In the future they probably will be widely used, but the tech to make them useful falls into 2 categories:1) The tech’s more advanced so they are more cost effective, or
2) The quietness is more highly valued, including and especially for the surrounding neighborhoods, or
3) _____________________________________________________ .
Your ideas please.
Or, we’re just curvier at the beginning and end, giving ourselves a long straightaway in the middle.
Germany had an Maglev accident in 2006 in which 20+ persons were killed, which was attributed to “human error.”
m.dw.com
This second part is more like it, talking about something which is similar to lockout-tagout procedure for electrical equipment.
The long straightaway in the middle is what most designs do, but since even maglev routes are between closer and larger cities, the middle section is still occupied by suburbs and roads, before accounting for terain.
No, maglevs and vactrains have the advantage of being able to run at speeds faster than any normal train, and still using less energy than an airliner. That has been the entire rationale for their development so far, and so long as traditional high speed rail can't go that fast and airliners can't be that efficient, they will have potential.
And more cost-effective superconductivity was supposed to be the solution.
Ok, so Brazil builds a "national" maglev line during the military government.
The story of the Olympics! Sold on promises of prestige and trade and economic development. City and really nation left with empty stadiums and un-usable housing.
And in different timelines, maybe either or both really hit a sweet spot in the middle and make a real run to become the norm.
On paper that looks true, but I checked and the trains (which are the ones with superconductors) aren't a big factor in the cost of maglevs. First off, only the Japanese maglevs use superconductors, so other designs probably use less, and even in the Japanese designs the cost of a train is less than the cost of 1 km of track, before factoring in tunnels. So the main fraction of cost is the track and the right-of-way (or tunneling to avoid it), making these the critical costs to be reduced before a maglev is viable. If those are reduced earlier, the cost of the trains or liquid nitrogen wouldn't make the trains much more expensive than a normal train.
Around 1990, they hit the threshold of demonstrating superconductivity at the relatively high temperature of liquid nitrogen. And that was supposed to be the threshold which made the whole thing economically viable. But some of these early “high temp” superconducting alloys were brittle, and perhaps expensive in their own right.
So, the verdict is not yet (least as far as I understand).
Nitrogen becomes liquid at -196 °C (-320 °F).
The main potential would be to compete with aircraft over longer distances than high-speed rail can. There aren't too many distances this long in Europe, so it may be more limited there, but elsewhere there are routes where this applies, even when high-speed rail exists on shorter routes.
