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Atlanta-Chattanooga maglev rail gets a dose of cash

9:37 am September 11, 2009, by jgalloway

This from the Chattanooga Times Free Press:

Plans for a modern, high-speed Chattanooga Choo-Choo picked up steam Thursday when federal officials agreed to fund a more detailed study of a proposed rail line between Atlanta and Chattanooga.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., announced that the Federal Transit Administration will provide $14.2 million to pay for environmental and engineering studies of a proposed magnetic levitation train route through North Georgia.

The line will be among three routes in the eastern United States selected to share in part of $90 million that Congress set aside nearly two years ago for high-speed train studies.

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6 comments Add your comment

Daedalus

September 11th, 2009
12:21 pm

Dream on Chattanooga. This will never happen.

Georgia cannot get its act together to build a commuter rail to Lovejoy even where the feds have already provided 80% of the costs and the City of Atlanta has donated the building to the State that would serve as part of the multi-modal station.

Look out your back window Jim. See that parking lot (the gulch) and the old AJC building. That’s where the rail station is supposed to go because that’s where the east/west and north/south rail lines cross. Over 10 years ago Congress authorized $70 or $80 million to build the station and the first leg of the southbound line as far as Lovejoy. Over six years ago Atlanta donated the old AJC building (across from MARTA’s 5 Points station) as part of the local match. Once the station is built we could start planning lines to Athens, or even, heaven forbid, Marietta. That multi-modal station is still in the transportation plan, but no one at the federal DOT believes for a second
that Georgia has the capability (or willingness) to pull this off.
What happened? Zip, zero, zilch, nada. Why? Cause Sonny don’t care about metro Atlanta traffic solutions and he darn sure does not care about building infrastructure for the future. That would take vision and the backbone to spend money today on the future. That vision and courage we don’t have under the Gold Dome.

The GOP should just fess up and kill the idea of commuter rail once and for all because they don’t do infrastructure, except highways and this is not a highway. Let’s stop kidding people, there is no solution that GDOT and GRTA will seriously consider paying for that involves anything but cars.

This $14.2 million is just a waste of money.

Steve

September 11th, 2009
3:30 pm

“WHAT IS MAGLEV?

Magnetic levitation trains, which now operate in Germany, Japan, China and the United Kingdom, use magnets to guide trains at speeds faster than 300 mph, far faster than today’s trains that run on steel rail and wheels.”

This, the last paragraph in the Time-Free Press article, is pretty much untrue. The German demonstration unit has been dismantled after a fatal crash. The one in England was only a mile or so long and was converted to monorail several years ago. The only commercial one in the world is in China. As for speed, the TGV in France regularly runs 250-300 mph and recently had a test run at 350mph. It is proven steel wheel/steel rail technology that can be built at less than half the cost of unproven maglev.

Bill White

September 11th, 2009
7:53 pm

All public transport is part of the Socialist agenda. Anyone knows that driving your own truck is the American Dream.

Don G

September 11th, 2009
11:37 pm

Steve stated: “This, the last paragraph in the Time-Free Press article, is pretty much untrue. The German demonstration unit has been dismantled after a fatal crash.”

Steve is incorrect and his statement os so false it deceives average readers.

Germany had a test track in Berlin in built in the 1980’s that was indeed dismantled but that experiment was only part maglev and part of the weight was carried by conventional wheels.

The Emsland, Germany facility had run flawlessly since it’s inception and has had one fatal accident that occurred on Sept 22nd, 2006.

The test facility still is operation and not dismantled as Steve would state. Here are lines from Transrapid’s website:

May 8, 2008
Siemens und ThyssenKrupp restructure their Transrapid activities and close the offices of their joint subsidiary. Transrapid International in Berlin. Project development and technical support will be provided directly by the parent companies. Transrapid International-USA continues the marketing and project development in the United States.

July 2008
Start of test operation of the new TR09 on the Transrapid Test Facility.

2009
January 29, 2009
Signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for extended licensing of the Transrapid technology for projects in China.

June 30, 2009
Completion of the test program of TR09 on the TVE.

Now we must get to the straight facts versus false statements of Steve that skew what people reaed and tend to believe and pass on.

Steve stated as fact:

“The only commercial one in the world is in China. As for speed, the TGV in France regularly runs 250-300 mph and recently had a test run at 350mph. It is proven steel wheel/steel rail technology that can be built at less than half the cost of unproven maglev.”

(1) That ‘one’ in China, has been operating at 99.92% on time record. It has operated flawlessly.

(2) The French TGV does NOT operate at anything close to 250-300MPH!
Here is information directly from their web site:

“TGV in a word? Fast. Up to 200 mph fast . Fast. Up to 200 mph fast.”

“Up to 200mph” isn’t evn close to Steve’s false claim.

In Wikepedia the follow statement is written:

” TGV service holds the record for the fastest scheduled rail journey with a start to stop average speed of 279.4 km/h.”

THAT is only 173.61 mph. The Shanghai maglev, which is constrained by the shortness of length, states “A train can reach 350 km/h (220 mph) in 2 minutes, with the maximum normal operation speed of 431 km/h (268 mph) reached thereafter.”

The average speed for that wee line is only 156mph but would be far great over the same distances used by TGV.

Maglev IS proven.

Tell Steve to please explain then exactly why a private rail company (not a government operation) in Japan, which was (and still is. the leader in high speed dual-rail technology, is going to build maglev to replace their dual-rail? They have already started work on the first line plans.

Japan has the world record for top speed and it is with their maglev. Unlike France, their test train that achieved the world record ran with conventional trains sets that would be used in operation.

Fastest Train: JR Maglev
“The distinction of being the fastest train in the world belongs to Japan’s JR-Maglev. It set a world speed record for a manned, railed vehicle when it hit 361 mph on December 2nd, 2003.”

Now, what gets interesting is that the fact is that the French TGV had a speed record only 4mph slower?

One would then assume; “Hmmm, basically the same speed for far less cost?”

What is failed to report however is that the Japanese maglev was a “standard” train set with passengers onboard while the French train was was “CUSTOM built” solely for the test and had no standard passengers onboard. The speed was ONLY achieved on a very small portion of a specially designed section wast was:

1: downhill gradient
2: straight as an arrow
3: special ovesized wheels
4: jacked up power supply unlike what is ‘normally used by TGV

Here is just one report on the vehicle from MCNBC:

ABOARD TRAIN V150, France – A French train with a 25,000-horsepower engine and special wheels broke the world speed record Tuesday for conventional rail trains, reaching 357.2 mph as it zipped through the countryside to the applause of spectators.

They had to rewire that special piece of track with new overhead wires and special power pick-up poles. The maglev has NO overhead wires and no power trasferred to any onboard engines at all.

The only moving parts on the Shanghai maglev are the doors.

What was proven with high speed dual-rail, is what happened in Germany. Here is an excerpt from Wikepedia:

“The Eschede train disaster was the world’s deadliest high-speed train accident. It occurred on 3 June 1998, near the village of Eschede in the Celle district of Lower Saxony, Germany. The toll of 101 dead and 88 injured surpassed the 1971 Dahlerau train disaster as the deadliest accident in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was caused by a single fatigue crack in one wheel which, when it finally failed, caused the train to derail at a set of points.”

The German maglev text facility had one accident with over 20 dead BUT, is was 100% dumb human error because the engineers overseeing operation forgot to stop the test train when there was a solid steel maintenance vehicle out on the rail line. Nothing there was from design flaws or fatique.

Almighty1

June 11th, 2010
9:23 am

Maglev is nothing but a joke; the whole objct of which is to get taxpayers to fork over some bucks to a few hucksters who have thier hooks into some of our lawmakers who have excrement for brains.

Bob L.

August 22nd, 2010
1:01 pm

Well, we are letting our infrastructure collapse at an alarming rate. We care less what is happening, even to our highway systems. We make a big deal about $8 billion for HSR, but China is spending $300 billion and will have over 10,000 miles of HSR operational by 2020.

All we do if find fault, not constructive comments. We are catering to the NIMBYs, we blame someone or something for the problem, but we still will not fix the problem as the U.S. is rushing not be be a third world country, but to become a fourth world country because of our own selfishness.

Almighty1,
It is this type of thinking that the U.S. who use to be #1 in technology now has to go to other countries for information, like California is looking outside the U.S. for their HSR technology. As long as the two parties don’t know how or will compromise and work for a better U.S., we will see our country continue to fall and things not get done, including a good transportation system in Metropolitan Atlanta.