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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?

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[–] mikeboltonshair@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As others here have already mentioned the infrastructure costs alone are a huge problem, where I live we are currently just trying to electrify the corridor and it’s not even the entire system, once again the overall rail infrastructure is already there (it’s just electrification) yet this is still going to take a minimum of a decade and the minimum cost is going to be more than $11bn, technically this saves money as you don’t need to buy a new fleet of rolling stock just upgrade the old ones.

So ya for a maglev you would need a completely different infrastructure and the rolling stock