Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

melling

Maglev hasn't failed miserably. China is starting to adopt low-speed for intracity travel:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-05/06/c_135339867.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR

San Francisco/LA is only 400 miles. We need a 700 mph train because there's no affordable direct route.

View on HN

The Chinese maglev projects are white elephants. All they demonstrate is that maglev can kind of work if you have a government willing to write a blank check in order to demonstrate the power of the glorious People's Republic; but this says nothing about their practicality in the rest of the world, where their cost/benefit ratio has to withstand comparison against other technologies.

The one maglev costs $656,729,196, if I did the conversation right. That's 9 miles of track. Is that expensive for a major city? The Second Avenue subway cost a lot more, for example:

"The first phase will be within budget, at $4.45 billion. The total cost of the 8.5-mile (13.7 km) line is expected to exceed $17 billion.'

This article says that low-speed maglevs are competitive:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-05/06/c_135339867.htm

"The line costs between 150 million yuan and 250 million yuan per kilometer, making it highly economical compared to subways and light rail, which cost up to 800 million yuan and 300 million yuan per km respectively"

Do you have any facts to back up your "white elephant" claims?

> The Second Avenue subway cost a lot more.

This is an apples and oranges comparison. Big construction projects will always cost a lot more in the United States because of high labor costs, getting a plan that is acceptable to all levels of government and other stakeholders, environmental impact studies/minimization, and all those other pesky things that China doesn't have to worry about. You would have to do a comparison with a Chinese rail project to get useful results.

I think when you say glorious People's Republic you invite cross border comparisons.

I also agree that the comparison with a Chinese rail project would be more interesting, but the miserable political climate for large projects in the US would apply to a good Maglev technology just as much as it would apply to a junk Maglev technology.

> "The line costs between 150 million yuan and 250 million yuan per kilometer, making it highly economical compared to subways and light rail, which cost up to 800 million yuan and 300 million yuan per km respectively"

Putting a viaduct in the middle of nowhere, where eminent domain committed by a totalitarian state lets you get access to very cheap land usage, is not a fair comparison with having to dig holes in a high-density city.

I'm responding to the claim that it's a "white elephant" project in China. I'm not asking why we can't do it here.

Yes, China can build a 21st century infrastructure more easily than the US. They already have 10,000 miles of high-speed rail, for example, while the US has none.

>San Francisco/LA is only 400 miles. We need a 700 mph train...

Or a bed on a truck. $48, no subsidies needed, get there in ~0 waking hours, sold out, mostly 5* reviews http://www.autoblog.com/2016/05/09/sleepbus-la-sf-overnight-...

LAX/SFO is the second busiest air route in the US.

http://cahsr.blogspot.com/2009/10/la-sf-nations-second-busie...

6.3 million people fly it every year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com