1. The projected Transrapid Hamburg - Berlin (top speed 430 km/h) is supposed
to make an average speed (including stops) of 285-295 km/h.
2. The conventional wheel/rail high speed train Shinkansen 300 on the Tokio -
Fukuoka line, on which the top speed is „only“ 270 km/h, still makes an
average speed of 233 km/h.
The Transrapid top speed (which may seem impressive at first glance) leads to
a rather small advantage in average speed and to a disappointingly small
advantage in travelling time (only 5 minutes per 100 km saved).
In contrary to that, energy consumption caused by aerodynamic drag doubles to
triples between Shinkansen speed 270 and Transrapid speed 430 [3].
This leads to a very poor ratio of cost and benefit.
Improvements in door-to-door travelling time (the only decisive figure for the
passenger) in this dimension can be achieved by far cheaper measures, such as
· improvement of connections between urban/regional and high speed transport,
· network optimization in order to minimize transfer,
· speeding up ticket sale,
· cutting transfer times by shortening walking ways within the station [4]
The comparison shows how little top speeds contribute to cutting travelling
times and how great the difference between top speed and average speed often
is.
Thereby you must consider that 270 km/h for new railway lines is rather slow.
French lines that are under contruction are built for 350 km/h regular
velocity.
Conclusion:
The „speed gap“ between conventional railways and maglevs (with which maglev
development used to be justified) is no longer present. This way, Transrapid
is deprived of its reason to be and its many disadvantages become more
significant [6].
International investors who are not affected with german or japanese „maglev
madness“ an thus can make clear-headed decisions, would rather build
conventional railway high speed backbones from which the trains can easily
switch into the existing network. Finally, this saves time by reducing
transfer.
The decision of choosing conventional railway technology instead of Transrapid
for the Cologne - Frankfurt line (opens in 2001) based on this fact.
[1] Source: Der Eisenbahn-Ingenieur 12/1997.
[2] Source: Der Eisenbahn-Ingenieur 4/1998.
[3] Aerodynamic drag increases by velocity’s square
[4] In Hamburg central station Transrapid is supposed to stop at a
platform rather far off (outside the hall) so the access and transfer times
increase.
[6] Please refer to „Is there anything maglevs can do better than
conventional railroads?“, chapter 2
(http://home.t-online.de/home/rsdhanstein/rh_2eng.htm)
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