China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

Post by kamnet »

Now this is some exciting news! China proposes to cut a trip from Shanghai to Beijing from 4.5 hours to 15 minutes.

https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2017/ ... 15-minutes
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

Post by Pilot »

kamnet wrote:China proposes to cut a trip from Shanghai to Beijing from 4.5 hours to 15 minutes.
China obviously forgets about planes which do the trip in as little as 2 hours 15 minutes! :lol:
Beijing - Shanghai flight price.PNG
Beijing - Shanghai flight price.PNG (7.07 KiB) Viewed 4900 times
Anyway, I don't see the Vactrain taking off, everyone was hyped up about Maglev, but that's so far been a big flop, so I see something similar happening here.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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This is Hyperloop BS on BS steroids.




Though, if they do so, we *should* be very afraid...
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

Post by Doorslammer »

I don't give Hyperloop or vacuum systems similar to it any credence, the sooner the planet gives up on this idea the better.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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Pilot wrote:China obviously forgets about planes which do the trip in as little as 2 hours 15 minutes!
But it's all about total travel time. That's why Eurostar has at least 80% of the travel market between London and Paris/Brussels, despite the fact that planes can obviously do it much faster. You gotta get to an airport, be felt up by security, wait to get on the plane, etc..
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

Post by supermop »

JamieLei wrote:
Pilot wrote:China obviously forgets about planes which do the trip in as little as 2 hours 15 minutes!
But it's all about total travel time. That's why Eurostar has at least 80% of the travel market between London and Paris/Brussels, despite the fact that planes can obviously do it much faster. You gotta get to an airport, be felt up by security, wait to get on the plane, etc..
Agreed - just getting to PVD from many central areas of Shanghai would take almost as long as the flight itself. I just flew HND (the close Tokyo airport) to JFK this morning - flight time was about 12 hours, but walk+JR Train+Monorail to get from Shinjuku Hotel to Haneda was about 1h40 (early on a weekend, missed the express monorail etc). The Airtrail+J Subway from JFK to Chinatown was similar. Even on a long haul transpacific flight, the travel time to airport was about 25% of the flight time, not even counted the time spent waiting around the airport.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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supermop wrote:Agreed - just getting to PVD from many central areas of Shanghai would take almost as long as the flight itself. I just flew HND (the close Tokyo airport) to JFK this morning - flight time was about 12 hours, but walk+JR Train+Monorail to get from Shinjuku Hotel to Haneda was about 1h40 (early on a weekend, missed the express monorail etc). The Airtrail+J Subway from JFK to Chinatown was similar. Even on a long haul transpacific flight, the travel time to airport was about 25% of the flight time, not even counted the time spent waiting around the airport.
Should have taken the Keikyu line! Nice and quick; non-stop from Shinagawa!

On a recent journey I took from my office in London to my office in Glasgow, my total travel time was 4 hours and 31 minutes. Of that, the flight was 1 hour and 20 minutes. Sadly, to take the train would have actually been very marginally faster even with total travel time.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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JamieLei wrote:Should have taken the Keikyu line! Nice and quick; non-stop from Shinagawa!
We were on JR passes, and I didn't want to get more Yen (when the atm minimum always seems to be 10,000) to load up more onto my Passmo. We realized that it would have actually been faster to take the Chuo line across town to Tokyo and then transfer to the Yamanote to get the monorail, but really didn't want the extra transfer with all our luggage.

Being back on some 1964-ish stock on the J really was a jarring change though - Every time I'm in Tokyo it seems the Yamanote line has new stock.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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The new stock (E235) was supposed to be in full service by now. They were originally brought into use when I was last there nearly 2 years ago and it's still not much further along now. Not that the E231-500s are any worse than any standard Japanese rolling stock - even the venerable E103 I took from Uji to Kyoto was nicer than most modern British urban/suburban stock.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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JamieLei wrote:
Pilot wrote:China obviously forgets about planes which do the trip in as little as 2 hours 15 minutes!
But it's all about total travel time. ...
Doing something a plane takes 2h15m in 15m only ? That's ridiculous. That means whatever the damned thing is, it's going to go at least physically 9 times faster than a plane. I'm sorry, that's utter BS, unless you're sending them on a roman candle or something.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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YNM wrote:
JamieLei wrote:
Pilot wrote:China obviously forgets about planes which do the trip in as little as 2 hours 15 minutes!
But it's all about total travel time. ...
Doing something a plane takes 2h15m in 15m only ? That's ridiculous. That means whatever the damned thing is, it's going to go at least physically 9 times faster than a plane. I'm sorry, that's utter BS, unless you're sending them on a roman candle or something.
Oh yes. The problem is that there's a big gap between what is technologically possible, and what the general public will tolerate. This is why I think most hyperloop schemes will fail; no one will be willing to get on something that goes that fast in case something goes wrong.

Planes are scary enough as they are, but at least if something goes wrong, they can gently glide (they don't plummet as people think!) down to the nearest airport. A hyperloop has no way really of doing a mid-journey evacuation, and the adjustments needed to support that (an escape tunnel every 2km?) would be so costly as to render the whole thing too expensive from the outset.

It's good to dream, but my real-life job as a transport planner requires me to be realistic about the prospects of mega-infrastructure; and I can't see a case for the Hyperloop even under the most heroic scenarios.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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JamieLei wrote: Oh yes. The problem is that there's a big gap between what is technologically possible, and what the general public will tolerate. This is why I think most hyperloop schemes will fail; no one will be willing to get on something that goes that fast in case something goes wrong.
It's technologically too advanced. It's still in the "magic" realm if it's ever possible. I mean, JR Maglev already goes so quick with lots of extremely long underground sections that I wonder is it possible to even evacuate, or is it simply shouldn't be done (ie. emergency plan : just go on ASAP). Donning the same maglev train in a strong (?) vacuum chamber would mean that evacuation (heheh, evacuation in evacuation) is impossible, yet the slightest failure surely needs evacuation. In an evacuation (??!).

I wonder though, by "transport planner" does it mean you plan new infra or such ?
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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YNM wrote:
JamieLei wrote: Oh yes. The problem is that there's a big gap between what is technologically possible, and what the general public will tolerate. This is why I think most hyperloop schemes will fail; no one will be willing to get on something that goes that fast in case something goes wrong.
It's technologically too advanced. It's still in the "magic" realm if it's ever possible. I mean, JR Maglev already goes so quick with lots of extremely long underground sections that I wonder is it possible to even evacuate, or is it simply shouldn't be done (ie. emergency plan : just go on ASAP). Donning the same maglev train in a strong (?) vacuum chamber would mean that evacuation (heheh, evacuation in evacuation) is impossible, yet the slightest failure surely needs evacuation. In an evacuation (??!).

I wonder though, by "transport planner" does it mean you plan new infra or such ?
Yeah; at the end of the day perceptions of passenger safety are what really killed the Concorde, when there were a few very high profile crashes in quick succession. I remember the stories on TV about jumbo jets being full because all the businessmen were changing their flights from Concorde.

Specifically, I work on calculating the value for money of new railway schemes, and helping to develop schemes to maximise the value for money. For example, you have two options: A and B. A is very expensive and delivers you a lot of benefit. B is cheaper, and delivers you a good level of benefit, but not as much as A (ie: it could be slower, or have fewer stations). I help to calculate and inform whether it's worth paying extra to deliver A (because the railwaymen will always want to build A because it's sexier!), or even whether it's worth doing in the first place (they could both be terrible options). If you want to talk offline or privately, I'd be very happy to tell you more.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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JamieLei wrote:
YNM wrote:
JamieLei wrote: Oh yes. The problem is that there's a big gap between what is technologically possible, and what the general public will tolerate. This is why I think most hyperloop schemes will fail; no one will be willing to get on something that goes that fast in case something goes wrong.
It's technologically too advanced. It's still in the "magic" realm if it's ever possible. I mean, JR Maglev already goes so quick with lots of extremely long underground sections that I wonder is it possible to even evacuate, or is it simply shouldn't be done (ie. emergency plan : just go on ASAP). Donning the same maglev train in a strong (?) vacuum chamber would mean that evacuation (heheh, evacuation in evacuation) is impossible, yet the slightest failure surely needs evacuation. In an evacuation (??!).

I wonder though, by "transport planner" does it mean you plan new infra or such ?
Yeah; at the end of the day perceptions of passenger safety are what really killed the Concorde, when there were a few very high profile crashes in quick succession. I remember the stories on TV about jumbo jets being full because all the businessmen were changing their flights from Concorde.

Specifically, I work on calculating the value for money of new railway schemes, and helping to develop schemes to maximise the value for money. For example, you have two options: A and B. A is very expensive and delivers you a lot of benefit. B is cheaper, and delivers you a good level of benefit, but not as much as A (ie: it could be slower, or have fewer stations). I help to calculate and inform whether it's worth paying extra to deliver A (because the railwaymen will always want to build A because it's sexier!), or even whether it's worth doing in the first place (they could both be terrible options). If you want to talk offline or privately, I'd be very happy to tell you more.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

Post by JamieLei »

Ameecher wrote:You're going to love what I've got coming your way!
Ohdeargod...
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

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JamieLei wrote:Yeah; at the end of the day perceptions of passenger safety are what really killed the Concorde, when there were a few very high profile crashes in quick succession. I remember the stories on TV about jumbo jets being full because all the businessmen were changing their flights from Concorde.

Specifically, I work on calculating the value for money of new railway schemes, and helping to develop schemes to maximise the value for money. For example, you have two options: A and B. A is very expensive and delivers you a lot of benefit. B is cheaper, and delivers you a good level of benefit, but not as much as A (ie: it could be slower, or have fewer stations). I help to calculate and inform whether it's worth paying extra to deliver A (because the railwaymen will always want to build A because it's sexier!), or even whether it's worth doing in the first place (they could both be terrible options). If you want to talk offline or privately, I'd be very happy to tell you more.
Well, I do still question fully something moving 6 to 7 times the speed of sound.

On the other note, interesting to hear what you're doing.
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Re: China unveils plans for maglev vactrain, speeds of 4000 km/h!

Post by JamieLei »

YNM wrote:Well, I do still question fully something moving 6 to 7 times the speed of sound.
I suppose that I'm not particularly interested whether the technology works or not; I'll leave that one to the engineers! After all, back in the Victorian era about 150 years ago, it was widely thought that one would go mad travelling above 30mph! I'm more interested if someone will actually board such a train, considering the safety implications in the event of any glitch are very serious.
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