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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

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?

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> 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.

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