China's maglev transit initiative picks up steam

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**reds8n**

,, lovely headline

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-10/31/content_27227406.htm

China's largest railway enterprise has shelled out 2 billion RMB to establish the country's first magnetic levitation, or maglev, transportation company, marking the country's push to speed up its industrialization and commercial maglev infrastructure, Thepaper.cn reported.

China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC) has established its subsidiary, China　Railway　Maglev　Transportation　 Investment　 &　Construction　Co., LTD (CRMT), located in Wuhan, Hubei province. The subsidiary carries out research on maglev technology for passenger and cargo transportation, in addition to planning, managing, building and investing in maglev projects.

According to Qian Qingquan, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Southwest Jiaotong University, China has put original, domestic technology to work building a medium-low-speed maglev train (traveling at 200 km/h), as well as a high-speed one (600 km/h). Research into vacuum tube trains that travel at up to 4,000 km/h is also underway.

The Changsha Maglev Express in central China's Hunan province is China's first domestically built maglev line that uses homegrown technology. The line stretches over 18.55 kilometers and takes 19.5 minutes to complete. According to Xia Guobin, vice president of CRCC, the line that started trial operation on May 6 had safely operated for 175 days as of Oct. 27. With a steady passenger flow of 6,800, over 1.2 million passengers have ridden the line so far. It has filled a void and verified the safety and commercial potential of maglev projects in China.

Lei Jiamin, president of CRMT, said that more than 10 cities in China are currently planning maglev railways. These cities include Changsha, home to China's first maglev line, Qingdao and Beijing. Beijing is building its first medium-low-speed maglev line S1, which will enter operation at the end of 2016, according to the Beijing Railway Construction Cooperation. It will take only 10 minutes to travel 10.2 kilometers from the city's western suburb Shimenying to Pingguoyuan station on city subway Line 1.

According to CRMT, future low-speed maglev projects will primarily aim to link large cities with their satellite cities, as well as suburbs to downtown areas. They will also be used in second- and third-tier Chinese cities as a substitute for subways. Currently, China has 142 cities with more than 1 million residents, but only around 30 cities have subways.

4000K per hour eh ?

... Tough life as a trainspotter in China eh ?

.... guess they'll be using a lot of steel too then.

**whembly**

40000k per hour sounds a lotta juice eh?

Do they have the infrastructure power grid for that? o.O

**notprop**

We're gonna need a bigger Coal fired power station.....

**Herzlos**

reds8n wrote:
Research into vacuum tube trains that travel at up to 4,000 km/h is also underway.

I dread to think how long it'll take to get up to that sort of speed. The G forces would be unbearable otherwise.

**Smacks**

whembly wrote:
40000k per hour sounds a lotta juice eh?

Do they have the infrastructure power grid for that? o.O

It's not necessarily more juice, without air resistance, the train can just keep accelerating with fairly minimal effort. The problem is maintaining the vacuum, which may require a lotta juice... or be completely unfeasible altogether.

**Herzlos**

Assuming it's solid enough the only place you'd have vacuum difficulties is at the stations. You'd need to use an airlock to join the vacuum which might be time consuming, but once you've got rid of the air you should be able to make up time.

I'm assuming it'd be a point-to-point line rather than a multi-stop line though.

**Smacks**

Since humans don't tolerate g-force very well, it would probably take a few minutes to comfortably accelerate people to 4k, and slow them back down again.

**Herzlos**

They must be intending it for seriously long trips, as the maglev trains take about 10-15 minutes to get up to speed, by which a lot of them are starting to slow down again.

I dread to think what'd happen in a 4000k/h accident.

edit: apparently you could accelerate to that sort of speed in about 2 minutes, but you'd need to be strapped in and facing forwards.

**tneva82**

Smacks wrote:
whembly wrote:
40000k per hour sounds a lotta juice eh?

Do they have the infrastructure power grid for that? o.O
It's not necessarily more juice, without air resistance, the train can just keep accelerating with fairly minimal effort. The problem is maintaining the vacuum, which may require a lotta juice... or be completely unfeasible altogether.

There's company planning one between sweden and finland. They are aiming for within country connections in about 8-10 years and then connecting the two country in further 4-5 years.

Sounds pretty nutty schedule. There's new metro that keeps getting delayed! 8-10 years to start for real this for business? Riiight...

**Smacks**

Herzlos wrote:
edit: apparently you could accelerate to that sort of speed in about 2 minutes, but you'd need to be strapped in and facing forwards.

And presumably in good health, and carrying a spare pair of underpants?

**SagesStone**

If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 4,000km/h you're going to see some serious gak.

**BigWaaagh**

Can't we just eliminate all these stopping points in the evolution of human transportation and just sink all the resources into finally developing teleporters? C'mon, you know you want 'em!

**Desubot**

Lets just hope they dont use china's quality control standards.

Hopefully they get this thing up an running well.