Asklemmy

43898 readers

1199 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

233

Why are maglev trains still rare? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

144 comments fedilink hide all child comments

They were invented decades ago.

They have fewer moving parts than wheelbois.

They require less maintenance.

There's obviously some bottleneck in expanding maglev technology, but what is it?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] jackmarxist@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They're quite expensive for a start and standard HSR does it's job just fine.

Japan is the only country that's building actual Maglev lines. It's feasible in Japan due to popularity of rail and distance between the endpoints makes it worth it.

China has Maglev tech and also some demo Maglev lines. But they are committed to standard rail because it's cheaper to build using a standardised process and works good enough on large distance travel required in China.

In the US, it's nearly impossible because Petroleum companies and such hate the idea of cheap and efficient transport and just bribe the politicians to be against it.

[–] markr@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I rode the maglev to the shanghai airport, it was awesome. The newer version in Beijing is significantly faster. But yeah super expensive to build.

[–] lemann@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How was the ride? Smooth/bumpy/not feel much movement?

My experience on a much slower HSR is being thrown around in the seat at certain times, wouldn't want to be carrying an open drink of any kind tbh lol

[–] markr@hexbear.net -1 points 1 year ago

Actually it was very smooth.

load more comments (1 replies)