memes

I am staunchly anti-maglev for different reasons. Firstly, it's incompatible with other systems. Building it is expensive as hell because of the awkward way you have to build the rails of magnets which the train will then glide upon. Since every centimetre of the train needs magnets to be floating above the rails, the trains themselves are incredibly short and expensive for their capacity. Short version, you need a lot more trains, which are significantly more expensive for the same capacity of a normal train. A hundred years sounds impressive, but for example, a railway tunnel with conventional rails has only the drive wire and the rails, which will need to be exchanged in the future. The tunnel itself can be easily used for hundreds of years most states calculate with 200 though. Speed isn't everything, capacity is. The Austrian railjet only drives 230 km/h because you don't need to make the train airtight, meaning for 2 million (2008 money) plus two eurosprinters (5 mil a pop, todays money) you get 500 meters of railjet, which can transport approximately 1,400 people. Also, the railjet can just be separated into two 250m trainsets and the go into two completely different directions. All of these are benefits that Maglev hasn't got. It's more expensive and can do less. But it does go fast, admittedly. But at what cost is this speed gained? And is it really the most important thing if 250 people can reach something twice as fast as a contemporary high-speed train? Also, the French TGV has proven it can go 575 km/h, So even in that regard, if you were to reduce it to the engines in the front and the back in a single passenger car, you basically have Maglev, but for a fraction of the price.