They were invented decades ago.

They have fewer moving parts than wheelbois.

They require less maintenance.

There’s obviously some bottleneck in expanding maglev technology, but what is it?

  • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
    48·
    1 year ago
    • construction is Hella pricey
    • there are few maglev manufacturers, allowing vendor locking and exacerbating the first point
    • they must be built grade-separate, which can complicate route planning
    • they are incompatible with existing rail tech, which results in having to build new, expensive infrastructure for 100% of your route, further exacerbating the first point
    • their switches are slow, limiting capacity

    Ultimately, their competition is regular trains, which are simpler, more tolerant to buying from multiple manufacturers, still significantly more efficient and faster than anything roadborne, able to switch over the course of seconds instead of minutes, able to interoperate with different tiers of intensity and speed, able to be built at grade, cheaper and having the better part of two hundred years of technological refinement behind it. Ultimately, maglev has specific, niche advantages that make it a hard sell for any system that already has regular rail.

      • Devion@feddit.nl
        11·
        1 year ago

        They can’t cross any other tracks/roads. I.e. everything else must go above/below it.

        • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          On one side, it can mean this. And for lighter railway construction, such as trams, light rail and rural regional trains, this can be optional. Plus it makes yards and depots easier to build, just slap a few concrete plates for a few crossings and the staff will find their way around. This is not possible with some maglev technologies

          On another, it can also mean that the infrastructure is built directly on the ground. Being able to do so is extremely useful, since you don’t need to build (as many) bridges or tunnels to have rail going somewhere. Again, for some maglev technologies, this is not an option.

    • bouh@lemmy.world
      41·
      1 year ago

      A lot of these arguments apply to high speed train. In France a completely separate line was build between Paris and Marseille for the TGV To reach its peak speed without being delayed by lines that stop at every station.

      The problem is investment and shitty companies holding these technologies IMO.

      • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        To compare our bullet points for maglev and high speed & conventional rail:

        • there’s a big step in price between “a railway line built to millimetre precision” and “a completely new type of infrastructure that may or may not need superconductors to work”
        • there are way more manufacturers for components of high speed rail. For rolling stock there 4 in Europe alone, plus more in Japan, South Korea and China. As for signalling, it depends on the underlying tech. And if we follow the current European tech standard, that encompasses a standard… That is made by multiple manufacturers, and where their systems are operationally compatible.
        • for one, high speed rail is still rail, so building at grade & laying them on the ground is trivial compared to maglev shstems. While some maglev technologies must be built like a bit of a monorail, which must be built elevated everywhere. And if we step outside of high speed rail, and point to rail in general, the mere existence of level crossings and street running disproves the fact it can only be built grade-separate. Sure, level crossings for HSR are a reason for the planning engineer to get fired, but for rail in general, it can happen.
        • this depends on what is already there. Most high speed trains use standard gauge, and those that don’t, use broad gauge, and for that, only the Russian Sapsan comes to mind. If your country has standard gauge track, you can use the existing railway lines into town, disproving your point. And as for signalling, you can fit a train with multiple train protection systems, and many places are instead working towards using high speed signalling for general use, since the tech that makes high speed trains go BRR is the same tech that allows regular trains to run closer together. Finally, electrically, many countries use the same power on the wires on their high speed network as their general network.
        • I’ve seen footage of a set of switch points with a diverging speed of 160 km/h, and it needs 9 switch motors to work. Proper high speed switches need even more. However, these motors all work in parallel, so the difference in switching time is negligible compared to a more basic type for general use. And these points work by bending one rail a little bit out of the way, bending another rail into place, and for high speed, pushing the frog (image pending) to the other side. This all unlike maglev, where you need to invasively rearrange the whole track, the replacement of which is probably several metres away.

        High speed rail has enough compatibilities with regular rail to make sense.