Why can't we get these in this country? China Transrapid Maglev YouTube video:

[originalpckelly]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWjmgBxPG78

This train travels at 267 mph or about 430 km/h(kph).

Amazing.

All electric by the way.

Here is more on the company that makes this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid

There are even proposals from other companies about using evacuated (vacuum) tubes to create trains that could travel beyond the speed of sound with no sonic boom, something that even airplanes can't hope to do.

We have had multiple studies done on these trains, but it always seems like nothing ever comes of it.

[Atman]

1. Because we're a backward third-rate jerkwater banana republic

I'm surprised we don't get our news by reading newspapers pinned to a bulletin board in the town square. We're totally sold a bill of goods about how "superior" America is to the rest of the world...but we have the lamest cell phone system, crappy televisions, but you know when I really realized how far behind we were? When I heard on the news a couple of years ago about the crash of a bullet train in Turkey. TURKEY.

Turkey has fucking bullet trains, and we can't even get a bus to run on time! Yes, America...keep watching the corporate news, and wonder why the government is making it so that we all have to have ze paperz to travel anywhere outside our borders. They're afraid we'll catch on!

.

[Bluebear]

3. You said it. nt

[Lerkfish]

2. the studies themselves are the scam.

there are companies that rotate around from metropolitan area to metropolitan area, pushing for high speed transit, a couple of million are spent on the "study" which concludes its too expensive and the scam moves on to to the next hapless municipality.

Sad, really, It WOULD be nice to have such a thing, but keep in mind places like Europe and Japan have them, but are societies that are based on highly used mass transit. China's largest mode of transport was the bicycle.

America has always loved its highways and the independence of owning your own gas0guzzling vehicle. It would require a massive paradigm shift, and not to mention an incredible capital investment in infrastructure to make this a reality, and when you consider govt. is allowing our current infrastructure to lie fallow and deteriorate, I don't see this happening anytime soon.

[originalpckelly]

4. We could figure out a way to run non-maglevs...

Regular high-speed trains don't cost nearly as much to construct as maglevs, I just don't understand this. Trains can be powered with electricity, jets just can't. It's completely stupid. We're talking about travel times that are in the same range, and trains can even offer better more spacious accommodations.

I think Americans can come up with a train that can meet or beat the speed of an airplane, I think we can even do a mach speed train. We're just being a bunch of fools.

[Lerkfish]

7. oh, I agree, it would be great on many levels., but I've lived in the various cities listed:

NYC, Philadelphia, CHicago, Los Angeles, Tucson, Las Vegas, Seattle, St. Louis.

at some point, nearly all of those places commissioned expensive STUDIES on high speed rail systems. ALL OF THEM paid for the studies and then nothing happened. If all the money spent on the STUDIES was actually used to build the damn thing, it would already exist.

I do not understand it except for unbridled graft. :shrug:

[originalpckelly]

9. It must have something to do with oil.

If you catch my drift.

:eyes:

I bet someone in the government killed the study for the big oil companies that make a bundle off of refining/selling gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

[Lerkfish]

13. that would not surprise me one bit.

[AndyTiedye]

5. Let's Close the War and Build a State-of-the-Art Rail System. It Would be Cheaper

[originalpckelly]

8. I know. Imagine tomorrow, we have trains that run in what are called "evacuated tubes"

that are completely immune to weather delays and can run faster than airplanes without the noise. Because the tubes have to be air tight and strong enough to hold a vacuum, they have to withstand all types of weather. Because of the vacuum, there is no air resistance, that means a more efficient system that uses less power, it also means the trains can travel much faster. In some cases, depending upon the track configuration, even faster than an airplane.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. because you can't build anything in America anymore,

I can't think of a significant new piece of public infrastructure that has been built in California in my lifetime and I was born during the Nixon administration!

Hell we can't even use infrastructure that is already standing without fighting a war over it, don't get me started on the idle infrastructure in Orange County that is just sitting around unused because of the professional local malcontents.

[Old and In the Way]

11. How ironic is it that it was a gas tanker that shutdown that hiway in SF?

[KamaAina]

12. Wasn't BART built in the '70s?

Still, that's quite a while ago...

edit: the LA subway, inadequate as it is, is even more recent.

[Old and In the Way]

10. I wonder how many Mag-Lev's we could have built her for $500BB?

Instead, we piss our future away breaking things....

[greenman3610]

14. note pollution haze in background

China is suffocating in fossil fuel fog.

[originalpckelly]

15. Yes, it's all electric, but most of their electricity comes from coal...

If you watch the video, however, it makes you wonder if that's really a fog or something. The video looked nice.

[momster]

16. I was in China in March

For 10 days. Every single day in the cities and along the Yangtze, there was thick smog just like in this picture. The Olympic committee is worried that the poor air quality may affect the atheletes at next year's games.

That aside, the reason we don't have trains built here, like this, is because in China, when the government says, we're building a train/flooding a river valley/tearing down 1000 year old buildings to widen a highway so all you people have to move...they move. The government moved millions of people out of the way of the new Three Gorges Dam...they told us that 70% of the cost of the project was for relocation -- new roads, new cities, new apartments, new everything.

Here in No. VA they've been studying whether to run a new Metro line to Tysons Corner -- they've been studying it for 5 yrs and they still can't decide if it should be above ground or below and they're supposed to break ground next year. Governor Kaine says above -- everybody else says below. In MD, the Inter-county Connector (a new highway) has been under advisement for 50 years -- that's f-i-f-t-y! Between legal challenges and environmental impact studies, it could be 10 to 15 more before they start that one. I think it's great that the citizens of this country can decide if a new system is good or bad, unlike the people of the PRC.

[momster]

17. By the way...the Shanghai train

I saw it from the bus taking us from the airport to downtown Shanghai. It goes very fast indeed, left our bus way behind and we got stuck in traffic. However, it also is very expensive for the ordinary citizens to ride -- so our local guide said -- and is usually used by foreign businessmen to and from the airport. Also, it only makes 2, maybe three stops, running between the airport and the town, a fifteen mile rt? It's really more of a demonstration model than a vital part of the transportation infrastructure.