[ucosty]

Another day, another gadgetbahn. It's hard to tell from their website exactly what problems they're trying to solve. They seem to have taken all of the worst aspects of monorail style operations, the relative complexity of maglev, and the vendor lock-in of a gadgetbahn and have just run with it.

Off the top of my head:

From their rolling (gliding?) stock concepts it looks like they're targeting the automated metro system market, think London DLR or Vancouver Skytrain. With these system top speed isn't really the issue as you'll be constrained by acceleration and stop spacing. Better gains can be had in this space by building better signalling systems, allowing the trains to run at higher frequencies.

All of their marketing materials show the trains going in perfect straight lines. A lot of other monorail systems are constrained by this, because building switches for monorails is hard. Throw maglev into the mix and I can't imagine the problem gets any easier.

They focus a bit on ease of construction with the elevated rail segments being made of pre-cast concrete sections. I'm faily certain any modern elevated train guideway is also made of pre-made sections on a production line. They're trying to sell normal as some kind of innovation.

All the usual gadgetbahn things seem to apply as well. TSB goes bust? Good luck getting new rolling stock. Want to integrate this service with existing stations and track? Nope, it's all bespoke. Want to get rolling stock from a different supplier that can meet your local needs better? Good luck with that one. Nobody else buys this system, so it remains expensive forever? Sucks to be you.

[bluGill]

Maglev has some advantages for high speed operation: less rolling resistance at speed (but worse in slow sections - while not rolling resistance, at low speed they are not as efficient), and less track maintenance. Problem is until you get to high speed those advantages are not worth it, and when you do air resistance is very expensive and so you need a lot more riders or a high ticket price.

In the end maglev isn't worth it. It is only marginally faster than regular rail, and a lot slower than flying. You can bring a few cities just outside of regular rail range into train range, but if you just let those people fly you overall have a cheaper system.

Sticking to standard rail means that you can share track with other service. While this isn't easy (you need a lot of people in the office ensuring the schedule works) the options make it well worth it. Even if you only share rail overnight when you are running less service, 24 hour service is something all cities should have on all lines.

[seanmcdirmid]

Does anyone know how the new slower maglev in Changsha is working out (between the HSR station and airport)? I’m not sure why they went with maglev there, hopefully it just wasn’t just a prestige project and there was a real benefit to it.

The maglev Japan is building between Tokyo and Nagoya (and eventually Osaka) should be productive, but that is more of a traditional high speed one and will have enough traffic to support it.

[0_____0]

gesticulates wildly in the direction of Paris Line 14

In the US, we're so far behind that we can just plain copy just about any modern train system. It's not the tech that's the issue, it's the land use, policy, and planning.

[usrusr]

My sarcastic take: the problem they are trying to solve is that they are earning a lot of money from contracts so large that so few competitors remain that it becomes somewhat "taking candy from a baby" and that makes them desperately look for something to be proud of.

On the less sarcastic side: unlike the major partners in the former Transrapid project (Siemens and whatever the current incarnation of Thyssen was called at the time), they aren't a public company but some kind of family estate foundation. That type of organization has far more liberty to follow vanity projects than anything pubic could ever dream of.