I mean, it looks a lot like the DLR in London which is a bit of a raised concrete eyesore too. But it’s not what you’d choose to plonk down in Vienna or Bruges, I agree.
Trains are relatively long in proportion to their width. That makes the sides of the trains become relatively more important for aerodynamics than the fronts.
Possibly, making the front more aerodynamic has so many disadvantages that it’s not worth it. For example, a train with a long nose means less space for passengers in a given length of train. It also may be a bad choice aerodynamically if you want to have the ability to combine multiple railroad cars into a single train.
I looked at the site, I can’t tell what’s new about it. Kinda looks like less-grimy BART to me, and that’s hardly modern. Does anyone know more about what’s innovative here?
marketing, like most gadgetbahns. There is a reason transit enthusiasts in general look down on this. Anyone who knows something about how to run trains knows this at best done nothing to solve the real problems facing transit, and most likely if they get even one sale it makes things worse for everyone.
I'd be interested to read more about the actual problems and how maglev trains might make them worse. Not that I don't believe you, but it seems counterintuitive and I'm curious now
The biggest problems is the high cost of building track. Remember that trains do not cover everything, so you have to pay for roads (though in the most transit friendly places the few trucks that are needed drive on the sidewalks next to pedestrians no problem). Automated rail is the cheapest to operate, but there are very high upfront costs that may never be paid for compared to running a bus. (when self driving cars arrive I look forward to self driving buses - they would solve something like 75% of what I'm looking to a train for)
standardization is a very useful thing in the world. Standards mean you can buy from many different suppliers - if one train manufacture is busy find a different. Standards also mean you can share track with different lines spreading construction costs out. (this even includes freight trains) Standards mean manufactures can invest in jigs that are not worth building for custom things that nobody else needs - or worth building but the cost of the jig is spread out across more parts. One special case of a jig is a long assembly line - note that a modern car is very complex and yet new they start at only $16,000. While trains will never be in high enough demand to get that cheap, there is a lot of opportunity to lower costs if only there were more orders of the same thing (like cars you can choose what color paint you want and a few other options)
Right, I suppose that does make sense. What are the odds of a standardised high speed rail track being adopted at some point so that multiple manufacturers could build cars for that?
from the website: Cruising speed of up to 150 km/h
I'm guessing that the value proposition of this particular system is that it's cut certain performance corners to achieve a far lower cost while still providing more than adequate speed for the intracity use case.
Sure, but wheels work just fine at those speeds. the advantages of maglev over steel wheels need much faster speeds before they are realized. At least for all current maglev systems, this is still vaporware, ask me after it has been in use for 20 years and we have real world data on how it works out. Don't be the person who pays for getting that real world data though.
Cynically speaking – it's based on a track made from pre-cast concrete elements, which Max Bögl (a construction company and concrete manufacturer at heart) will happily build for you.
It's also marketed as a fully turn-key system where everything starting from the design and finishing with the vehicles and operations control will be provided by Bögl, which conversely also means that it's a fully proprietary system and you're dependent on Bögl for continuing support or any future expansions, too.
While similar technology, a lot more of that technology went into the train instead of the track which makes this new solution much cheaper to produce.
seems it's another maglev train solution.
maglev trains seemed cool watching videos close to 2 decades ago.
seems they're coming to fruition finally
something to get excited about
This is very similar to existing maglev trains (such as transrapid) but has the advantage that a lot of the technology is now in the trains, not in the track. That makes construction of such tracks a lot cheaper (but separate and new tracks are needed anyway).
Also, this new system is designed for cruising speeds of up to 150 km/h (instead of 500 km/h).
But in addition to passenger transport, they seem to be able to carry freight as well. Last year there was a demo track for container transport in Hamburg's harbour [1], not sure, if it's still there.
The question in my mind is just: if not for higher speeds, why should you build a maglev line instead of a conventional (high speed / regular) train line? IMHO the other purported advantages are not really convincing - it may be a little bit quieter, but the "flexible track routing" sounds very unconvincing: at ground level you would have to fence off the track, so in an urban setting it would probably end up on stilts most of the time. And if you consider that, phrases like "Visually appealing track route for urban use without overhead lines" sound a bit ridiculous - is a concrete guideway on concrete stilts really more visually appealing than tram (or train) rails with overhead line? (In case anyone is wondering: Germany has the luxury problem of having all other cables - power, telecom, etc. - 99% underground, so they can debate the aesthetic impact of overhead lines of trams. Not an issue in most other countries.)
I live near a railway where over 100 trains pass every day, most are freight ones. They are very, very noisy, even a small reduction could help when these lines are within cities.
Why do they have a re-painted Transrapid 07 on their grounds?[1]
Trnasrapid seems like a much more mature and capable design than their own. E.g. While Transrapid uses a T-shaped track, Bögl uses a U-shaped track. That's not going to work well with snow or falling leaves, not to mention people on platforms discarding items into the tracks…
Deutsche Bahn have given up the idea that it's something you could advertise for a brighter future with so they must have been happy to get rid of it without getting bad press for destroying industrial heritage.
Max Bögl participated in the construction of the Shanghai line. So I guess they thought it would be nice exhibit of being a global player.
We should not forget the backstory of this company.
Max Bögel is the largest family-owned construction company in Germany. They build mainly infrastructure like roads, but where also involved in the Gigafactory in Grünheide in Germany.
So, for them its a new business unit to build more infrastructure as a whole contractor. They can delivery everything, not like it is today in infrastructure projects where you have many different contractors providing different parts.
Looking at that page, it's also marketed as a fully turn-key solution with really everything (design, track construction, vehicles, signalling) provided by Bögl, so they presumably also hope to get some sort of lock-in effect where buyers of their system continue being dependent on them for any ongoing maintenance or future expansions, too.
For how this can go wrong, look at the story of the Translohr (some sort of guided bus touted as a cheaper alternative to a conventional steel wheel tram), where the cities who bought that system subsequently had difficulties in persuading Alstom (who had bought up the tram part of the Translohr technology and eventually decided to sort of discontinue that system) to continue providing maintenance support or possibly even additional vehicles for the exisiting Translohr installations.
Interesting, lived in Germany for 30 years (although decades ago), but had never heard about them.
Just wanted to say if the Transrapid consortium with the biggest German industry players and decades of public investment backing could not make it, I would not try again. This is not the SW business where any can start with some resources rented in the cloud. Of course sometimes it's just too early to be right, but wouldn't count on it.
On the anecdotal side my first presentation in school around 1972 was about the German Maglev train project. It did not go as predicted, they sold one minor line to Shanghai decades later.
The old munich airport in Riem was closed in the 90s. The new airport was very far away. Gadgetbahn Transrapid, running through tunnels and above the remains of the old olympia train line from '72, should save the day. MP Stoiber tries to explain the advantages.
Translation:
If you start from the main station in Munich with 10 minutes, without having to check in at the airport yet, then you basically start at the airport, at the main station in Munich you start your flight. 10 minutes. Take a look at the major airports. If you go to Heathrow in London or anywhere else, Charles de Gaulle in France or in Rome, if you look at the distances, if you look at Frankfurt, you will find that 10 minutes is all you need to find your gate in Frankfurt. If you start from the main station, you get into the main station[1], you take the Transrapid to Franz Josef Strauss[2] Airport in 10 minutes, then you practically start here, at the main station in Munich. Of course, this means that the main station basically grows closer to Bavaria, to the Bavarian cities, because that is obvious, because many lines from Bavaria converge at the main station.
[1] "get into" like you would get into a bus, like if the station actually transports you to your destination
[2] Bavarian MP and German Minister in the 60s/70s/80s, Munich Airport is named after him
Munich has been considered one of the leading engineering centers in Germany for a long time. (Maybe Berlin has passed it now when you focus more on software startups.) How the heck have they had the worst politicians In Germany (well, probably only second worst in post fact age) for decades?
I wish they would sell standard systems. If it is just concrete we need more competition bringing costs down.
Standard not only means you won't get an orphan system, but it also means you as a city can order from anyone. If the company you normally order from is busy with other orders you can buy from someone else when you have need.
Standard means as a manufacture you can afford to invest in more jigs. Jigs are very expensive to make, but they decrease the cost of each whatever built with them. As such the more customers of the same thing the more jigs are worth investing in. Every change the jigs cannot handle is additional cost. (some jigs are adjustable, so within limits you could do things like non-standard wheel gauges - you still shouldn't but you could)
Quiet, fast elevated trains and commuter rail would be amazing, but at this point in the US I'd settle for existing at all or in the few cities that have rail systems, equipment that's not >50 years old and can actually stay on the tracks, be on time, and have reasonable levels of service.
But even that extremely low bar isn't achievable. Meanwhile, local, state, and federal government can find $200 billion dollars a year to spend on roads so we can all be stuck in traffic on good quality pavement...
Another day, another gadgetbahn. It's hard to tell from their website exactly what problems they're trying to solve. They seem to have taken all of the worst aspects of monorail style operations, the relative complexity of maglev, and the vendor lock-in of a gadgetbahn and have just run with it.
Off the top of my head:
From their rolling (gliding?) stock concepts it looks like they're targeting the automated metro system market, think London DLR or Vancouver Skytrain. With these system top speed isn't really the issue as you'll be constrained by acceleration and stop spacing. Better gains can be had in this space by building better signalling systems, allowing the trains to run at higher frequencies.
All of their marketing materials show the trains going in perfect straight lines. A lot of other monorail systems are constrained by this, because building switches for monorails is hard. Throw maglev into the mix and I can't imagine the problem gets any easier.
They focus a bit on ease of construction with the elevated rail segments being made of pre-cast concrete sections. I'm faily certain any modern elevated train guideway is also made of pre-made sections on a production line. They're trying to sell normal as some kind of innovation.
All the usual gadgetbahn things seem to apply as well. TSB goes bust? Good luck getting new rolling stock. Want to integrate this service with existing stations and track? Nope, it's all bespoke. Want to get rolling stock from a different supplier that can meet your local needs better? Good luck with that one. Nobody else buys this system, so it remains expensive forever? Sucks to be you.
Maglev has some advantages for high speed operation: less rolling resistance at speed (but worse in slow sections - while not rolling resistance, at low speed they are not as efficient), and less track maintenance. Problem is until you get to high speed those advantages are not worth it, and when you do air resistance is very expensive and so you need a lot more riders or a high ticket price.
In the end maglev isn't worth it. It is only marginally faster than regular rail, and a lot slower than flying. You can bring a few cities just outside of regular rail range into train range, but if you just let those people fly you overall have a cheaper system.
Sticking to standard rail means that you can share track with other service. While this isn't easy (you need a lot of people in the office ensuring the schedule works) the options make it well worth it. Even if you only share rail overnight when you are running less service, 24 hour service is something all cities should have on all lines.
Does anyone know how the new slower maglev in Changsha is working out (between the HSR station and airport)? I’m not sure why they went with maglev there, hopefully it just wasn’t just a prestige project and there was a real benefit to it.
The maglev Japan is building between Tokyo and Nagoya (and eventually Osaka) should be productive, but that is more of a traditional high speed one and will have enough traffic to support it.
gesticulates wildly in the direction of Paris Line 14
In the US, we're so far behind that we can just plain copy just about any modern train system. It's not the tech that's the issue, it's the land use, policy, and planning.
My sarcastic take: the problem they are trying to solve is that they are earning a lot of money from contracts so large that so few competitors remain that it becomes somewhat "taking candy from a baby" and that makes them desperately look for something to be proud of.
On the less sarcastic side: unlike the major partners in the former Transrapid project (Siemens and whatever the current incarnation of Thyssen was called at the time), they aren't a public company but some kind of family estate foundation. That type of organization has far more liberty to follow vanity projects than anything pubic could ever dream of.
It's really hard to figure out how the system differs from PeopleMover. Is this new tech, or just a new vendor for basically the same design they have at Disney?
Wait, is this a MagLev peoplemover?
50 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadI can't imagine this in the middle of EU architecture
Or in the middle of Asian temples, or in the middle of a beautiful landscape
They really need better designers
Also the front doesn't look like aerodynamic
Possibly, making the front more aerodynamic has so many disadvantages that it’s not worth it. For example, a train with a long nose means less space for passengers in a given length of train. It also may be a bad choice aerodynamically if you want to have the ability to combine multiple railroad cars into a single train.
"EU architecture" already juxtaposes ornate pre-1900 buildings with brutalist concrete blocks and glass spires, so no change there.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1019_4-Gleisdreieck-... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Model_1000_of_Odakyu...
an example of what's beautiful and modern design (imo) is the Tram in Bordeaux, France
https://www.alstom.com/fr/press-releases-news/2020/2/alstom-...
https://i.redd.it/fbl047w3qdpy.jpg
https://static.actu.fr/uploads/2020/07/tramway-bordeaux-854x...
standardization is a very useful thing in the world. Standards mean you can buy from many different suppliers - if one train manufacture is busy find a different. Standards also mean you can share track with different lines spreading construction costs out. (this even includes freight trains) Standards mean manufactures can invest in jigs that are not worth building for custom things that nobody else needs - or worth building but the cost of the jig is spread out across more parts. One special case of a jig is a long assembly line - note that a modern car is very complex and yet new they start at only $16,000. While trains will never be in high enough demand to get that cheap, there is a lot of opportunity to lower costs if only there were more orders of the same thing (like cars you can choose what color paint you want and a few other options)
Downsides are that you need to build completely new tracks with limited curvature (and new stations).
from the website: Cruising speed of up to 150 km/h
I'm guessing that the value proposition of this particular system is that it's cut certain performance corners to achieve a far lower cost while still providing more than adequate speed for the intracity use case.
It's also marketed as a fully turn-key system where everything starting from the design and finishing with the vehicles and operations control will be provided by Bögl, which conversely also means that it's a fully proprietary system and you're dependent on Bögl for continuing support or any future expansions, too.
A prototype was developed in Germany some 50 years ago [1] but never caught on.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid
But it looks like Japan will be the first with a proper intercity line in 2027-ish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen
I think, they extended the original track later on. But no new one will be ever build.
Also, this new system is designed for cruising speeds of up to 150 km/h (instead of 500 km/h).
But in addition to passenger transport, they seem to be able to carry freight as well. Last year there was a demo track for container transport in Hamburg's harbour [1], not sure, if it's still there.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tee6BjDY0N8
This is their test track, on the right-hand side of the road (edit: click on the picture, there's also a 360° panorama of the track)
Trnasrapid seems like a much more mature and capable design than their own. E.g. While Transrapid uses a T-shaped track, Bögl uses a U-shaped track. That's not going to work well with snow or falling leaves, not to mention people on platforms discarding items into the tracks…
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Transport+System+B%C3%B6gl...
Deutsche Bahn have given up the idea that it's something you could advertise for a brighter future with so they must have been happy to get rid of it without getting bad press for destroying industrial heritage.
Max Bögl participated in the construction of the Shanghai line. So I guess they thought it would be nice exhibit of being a global player.
Max Bögel is the largest family-owned construction company in Germany. They build mainly infrastructure like roads, but where also involved in the Gigafactory in Grünheide in Germany.
So, for them its a new business unit to build more infrastructure as a whole contractor. They can delivery everything, not like it is today in infrastructure projects where you have many different contractors providing different parts.
So, they want to sell more concrete.
For how this can go wrong, look at the story of the Translohr (some sort of guided bus touted as a cheaper alternative to a conventional steel wheel tram), where the cities who bought that system subsequently had difficulties in persuading Alstom (who had bought up the tram part of the Translohr technology and eventually decided to sort of discontinue that system) to continue providing maintenance support or possibly even additional vehicles for the exisiting Translohr installations.
Just wanted to say if the Transrapid consortium with the biggest German industry players and decades of public investment backing could not make it, I would not try again. This is not the SW business where any can start with some resources rented in the cloud. Of course sometimes it's just too early to be right, but wouldn't count on it.
On the anecdotal side my first presentation in school around 1972 was about the German Maglev train project. It did not go as predicted, they sold one minor line to Shanghai decades later.
Context:
The old munich airport in Riem was closed in the 90s. The new airport was very far away. Gadgetbahn Transrapid, running through tunnels and above the remains of the old olympia train line from '72, should save the day. MP Stoiber tries to explain the advantages.
Translation:
If you start from the main station in Munich with 10 minutes, without having to check in at the airport yet, then you basically start at the airport, at the main station in Munich you start your flight. 10 minutes. Take a look at the major airports. If you go to Heathrow in London or anywhere else, Charles de Gaulle in France or in Rome, if you look at the distances, if you look at Frankfurt, you will find that 10 minutes is all you need to find your gate in Frankfurt. If you start from the main station, you get into the main station[1], you take the Transrapid to Franz Josef Strauss[2] Airport in 10 minutes, then you practically start here, at the main station in Munich. Of course, this means that the main station basically grows closer to Bavaria, to the Bavarian cities, because that is obvious, because many lines from Bavaria converge at the main station.
[1] "get into" like you would get into a bus, like if the station actually transports you to your destination [2] Bavarian MP and German Minister in the 60s/70s/80s, Munich Airport is named after him
Braindeadly conservative folks outside of Munich and the other population centers.
Standard not only means you won't get an orphan system, but it also means you as a city can order from anyone. If the company you normally order from is busy with other orders you can buy from someone else when you have need.
Standard means as a manufacture you can afford to invest in more jigs. Jigs are very expensive to make, but they decrease the cost of each whatever built with them. As such the more customers of the same thing the more jigs are worth investing in. Every change the jigs cannot handle is additional cost. (some jigs are adjustable, so within limits you could do things like non-standard wheel gauges - you still shouldn't but you could)
But even that extremely low bar isn't achievable. Meanwhile, local, state, and federal government can find $200 billion dollars a year to spend on roads so we can all be stuck in traffic on good quality pavement...
Off the top of my head:
From their rolling (gliding?) stock concepts it looks like they're targeting the automated metro system market, think London DLR or Vancouver Skytrain. With these system top speed isn't really the issue as you'll be constrained by acceleration and stop spacing. Better gains can be had in this space by building better signalling systems, allowing the trains to run at higher frequencies.
All of their marketing materials show the trains going in perfect straight lines. A lot of other monorail systems are constrained by this, because building switches for monorails is hard. Throw maglev into the mix and I can't imagine the problem gets any easier.
They focus a bit on ease of construction with the elevated rail segments being made of pre-cast concrete sections. I'm faily certain any modern elevated train guideway is also made of pre-made sections on a production line. They're trying to sell normal as some kind of innovation.
All the usual gadgetbahn things seem to apply as well. TSB goes bust? Good luck getting new rolling stock. Want to integrate this service with existing stations and track? Nope, it's all bespoke. Want to get rolling stock from a different supplier that can meet your local needs better? Good luck with that one. Nobody else buys this system, so it remains expensive forever? Sucks to be you.
In the end maglev isn't worth it. It is only marginally faster than regular rail, and a lot slower than flying. You can bring a few cities just outside of regular rail range into train range, but if you just let those people fly you overall have a cheaper system.
Sticking to standard rail means that you can share track with other service. While this isn't easy (you need a lot of people in the office ensuring the schedule works) the options make it well worth it. Even if you only share rail overnight when you are running less service, 24 hour service is something all cities should have on all lines.
The maglev Japan is building between Tokyo and Nagoya (and eventually Osaka) should be productive, but that is more of a traditional high speed one and will have enough traffic to support it.
In the US, we're so far behind that we can just plain copy just about any modern train system. It's not the tech that's the issue, it's the land use, policy, and planning.
On the less sarcastic side: unlike the major partners in the former Transrapid project (Siemens and whatever the current incarnation of Thyssen was called at the time), they aren't a public company but some kind of family estate foundation. That type of organization has far more liberty to follow vanity projects than anything pubic could ever dream of.