https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/china-maglev-train-speed-flying-train/
When completed, the maglev train will reach 621 miles per hour, much faster than commercial flights.
It's probably faster than an airplane if you also factor in the time lost at airports going through meaningless queues.
n China, the trains are awesome and pretty much everything else sucks hard.
Chinese train stations are a fucking nightmare compared to the rest of the world. First, they have a funneled entrance from the subway that goes through multiple choke points. For example, at Shanghai Hongqiao, you're in a mob of hundreds, forced to go up two long escalators.
Next, people there don't have freedom of travel, so there is a security check to actually enter the station, where they look at your papers and make sure you're approved for your destination. The queues are super long and people constantly cut in line. It's rage-inducing.
Then they subject you to a baggage check, metal detector, and frisking.
Now you're inside the station, but you can't just go to the platform. Instead, you wait at a secure gate until maybe ten minutes before scheduled departure. Again, it's a giant mob of people, trying to form a line in a station that's also just overcrowded. They finally open the gate and everyone rushes through and down to the platform.
You have to arrive an hour ahead of your train's departure else you're going to have a very stressful time.
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That's the huge advantage of trains in my opinion. Instead of having to drive out to the airport, and deal with check in, boarding, and so on, you just go to the train station downtown and get off downtown of the city you want to go to. That alone saves a ton of time and hassle.
That's not very common for a good reason given that airports create a lot of noise pollution.
Are airports louder than train stations? Near freight trains and air port and the freight trains are much worse for me personally. Though I would hope passenger train systems are designed for less noise.
Passenger trains are a lot less loud than planes taking off https://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/Training/PPETrain/dblevels.htm
Thanks for the data, and yep that seems to be the case that passenger trains are quieter for the people living near a station vs planes taking off and circling a runway.
Honestly neither bother me too much, but I thinkings a matter of good spacing. No one's lives 1 mile from the run way or 25 meters next to the tracks from here, which is good thing for both.
Another to add passenger trains can make simple intercity travel easier, when for planes it's just not economical.
I worry that the more useful and prevalent high speed trains become, the more the population will use them… and the more likely the long useless queues will also move to trains.
Trains can have more stations to spread out the load, but then they won’t be as high speed.
Still, I’ll happily take advantage of the currently short queues.
I feel that could be resolved by adjusting ticket prices and providing alternative options, like regional buses/coaches. Another possibility is adding more doors to each carriage, spreading out queues across the platform, but at the cost of less seating
Where I am, the regional/inter-city train costs are very competitive with the alternatives, and sometimes enable more flexibility with travel. It's still nowhere near the affordability of some parts of Asia though, and is overpriced IMO. My biggest gripe though has got to be only 2 doors on each carriage side, one at either end. And they're narrow AF, good luck carrying a bike on board. What sadist designed these trains 😭
I think this is unlikely to happen. Going through security is one of the big sources of useless queues at airports, which trains don't have. Trains also tend to have more doors to get, which should reduce the length of queues to get on the train.
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I wish when governments said they want to be competitive with China they did like the one thing China does that would raise our quality of life. As in make trains.
People: Can we have competitive with china [trains]?
Governments: we have Competitive with china at home.
Competitive with china at home: Low wages and no labor rights.
In the US it's usually 2 part time jobs or 1 ft and 1 or or 1 ft and gigs. Regardless the idea isn't that they make enough with one job and get spending money from the other. It's basically that you need to make as much as the top 15% of earners in the US to be ok in most areas. So we work as hard as we can to survive
I remember how maglev was supposed to be the future when I was growing up but most European projects went way over budget and were eventually scrapped so I'm really happy to see that the Chinese finished this thing and that it actually works and delivers in terms of speed.
This feels so much more futuristic than boring tunnels.
Unfortunately, the west’s political systems disincentivize projects that take longer than an election cycle. Everyone needs short term wins to secure re-election and it has stopped us from doing most things that inherently take a long time to show results.
And all the NIMBY's who definitely don't want a train line going "here" where they live, since it would be way better "there". And then the local politicians who listen to them.
My knowledge might be outdated but my understanding is that maglev is still unreliable and frequently breaks down or has to operate at slower speeds. Not yet a completely mature technology I think... but very interesting for sure.
My knowledge might be outdated but my understanding is that maglev is still unreliable and frequently breaks down or has to operate at slower speeds. Not yet a completely mature technology I think... but very interesting for sure.
I hope there are not too many tunnels or that they found a way to relieve the pressure when going through them at high speed. This is a thing I noticed in France when taking the TGV (300kmh), when going inside tunnels at a rather high speed, there is a lot of pressure, it kind of feels like a plane landing, but shorter and more intense
Tom Scott just did a video recently of the Japanese Maglev in which it goes to 500km/h so 310mph meaning it was faster than this Chinese test...
I think this article just has its numbers wrong. 281mph is barely faster than what they're already running commercially.
This article says they've tested as fast as 621km/h.
I feel like it's a lie because of how the Japanese have engineered their trains. Theirs have a huge leading "nose" structure to help them move the air in a fluid manner. I'm thinking the engineering behind that hasn't just suddenly been out done.
China's been working on these trains for over a decade now, there's nothing sudden about it. Also weird to think that what Japan did can't be replicated, if you look at the picture of the actual Chinese maglev train it too has a large nose structure https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-fastest-maglev-train-intl-hnk/index.html
Ah, then I stand corrected. They should have used a real picture of the train for the article.