well. It's a one time investment which lasts virtually forever.
The government should invest in long term solutions: infrastructure, education, etc. There's really no point investing anything into short term solutions. Housing can be a long term investment if done properly though. But that's an off topic.
Thanks. So it basically comes down to externalizing costs again. Those who build the trains don't see most of the profits or the costs that come with it, so they optimize for the parts that they do see.
Regarding food, I as an individual need to eat every day, and I need to pay for that food. I'm not going to just not buy food because I'll need it again tomorrow. It doesn't matter if the government provides the food or I buy it myself, it's still money that needs to be spent on it. One could argue that food security also leads to similar second/third order effects by freeing up that mental real estate dedicated to survival and allowing it to be used for positive contributions to the community, though I don't have data to back this up so it's just speculation. Similarly, if the rails are public and built using my tax money while providing me with no value, I would consider it to be wasteful as survival takes precedence over comfort. If it's private and not profitable, then it means no one wants this for the price it takes to build and maintain, so it was a bad idea to have it in the first place. But either way, this is all moot because it's a conclusion reached from incomplete information. I'm down for public spending on this if there are higher order effects that everyone benefits from.
Better acceleration, steeper inclines, tighter curves at same speed, better ride quality and less wear. As someone has mentioned below, normal trains could go a lot faster than they do in practice, because the ride quality, wear and wind resistance get atrocious, and the tracks need to be exceptionally straight. Making a maglev go fast is more feasible, though you still have the wind resistance issue obviously.