Fast and Efficient, Costly and Underused: Shanghai Debates Maglev's Future

SHANGHAI, China — The doors slid closed and the world's only commercial magnetic levitation train began to move — not with the rattle of wheels or even the hum of a distant engine, but accelerating silently out of this city's airport and towards its futuristic downtown.

Propelled on a cushion of magnetic forces, the train rushed past factories and farmland, a display in each train car flashing its speed: 100 mph, 150, 200.

By the time it topped out at 267 mph, passing scenery had become a blur reminiscent of Salvador Dali paintings. Highway signs melted into trees, cars seemed to race backwards and everything took on a feeling of weightlessness.

"It's just like an airplane," 9-year-old Huang Ming said breathlessly, his face pressed to the train's window.

"It's the future," his father, Huang Puying, a businessman from central China, instructed.

Or, depending on whom you ask, it's a white elephant, a $1.3 billion train that goes only 19 miles, is underused, hemorrhaging money and, some Shanghai residents argue, a potential health risk.

Since Shanghai opened the route in 2004, it has attracted only a quarter of its expected passenger load and is just beginning to cover its operating costs, said Xie Weida, a railway expert at Shanghai's Tongji University.

Last month China's state-run China Daily reported that the line had piled up losses of $125 million and Shanghai had suspended a planned expansion to Hangzhou, 110 miles to the south, although officials have since said that the route remains under consideration.

For the rest of the world, the debate is significant because more than a dozen cities are considering building maglevs.

In the United States, at least five lines are under consideration, including one that would stretch 117 miles from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tenn., a 39-mile-long route between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore and potential lines in Nevada, California and Pennsylvania, said Jack Sun, a Washington-based manager for Transrapid International, the consortium of Siemens and ThyssenKrupp that built the Shanghai maglev.

Jeff Mullis, chairman of the Georgia Senate's Transportation Committee, has argued that a maglev line linking Atlanta and Chattanooga's Lovell Field Airport is the best way to reduce demand at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

"The other options are to expand Atlanta airport or build a new (airport) north of Atlanta, and I think building a new one would be impossible," he said by email. "People would not like having an airport in their 'back yard,' so to speak."

Further expanding Hartsfield-Jackson Airport "doesn't make any sense," he said, adding that a maglev or other high-speed railway between Atlanta and Chattanooga could eventually be linked with more distant cities.

According to a Transrapid proposal, a 54-minute maglev ride between Atlanta and Chattanooga, stopping in Cartersville and Dalton, Ga., would take 54 minutes. The line would cost about $5 billion, according to Walter Buss, president of Transrapid's Washington, D.C. office.

Together with several Tennessee city governments and business groups, the Georgia Department of Transportation began a federally funded $7.8 million study of high-speed transportation — including maglevs — last year. The study is expected to be completed in 2009, said department spokesperson Crystal Paulk-Buchanan.

Several department board members "find maglevs interesting" and at least one has ridden on a test track, but maglev trains are "certainly not the only technology available for high speed ground transportation," Paulk-Buchanan said.

Germany, where Transrapid developed much of the maglev technology, is studying a line from Munich to its airport, while Japan's Central Japan Railway announced last year that it would spend $3 billion to experiment with new maglev technology.

Because maglev trains are expensive, only Shanghai has built a commercial line. But Transrapid is "confident that the technology is good and more countries will invest in it," said Gu Fang, a Shanghai-based Transrapid manager.

In Shanghai, where people have taken to heart the adage that time is money, the maglev's speed is its top feature.

By using magnetic attraction and repulsion to keep the train suspended about a centimeter above its track, the maglev reduces friction and can travel at nearly 300 mph, a speed that could cut travel time between Shanghai's 18 million people and Hangzhou's 7 million from two hours by car to 42 minutes.

Eventually, improvements in aerodynamics and track design could allow safe land travel at 350 mph, Gu said.

"The most important consideration is the time the route would save for riders in Hangzhou and Shanghai that could be used for other things," said Chai Xianlong, director of a government think tank in Hangzhou that is researching maglev development.

China is also considering building maglev lines that would run from Beijing to Shanghai and from Shanghai to Guangzhou, the bustling factory city in southern China, each taking three hours. Despite lobbying by Transrapid, Beijing is building a high-speed railway on the 820-mile Beijing-Shanghai route, but the line could be upgraded to a maglev "in the future," Gu said.

By cutting the time between cities, maglev trains could unite the economic zones, potentially bringing together businesses to make them more efficient while shorter routes could link residential and financial hubs, reducing overcrowding in China's biggest cities.

"Even though the costs (of building and running a maglev) are high, there are also intangible macro-economic benefits," said Chai Xianlong, director of a government think tank in Hangzhou that is researching maglev development. "If you look at the return to the entire society, a maglev line makes sense."

But critics argue the time maglevs save is not worth their cost.

In China, each mile of maglev track costs some $42 million to build, roughly one-third more than traditional high-speed railroads or highways, according to government figures. In the United States and Europe, the cost per mile would be about 18 percent higher due to increased labor costs, Gu said.

The proposed Shanghai maglev extension would cost $4.6 billion, money that would be better spent on bullet trains, said Paul French, an economist at Shanghai-based consulting firm Access Asia.

"The technology is proven for bullet trains and you can go into a competitive bidding war (to force down prices)," French said, adding that because freight and passenger trains run on the same tracks, the routes could serve multiple purposes.

Shanghai officials invested in the existing maglev train "because they had to have the fastest one," he said. "It was just vanity."

Other critics worry that the relatively new technology could pose health risks for communities near maglev tracks. Shanghai suspended work on the maglev extension in May after thousands of city residents "raised concerns their health may be affected by radiation from passing trains," the Xinhua news agency reported, quoting city officials.

A spokesperson for Transrapid said that radiation from maglevs is not a health risk because magnetic fields produced by the system "are extremely small (and are) far below the field intensity produced by many common household appliances" including hair dryers and toasters.

A collision between a maglev train and a maintenance vehicle on a German test track that killed 23 people last year, as well as a small fire on a maglev train in Shanghai, may prove more damaging to the reputation of maglev technology, experts said.

In theory, maglevs should never collide because of how they are powered, but Chinese and foreign scientists are still working out "technical problems," Tongji University professor Xie said.

In Shanghai, poor design of the existing maglev line – which ends six miles from the city center and requires passengers to lug baggage through the airport – has been a bigger problem.

Waiting for a bus outside the Pudong International Airport, Li Chaocheng, a Shanghai teacher, said he didn't ride the maglev because "it's too far to walk and it's inconvenient to get to." The maglev's one-way fare of 50 yuan – $6.50 – is also twice what he pays to catch a bus.

"I'd take the maglev if it made sense, but it doesn't," he said as he puffed on a cigarette.

For planners, the key to maglev routes is balancing costs and benefits.

"If you just look at a (maglev) project in terms of whether or not it will repay its costs, it's hard to justify," professor Xie said.

But the benefits of new maglev lines are also attractive, he and other experts said.

Besides tying city economies more closely together, maglev trains are three times more energy efficient than cars and five times more efficient than planes, according to Transrapid.

Because maglev trains use electricity, pollution is generated at power plants, where it can be contained.

"Maglev trains produce very little pollution, so they are good for the environment," said Liu Binglian, a transportation expert at Nankai University.

For Shanghai, the most important benefits may be psychological and educational.

China required that most of the parts used in the current maglev train be made in China, ensuring that Chinese engineers gained experience in the German technology.

Having the world's fastest commercial train in Shanghai is also a benefit, think tank director Chai said.

"The whole world knows that Shanghai has the fastest train and the best technology," he said. "How can you put a price tag on that?"

As the maglev train zipped toward Shanghai from its international airport, Huang Puying hoped the ride would inspire his 9-year-old son to study science.

"Shanghai is great because it is thinking of the future," he said. "I want my son to see that."