Sunday, August 31, 2008

China Wants to Go Fast

Tell me again why Maglev is still an option? From Reuters:

"We have mastered core technologies in terms of manufacturing high-speed trains and made innovative achievements in the process," he said.

"It is possible that we can start to manufacture 380-kph trains in two years' time, and put them into service on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway," Zhang added.

That's 236 miles per hour and the technology is still progressing.

Update: Frequent commenter NJH has the following analysis on top speed for HSR.

4 comments:

njh said...

Hehe, I just wrote an analysis of the limits of steel on steel on my blog for the CAHSR blog. I'll just link it:

How fast can a train go?

desmoinesdem said...

Off-topic, but I was wondering if you have any recent news about how many members of Congress have joined the new bipartisan caucus that will push for new priorities in the highway bill due to be considered by Congress in 2009.

Also, is there any news on whether Congress is likely to make transportation policy part of any forthcoming legislation on global warming?

Alon Levy said...

There's a lot of community protest about the maglev line; the people near the track are afraid of the radiation. There's no real evidence it is causing any health problems, but the Chinese government has so little credibility on environmental issues nobody believes it anymore. Shanghai is rich and powerful enough that the community opposition was enough to kill the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev plans. That's why they're building conventional lines and not maglev.

Unknown said...

awesome

although on that particular line the distance between stations will be roughly 70-100 kms

thats a hell of a lot more than the european average of just 30-50 kms between stations on HSLines

this means the acceleration can take longer in China, and so can the breaking - which is good cause for the TGV to accelerate to 320 kphs usually takes 8-10 kms