US company sets up maglev advisory board

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An advisory board has been set up to support a project to bring Japan’s Superconducting Maglev technology to the USA.

The Northeast Maglev (TNEM) has named a team of seven former government officials and senior industry executives who will work alongside the Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) to drive plans for a 311 mph maglev system between New York and Washington DC.

TNEM believes that a high-speed maglev system bring economic benefits to cities along the east coast corridor – a region that contributes $2.25 trillion (15 per cent) of the US gross domestic product.

Built as a public-private partnership initiative, the system would transport passengers from New York to Washington in just one hour, outstripping the two hours 45 minutes it currently takes on Amtrak’s ‘high-speed’ Acela service.

Senator Tom Daschle, who will head the new board, said: “Imagine catching a 7.30 am train in New York City and arriving in time for a 9.00 am meeting on Capitol Hill. Or imagine travelling from BWI Airport to downtown Washington, DC in eight minutes.

“That will be the reality for millions of Americans if we can move forward with this important project, revolutionizing business and leisure travel and bringing tremendous economic benefits to the region.”

Advisory board members include:

  • Tom Daschle, Former Senator and Senate Majority Leader
  • George Pataki, former New York Governor
  • Mary Peters, former US Secretary of Transportation under George W. Bush
  • Kevin Plank, CEO and founder of Under Armour
  • Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania Governor
  • Rodney Slater, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation under Bill Clinton
  • Doug Steenland, former CEO of Northwest Airlines
  • Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey Governor

7 COMMENTS

  1. One problem with your reporting. The picture in your article is of the German TR-08, which is an attractive magnet type maglev (the same type system that has been operating in Shanghai since 2003). The Japanese maglev is a superconducting magnetic repulsion type of system. Very different technologies with very different infrastructure costs. Americans need to be better informed about HSR and maglev technologies before they start building any high-speed ground transportation system. The first step should be for Congress to get maglev out of the FRA and to hand it over to NASA where they have scientists who understand the issues surrounding high-speed travel.

    • German technology operating in Pittsburgh and was managed by Siemens in Islin, NJ. Maybe a good place to start looking at price — German workers installed this with design from U. S. Siemens and contract with U. S. Siemens. My German national friend was a supervisor on the project.

      • With all due respect, there was and is no maglev technology “operating” in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh’s maglev initiative was part of the 1998 Maglev Deployment Program. They were one of the three finalists later chosen by the FRA administrator to receive funding for an Environmental Impact study. But, the sponsoring company went belly up.

        I was brought in as a maglev consultant for a study done last year (2013) to examine the technical and financial plausibility of a maglev line in Colorado. The report should be out by mid-February. I helped CDOT evaluate the various proposed maglev technologies and steered them towards the right companies with realistic numbers for system construction. While Siemens does provide the critical electronics and control components, the part of the overall initial capital expense is relatively small. About 70-80% of the infrastructure cost will be for concrete construction of guideways and support columns. That is not Siemens domain.

        When the report comes out, I think a lot of rail advocates will be surprised to learn that they are no longer the lower cost option. Nor are they the least costly to operate.

        KC

  2. Kevin Coates, points out the error and also points out a practical path to selecting a surface transport system.

    I represent the inventors of superconducting Maglev, Drs. James Powell and Gordon Danby, who invented the superconducting repelling force system in 1966 and the system was developed by Japan. The US Government, FRA, and DOT has been reluctant to compete with Japan and Germany for the Maglev system. However, we strongly believe that we should begin the process of selecting a Maglev system by competing the performance and costs of the German, Japanese, and American systems. We believe it would be wise policy to build a test track like the ones in Germany and Japan before selecting the standard. Much like the British rail standard, which Lincoln adopted, we should select a system that will do the best job.

    Powell and Danby have continued to work and have developed a 2nd generation system that is much more capable, (It can uniquely carry fully-loaded highway freight trucks as well as passengers, electronically switch at high speeds, and has the remarkable and unique capability of operating in a planar mode as well as a monorail mode. Therefore, it can operate on conventional railroad trackage that has been adapted at very low cost to Maglev.

    We have assumed that the Federal Government will make its future transport decision on the basis of competitive performance and not on the basis of the influence of its lobbying board, even though we would be very pleased to have the impressive list of advisers retained by TNEM.
    Rodney Slater and George Pataki, knows all about the proposal put forth by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to fund an R&D program for the superconducting Maglev with the vision of deploying the system along the rights of way of the Interstate Maglev system. One of the greatest public transport ideas of the time. However, our airlines and existing transport interests stopped the measure in the House. Clearly, a booby move on the part of the Congress.

    Kevin Coates recommends NASA as the technical agency, I think one could add to the possible agencies to develop and test and certify the system for the United States could be NIST. The big deal in this system and the greatest contribution to cost is a good long lasting concrete infrastructure. The Superconducting Magnets are well proven by Japan,their use in MRI machines and the miles of superconducting Magnets at CERN, which were used in the Higgs Boson discovery. Powell and Danby have told their storyin “The Fight for Maglev” and recently wrote a sequel book with specific projects outlined, “Maglev America”. These books are on Amazon and people who are interested in guided surface transport should read. As Kevin Coates points out there is a difference in Maglevs.

    Of interest, in the very beginning of the Obama Administration, President Obama, recognized and admired the achievement of Japan, when he introduced the High
    Speed Rail Initiative on 16 April 2009.
    See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkB_1QAADgE

    Unfortunately, the President did not seem to realize that the Japanese transport that he admired was invented by Powell and Danby. Of course, we wrote the President but the forces of political darkness for steel-wheeled-high speed rail had already captured the bacon. (no pun intended). It is our hope that the political and economic elites grasp the significance of the need for competition before making this selection and invest in a Test Facility to certify a system and a standard guideway gauge for the United States.’

    James Jordan see http://www.magneticglide.com for contact data.

  3. That’s a very impressive list of senior people backing the Japanese maglev initiative on the US East Coast Corridor. Congratulations to JR Central for getting the lobbying effort so powerfully into gear.

    It’s not, however, an auspicious start to the PR campaign, on this website at least. As Kevin Coates rightly points out, it’s the GERMAN Transrapid maglev, which has been in service in Shanghai since 2003, which features in the picture accompanying the article. If I were in TNEM’s shoes, I’d be googling “Better PR Agency” right now. Easy mistake to make, though. If an editor is looking for a picture of maglev operating in public service, the she/he is naturally going to come across images of the German system. And that’s because ONLY the German-developed system is in service (and has been for a decade, operating at 99.99% punctuality; the Japanese SC is still at the test track phase.

    Generically, TNEM is right, maglev is a compelling answer to the East Coast Corridor. Faster over any point-to-point journey than any air alternative, especially when taking into account the “hassle time” taken to get to/from airports, check in etc. Massively more capacity than air or any politically feasible road alternative. Makes Acela look very last Century.

    Specifically though, the Japanese (SC) system is probably the WRONG maglev, compared to the proven German Transrapid system.

    1) Japanese guideway is much more complex than German version. Capex is around 3x more expensive per mile. We (UK Ultraspeed, http://www.500kmh.com) did a detailed study in UK conditions. Transrapid came out at GBP 33 million per route km (USD 79.5m per route mile); the UK’s first conventional wheel-on-rail High Speed Rail line (HS1 from London to the the Channel Tunnel) was £56.41m/km ($135.4m/mile); using JR Central’s own estimates, the Japanese SC maglev was most expensive at £78m/km ($187.2m/mile).

    A lot of the cost difference is down to the difference in the levitation gap between the train and the guideway. Using superconductivity, the Japanese SC Maglev system floats in a magnetic field about 4 inches above the guideway; Transrapid uses conventional magnetic forces to levitate only 1 cm (less than half an inch).

    2) The superconducting magnets are, frankly, a bit of an issue. Although it’s not highlighted in the promo video, viewers do get a fleeting glimpse the of SC maglev’s “dirty secret” as the cartoon passenger boards the train. The Japanese system requires a ‘jet bridge’ style of boarding arrangement, presumably to shield passengers from electro-magnetic radiation (EMR). On this point, I’m happy to stand corrected if there’s any other explanation for this piece of kit; but I’ve never heard one in my 12 years around the maglev business.

    Transrapid, by contrast, uses conventional magnets, and generates less EMR than using a hairdryer. Passengers are free to walk about directly adjacent to the vehicle. Anybody using the Shanghai maglev will have seen hundreds of real passengers doing just that every day, having their photographs taken in front of the world’s fastest ground passenger transport currently in regular fare-paying service. For a good example, see the pic at the top of http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/8-outrageous-train-rides-231808832.html

    3) And now for the “epic fail” of the Japanese system. This debate is all about magnets and levitation. The clue is in the abbreviation: maglev.

    Basically, the SC system completely overcomplicates the “mag” part; and is pretty rubbish at the “lev” bit. Transrapid levitates at zero km/h. the Japanese system actually requires WHEELS (duh) until it has built up speed. Schlepping around the weight (and drag) of wheels really misses the point of maglev.

    No doubt, the backers of the Japanese system will try to sell this as a “safety benefit,” along the lines of ‘if the power should fail, the train will set down on on its wheels.” Basically, that’s because they have to: if their super-complex superconductive field should (for whatever reason) loosen its pulsating fluxy grip (well visualised in the PromoVid, btw) on their train, it’s going to set down on something, whether you like it or not.

    The German system is just better, simpler, and more elegantly engineered in this regard. In the event of a power failure, on board batteries maintain levitation, and the train uses its kinetic energy to glide to a stop, along a pre-planned dynamic trajectory, to the next station or emergency stopping point.

    4) On the general subject of over-complexity in the SC Maglev versus Transrapid, a very good (and immediately comprehensible) comparison can be made simply by looking at the schematic illustration of the Japanese system at http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/magnetacademy/superconductivity101/maglev.html

    Note the refrigerator, liquid helium, liquid nitrogen, compressors etc. All on board a vehicle travelling at 311 mph. And all of which are required to make the superconductivity work. And note the wheels.

    Contrast this with the much more elegant Transrapid technology. Short overview at http://www.transrapid.de/cgi/en/basics.prg?session=56ac6ec052864647_693388&a_no=34

    No wheels, no helium, no nitrogen, no fridges, no jet-bridges. One concrete beam for guideway, not a three-beam concrete trough.

    In short, maglev is a good idea.

    But TRANSRAPID is the way to implement it in the USA. That’s not my view, that’s the conclusion reached by six out of seven American projects developed to compete for funding the Federal Railroad Administration’s Maglev Deployment Programme, as long ago as 2001.

    The official Record Of Decision for that programme stated:

    “The concept of magnetically levitated trains was first published almost 100 years ago. In 1968,
    two Americans (Danby and Powell) were granted patents on their Maglev design. Since then,
    extensive research on Maglev technologies has been conducted in several countries, including
    the U.S., Germany, and Japan. Germany and Japan have the most experience in high-speed
    technology development. Both have test tracks and have performed extensive testing of
    vehicles, systems, and guideways.

    There are two Maglev technologies that were proposed for the Maglev Deployment Program and
    were part of the PEIS. Of the seven participants, all but one chose the German-developed
    Transrapid International (TRI) TR08 system. Florida DOT chose the Maglev 2000 technology,
    which is based on the original Danby/Powell design.”

    Note: NONE of the projects opted for the Japanese technology. ALL of the projects that emerged from the FRA’s subsequent shortlisting used the Transrapid system.

    In conclusion, it’s worth quoting verbatim the rationale for maglev stated in the FRA’s Record Of Decision. It was all true in 2001. It’s even more strongly true today, as the problems maglev some compellingly addresses have got worse in the intervening years.

    “high-speed Maglev technology has the potential to satisfy the need for additional transportation capacity in our most congested and environmentally impacted intercity corridors in a more environmentally benign manner than the conventional travel modes. Deployment of Maglev would help to alleviate the growing congestion of the Nation’s airways and highways and could reduce the need for additional highway or airport construction. Against the background of existing and future transportation demand and congestion problems, Maglev should be viewed as a potential part of the solution. Maglev technology is one of the most advanced ground transportation systems available today, and it complies with the high performance requirements established by US DOT for high-speed, competitive ground transportation service. The diversion of intercity trips from air, auto, and rail modes to Maglev could result in net reductions in energy usage, petroleum consumption, emissions of most airborne pollutants, and accidents. Higher speed, reliable travel would improve access between employment and population centers and help to accommodate the significant growth in population and travel demands projected for the future. Strategic economic goals of job creation, technological advancement, and international competitiveness would be enhanced by the development and building of Maglev systems.”

    Source: http://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/Details/L01410

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