Maglev (magnetic levitation) is a method of using the forces produced from either electromagnets or permanent magnets to suspend, support, guide, separate and/or propel objects. (see link: TRI Vehicle Power & Guidance Explained May 04)
Transportation systems employing some form of magnetic levitation are known as maglevs and consist of vehicles moving along dedicated guideways. Using magnetic levitation as a means of locomotion represents a revolution in transportation because several inherently undesirable characteristics of wheeled transportation are eliminated or dramatically reduced; namely, friction (wear & tear), vibration and noise (see graphic of two different system approaches to magnetic attraction below).
German TRI EMS system on the left and Korean LIM system on right.
Maglev technology is not “train” technology and is not compatible with any conventional railroad track design. Indeed, the scientific and engineering challenges of developing ultra-safe and high-reliability maglev ground transportation systems with top speeds comparable to turboprop and jet aircraft (500 – 580 kph), rivals any of the world’s great engineering achievements; including the world’s most advanced space programs. For example, complex algorithms are used to control and operate maglev vehicles and cost-effective construction techniques must be developed to build highly precise and extremely stable support structures, known as guideways.
It should be emphasized that maglevs are complete transportation systems. The term maglev refers not only to the vehicles, but also to the vehicle/guideway interaction. Maglev system guideways and vehicles are precise design elements specifically tailored to each other for the creation, and control of, magnetic levitation.
There are several magnetic levitation approaches, all of which have their unique characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Due to space limitations, only the world’s first three commercially available maglev systems will be discussed in this paper, along with the very mature Japanese high-speed system still undergoing improvements at the maglev research and development (R&D) facility in Yamanashi Prefecture.
Maglev’s Societal Impact
Maglevs are not just exotic transportation technologies designed for high speeds; they are actually vehicles for societal change. For instance, the deployment of an extensive high-speed maglev network for electric-powered intercity transportation would significantly lower America’s dependence on an increasingly unstable world oil supply. Use of lower-speed maglevs for commuter applications or for inner city transit would also further lower oil dependence by coaxing people out of their cars for those longer point-to-point trips. These lower-speed systems also have the advantage of being nearly silent and vibration-free, while able to operate safely on the steepest of grades, even during inclement weather. Most important, these systems are designed to be safer than any other transportation mode ever invented, since derailments are virtually impossible due to the way the vehicles fit around or within their guideways. In addition, braking requires no friction and is therefore unaffected by surface conditions (ice, snow, rain).
In a November 2005 speech, Secretary of Transportation, Norman Y. Mineta, stated that America’s cities were too far apart to justify a national rail system, such as in Europe or Japan. Maglev makes this an outdated statement.
Although this conventional wisdom may apply to conventional railroads, America’s cities are not too spread out for a national high-speed maglev system that would be competitive with air travel. A high-speed maglev’s top cruising speed is in excess of 500 kph (310 mph), and combined with very quick acceleration and deceleration, makes it a perfect technology for travel distances between 50 to 1,000 kilometers (30 to 600 miles), especially, when trip times, reliable operations, overall environmental impact, energy consumption and safety are combined for consideration (see chart below).
In addition, a 500-mile maglev line could make a few stops along its route to service those smaller communities that the airlines simply fly over. A one- or two-minute stop is all that would be required at each station. Several trains a day would reconnect these smaller communities to larger cities and dramatically discourage long, boring, slow, and energy wasteful highway trips by car.
What Mr. Mineta failed to mention was that many American cities are too close together to financially justify inefficient short-haul air travel, yet the federal government continues to subsidize (i.e., encourage) these operations that only add to the congestion of major airports while simultaneously imposing a disproportionately high cost in airport delays (see chart below)
The most compelling questions are: why doesn’t America have a national transportation and energy policy and why aren’t important transportation deployment considerations being seriously considered by the U.S. Government to provide relief to our serious congestion and transportation-related energy problems? (see this link to a color-coded transport technology deployment evaluation matrix)
Ten compelling reasons to support the case for building a new high-speed, electric-powered, intercity maglev transportation system in the U.S.:
1 ) half of all domestic air travel in the U.S. is for trips of 600 miles or less,
2 ) no large American city is further than 500 miles from the next large city,
3 ) high-speed maglev trip times are competitive with door-to-door airline travel up to 600 miles,
4 ) maglevs operate reliably in weather that typically grounds or disrupts air service,
5 ) America’s transportation system is 96.9% oil-reliant,
6 ) jet aircraft are noisy and heavy air polluters (they have no pollution control devices), whereas maglevs are emission-free[1],
7 ) increasingly constricted world oil supplies are causing higher fuel prices that negatively impact U.S. transportation and the overall economy,
8 ) higher fuel prices will inevitably give way to fuel shortages as world demand exceeds world production, thus further hampering domestic commerce,
9 ) America’s 300 million people consumed approximately 18.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil on average in 2009 and is the world’s number one consumer of oil. The world demand average for October 2010 was 87.7 million bpd. China, a nation of 1.3 billion, is the second largest oil consumer hitting demand of 9.09 bpd for October 2010, up from 8.6 million bpd in 2005. China’s explosive economic growth is changing the world and now driving rapid energy demand. Meanwhile, high energy prices have yet to force U.S. citizens to realign their energy consumption patterns in any significant way, and
10 ) electric-powered intercity and commuter maglev networks could significantly reduce U.S. daily oil consumption and provide an effective alternative to hydrocarbon combustion-based transportation.
Given these hard realities, America will be forced eventually to reassess and reprioritize its national energy and transportation priorities. The longer America takes to address its growing national transportation and energy emergency, the more difficult will be the recovery. Words, arguments, discussions, meetings, studies, the oil industry’s propaganda or machinations by their political representatives will not prevent or reverse the physical realities of our “energy consumption crisis.”
The drilling of thousands of oil wells now adds up to one big hole of dependency for America (and the world) to climb out of. As Will Roger’s once quipped, “When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.” Well, maybe America should heed ol’ Will’s advice and stop drillin’, because our oil-based economy is simply not sustainable.
Which brings up the real issue preventing maglev (or high-speed rail) deployments in the United States – the politics of vested interests.
Transportation Politics
Maglev systems are now well-proven technologies. The difficulties preventing maglev deployment in the U.S. are certainly not technical. The main obstacle is the powerful political influence exerted by an existing oil-dependent transportation industry.
The need for a new national rail-type carrier is increasingly obvious to people familiar with the America’s looming energy crisis, but Amtrak is not the answer. Amtrak is a decrepit, dysfunctional, inefficient, unreliable, and expensive-to-maintain passenger rail system with an unworkable business model. To be fair, Amtrak was doomed to fail from the start. It was Congress that gave Amtrak an impossible national service mandate, while its former railroad owners assigned Amtrak passenger trains secondary status to freight rail traffic when riding their privately owned rails. The mere fact that Amtrak survived over thirty years is a testament to the public’s demand and need for passenger rail travel. If this were not so, yearly Congressional Amtrak operational “subsidies” (as rail opponents prefer to call investments) would not have been dispensed.
The dissolution of America’s passenger rail system did not happen by accident or in a political vacuum. During the first half of the 20th century, the decision to federally “invest” in the construction of a national network of airports—and to create a nationally funded and operated air traffic control system to manage the flight connections between them—put the first nail in the coffin for long-distance train travel in America. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 provided for a 65,000-km national system of interstate and defense highways. This act soon put the kibosh on most medium- and short-distance passenger rail travel.
Simultaneously, no money was being provided to the privately held railroads to shore up their aging infrastructure. As more money was being poured into the infrastructure for the other two modes, the railroad companies saw their passenger rail business drop off. Finally, they petitioned Congress to allow them to only operate as freight carriers, and pawned off their passenger rail service on the federal government; hence, the creation of America’s “national rail system” – Amtrak.
However, after 50 years of heavy federal subsidies, America’s highways and runways are increasingly more congested, while oil supplies are increasingly less certain. America’s first step to reduce oil dependence needs to be the shifting of the burden of intercity travel away from airlines/airports and cars/highways to more capacity-flexible and prime energy-flexible electric-powered rail or fixed guideway systems. The most technologically advanced of these systems is maglev.
With maglev systems in place, bustling intercity stations can be placed in downtowns. For instance, a downtown New Yorker could travel to the downtowns of Washington DC, Boston, Baltimore or Albany in about an hour and be on time – to the second – over 99% of the time. Travel between downtown Chicago and Manhattan would take approximately three hours, regardless of most weather conditions. This means, of course, that few people would ever fly these routes again, thus freeing up valuable runway slots for longer-haul flights and obviating the need for expensive airport expansion projects. Indeed, the country’s several on-going, federally funded, multi-billion dollar airport expansion projects represent a logical potential source for future maglev funding ($20 billion was the total system cost estimated in the early 1990’s for building a high-speed maglev system from Boston to Washington, DC); especially, when taking into consideration that at some point, rapidly rising fuel costs will eliminate airlines as mass transit passenger carriers. Transportation planners need to be looking ahead at these very real limitations on the growth of hydrocarbon combustion transportation modes. Simply by transferring most of the present yearly federal subsidies for airport expansions to intercity maglev projects, America could begin to chart a path towards a more sustainable and reliable transportation system and significantly reduce its reliance on oil for transport. This is obviously not a technical hurdle, but a political issue that needs to be understood from the perspective of being a national defense priority – if foreign oil supplies were suddenly suspended tomorrow, would Americans have a degree of intercity mobility? No.
Yet, soaring energy prices are not the worst problem facing energy consumers, for the high prices are merely a symptom of an imbalance in the supply demand ratio. As world oil demand begins to chronically outstrip world production capabilities, not only will prices soar, but it is inevitable that shortages will eventually occur. The real problem is not just oil supplies, but America’s over-reliance on one prime energy source for 97% of its transportation. With electric-powered transportation, any number of “prime movers” can be used to generate electricity making the country less vulnerable to selfish or corrupt political forces. For example, eight 2-megawatt wind turbines enable the maglev below to cruise at 185 mph (300 k/hr) – the definition of green transport.
For most downtown travelers to get to an outlying airport, check in, go through security, take the long walk to a gate, wait for boarding, board, taxi from the tarmac to a runway, take off, fly, land, taxi to a gate, unload, walk through an airport, grab a taxi or rent a car, and travel into another city, takes a lot of time and energy. Without ever considering air travel time, downtown-to-downtown air travelers burn up over four hours just moving around on the ground. Downtown maglev stations would cut that ground travel time from hours to minutes and cut out much of the aggravation and stress in the process.
Technical Approaches & Considerations
While some maglevs have top speeds in excess of 500 kph (310 mph), actual travel speeds would vary according to the route, just like short haul flights. Efficient and comfortable high-speed air or ground travel requires extremely straight and relatively flat rights of way. The idea that America’s Interstate Highway System ROW could host high-speed maglevs is not based on well-thought-out reasoning. While some extremely flat and straight sections of the Interstate could certainly be used, most of the system would only be able to share small portions of its ROW because the highway undulations and curves were designed for comfortable top speeds of only 80 mph. If high-speed, energy-efficient operation is the goal, a high-speed maglev traveling four times faster than a car traveling on the highway at 70 mph would need a completely new and dedicated ROW over most of its route, especially between the end of the departing acceleration phase and the beginning of the final deceleration phase for arrival into a station.
With a winding, undulating route, a maglev would be constantly accelerating and decelerating. As with all electric motors, the amps consumed during any acceleration phase are several times the amps required for operation at full speed. Additionally, since all electric motors can theoretically become generators through the regenerative braking process, some high-speed maglevs could actually be designed to generate electrical power to the grid during a steady deceleration phase, thus improving our overall transportation system’s energy efficiency.
There are several technological approaches for creating magnetic levitation that can be similar or very different, depending upon the manufacturer. For example, the world’s first commercially deployed high-speed maglev in Shanghai, China, uses ferrous electromagnets to attract vehicles to the underside of a guideway while on-board computers modulate magnetic strength to maintain a precise one-centimeter gap from the sides and undersides of the guideway, resulting in the vehicles riding 15 centimeters (about 6 inches) above the guideway during travel. This German-developed Transrapid high-speed maglev is called an electro-magnetic suspension (EMS) system. For video animation of how this works, click here.
The second commercial maglev deployed this century is a low-speed HSST version (Linimo) in Nagoya, Japan that is also an EMS, but its two key elements are the reverse of the Transrapid EMS system. The Koreans are building their EMS maglev line at Inchon Airport and the Chinese are starting construction of a 20 kilometer EMS system in Beijing, known as the S-1 line, on December 28, 2010.
EMS is essentially an electric motor broken down to its two key elements: the rotor and the stator. In a typical electric motor, a rotor is connected to the shaft that does the work. Rotation occurs when the windings in the stator surrounding the rotor are electrically “excited.” Transrapid EMS maglevs are basically big electric motors laid flat across the landscape.
HSST “Linimo” (LIM) Magnetic Attraction Passive Guidance System And Demonstration Of Frictionless All-Weather Hill Climbing Ability
The low-speed EMS vehicles carry the stator function, while the guideways serve the rotor function. This EMS approach is known as a linear induction motor (LIM), hence the Linimo name for the Nagoya system. The LIM approach allows for less expensive guideway construction, but has limited practical top speeds, typically around 200 kph (120 mph), because increased speed necessitates a larger stator (vehicle) and adds undesirable weight and bulk that detracts from high-speed performance. The LIM system also requires a contacting power pickup rail along its entire length, so it is not entirely a contact- or friction-free system, although propulsion and braking functions are achieved purely through electromagnetism and are free from friction.
As LIM system vehicles increase in weight and speed, guideways need to be sturdier, thus driving up guideway construction cost. In the mid 1970’s, during the R&D of the German Transrapid prototype (the origin of the Japanese HSST design), it was decided that the need for speed made the LIM impractical because ever-larger vehicles would increasingly limit performance. Because of the German’s desire to develop a high-speed intercity connector, they chose the “motor in the guideway” principle for their ensuing development. This was first demonstrated in public on the Transrapid TR-05 in 1979.
In the Transrapid TR-06, TR-07, Shanghai’s TR-08, and in the TR-09 put under development for a Munich airport connector, the vehicle acts as the rotor and the guideway provides the stator function and easily supports any additional stator weight for producing higher speeds. This type of system is known as a linear synchronous motor (LSM).
With an LSM, passengers ride inside a vehicle (rotor) powered by an electrified cantilevered guideway (the stator). This arrangement allows for much higher speeds because vehicle weight tends to remain constant, while static guideways carry the weight-intensive power delivery system for high-speed propulsion, suspension and guidance. Along the entire length of the guideway, three-phase cables run through stator packs that are attached underneath the guideway cantilevers on both sides. While this arrangement increases initial construction costs over the LIM (motor in the vehicle) approach, it represents only 3-4% of the guideway cost and makes very high speeds possible without any contact between vehicle and guideway. Indeed, the bulk of the guideway cost in Shanghai was for building an extremely stable structure to handle the speeds, loads and potential seismic activity up to 7.5 on the Richter scale. At speeds above 80 km/h, power is delivered to the maglev vehicles through non-contact linear generators. Power is delivered via contacting power rails for lower speeds in and near stations. A series of onboard batteries provides redundant backup power to maintain vehicle levitation en route in case of any propulsion power failures.
To achieve and guarantee optimal ride comfort with minimum maintenance, the geotechnical challenges peculiar to maglev are formidable. These challenges include highly demanding deformation limitations, long term stability of foundations under dynamic loads (including earthquakes), analysis of the entire foundation-support-beam system, and optimization of the foundation systems for cost effective design. Deformation considerations include immediate settlement, primary settlement due to consolidation, plastic settlements resulting from secondary consolidation or creep, total plastic settlements due to dead load, total settlements due to cyclical loads from vehicle operations, elastic settlements due to dynamic loads, and total anticipated settlement during operation.
For both LIM and LSM systems, vehicle levitation is achieved via onboard computer control units’ sampling and adjusting the magnetic forces of the onboard electromagnets as they are attracted to the underside of the guideway cantilevers. Vehicles move along the guideway with their cast aluminum support arms wrapped around the top cantilevers of the guideway’s I- or T-shaped cross section. The support arm’s upwardly facing suspension magnets are attracted towards stator packs attached underneath the cantilevers on the LSM or the rails on the LIM guideway – designs that make derailment virtually impossible and safe at any speed.
Regardless of load and speed, both LIM and LSM onboard control systems maintain a 10-millimeter gap with a +-2mm tolerance between the vehicle’s support and guidance magnets and the guideway. Both systems are fully computer controlled and run fully automatic. These are not mechanical systems such as wheeled trains or monorails, but digitally controlled and operated electronic transportation systems.
Essential Parts for CJR’s Superconductor (Repulsing) Magnetic MLX-01 and Vehicles Crossing Bridge
The Central Japan Railway’s MLX01 high-speed system still in development in Yamanashi Prefecture uses superconductor magnets to create magnetic repulsion to suspend its vehicles about 11 centimeters (about 4 inches) above the guideway. This is known as an electrodynamic suspension (EDS) maglev.
Recent Maglev History
To the lay person, it might seem logical, easier and preferable that a magnetic levitation system would use repulsion magnetism. However, it was a computer-controlled magnetic attraction design, Germany’s Transrapid TR-08 that was destined to be the world’s first high-speed maglev deployed in a full scale commercial project – in China.
Shanghai Maglev Demonstration Line Longyang Lu Station to Pudong Airport[/caption]
The contract for the high-speed Shanghai airport connector was signed in January of 2001. In less than three years, the 30-kilometer (19 mile) airport connector commenced commercial operations. The speed of the construction project is as remarkable as the maglev’s speed, especially when one considers that there was no maglev industry infrastructure in place in January of 2001.
By the end of 2005, the Shanghai maglev airport connector had safely transported over five million passengers with an on time – to the second – reliability level of 99.92%. In April of 2006, after two years of normal commercial operation, the government’s “expert group,” the Ministry of Science and Technology, as well as all the other affected agencies, declared the maglev demonstration line an unmitigated technical and engineering success. The Ministry of Science then announced that the demonstration line would be extended 7 kilometers further to the site of the 2010 World Expo and under the Huangpu River to the downtown Shanghai Railway station for an intermodal connection. From Shanghai, the line will then extend 163 kilometers to the southwest to the resort city of Hangzhou, thus providing high speed maglev access from Hangzhou to Pudong International Airport and a trip time of only 30 minutes for a distance of approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles). Pudong Airport-to-downtown Shanghai will take only a comfortable ten minutes by maglev and cost less than half the present fare for the hour long taxi ride – and, considering how harrowing Shanghai taxi rides can be, riding the maglev will be much safer.
While the Shanghai project was underway, another attraction maglev system was being built in Nagoya, Japan. This was the low-speed HSST, or Linimo, maglev. The Linimo began commercial operations in March of 2005 to coincide with the start of the 2005 World Expo. This HSST 100 has a top speed of 100 kph (60 mph) and links nine stations along a 9.6-kilometer (5.6-mile) route. In the first 3 months of operations, the system transported over 10 million passengers with near perfect (99.97%) on-time reliability and perfect safety.
The next maglev system scheduled to go online is in Daejeon, Korea, a city about 320 kilometers (130 miles) south of Seoul. Built by the Korean company Rotem, this maglev system operates using the same magnetic attraction methods as the Japanese HSST. The system is expected to be in commercial service by April of 2007. The Chinese have developed their own HSST spin-off and are starting construction of new low-speed maglev lines.
Midway between Tokyo and Osaka, the Central Japan Railway (CJR) operates a 30-kilometer maglev test track in Yamanashi Prefecture. The company’s MLX01 maglev vehicle uses magnetic repulsion produced by powerful onboard superconducting magnets. As of late 2005, the MLX01 was still in development. However, it is the world speed record holder for maglevs at 581 kph (360 mph). The plan is to extend the test track in both directions to provide additional high-speed service between Tokyo and Osaka and to provide relief to the corridor’s heavily traveled Tokaido Shinkansen (137 million passenger trips in 2005) that now operates 12 trains per hour in each direction during peak travel periods.
Beside these advanced and mature maglev technologies, a result of some 40 years of development, there are a host of new companies around the world looking into different ways to achieve magnetic levitation, including the incorporation of permanent magnets into various design approaches. However, these systems still remain in various stages of research and development.
The Maglev Payoff
While “magnetic levitation” and “maglev” are becoming accepted parts of the national lexicon, the technology has yet to be deployed as a solution for America’s transportation needs. This is, in part, because few policy makers truly understand how the several variations of the technology work or, more important, how the domestic travel experience would be dramatically improved over its present ultra-reliance on highway and air travel. And, even if policy makers are aware of the manifold benefits of maglev technology, their private political campaign funding requirements seem to trump their national interest concerns. How else can the lack of a single U.S. maglev system project under construction in 2005 be explained?
America has the need, it has the money, and it can buy and build the technology. What it clearly lacks is the political to address its rapidly worsening national transportation infrastructure problem in any meaningful way. The airline industry is failing miserably, requiring tens of billions of dollars in federal bailouts to keep planes in the sky. State highway budgets throughout America are in the red because they cannot keep up with the cost of repairing an ever-expanding road infrastructure without raising taxes. Yet, only Amtrak is continually in the budgetary crosshairs from those who view transit as a financial black hole while remaining blind to the fiscal woes of maintaining an over-expansive suburban sprawl road system.
In spite of the recent successes in Asia that prove maglevs are not “pie in the sky” dream machines, but ultra-reliable transportation engineering realities, American transportation policy continues to be wed to 1950s-era delusions of perpetually cheap gas and the seduction of open highways, although neither of which has been the case for a long time. America has simply not made the mental transition from seeing maglevs as promising transport modes of the future to the ultra-reliable transporters they are now. Indeed, much of America has not awakened to the fact that its suburbs have transitioned into urban centers that need new transit options. Yet, America’s lack of any working maglevs is understandable, given that maglev technology was aggressively pursued, developed and brought to maturity in far-off Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, American commuters are spending ever more time stuck in traffic.
Conclusion
Maglevs are merely the logical progression of the electricity revolution that was begun by Edison and Tesla in the late 19th century. The idea of using electricity to create a magnetic field is the basic premise behind both electric motors and generators. Indeed, maglev vehicles and their guideways are basically long electric motors when they accelerate, and can function as generators when they decelerate.
Scarcely one hundred years ago when electricity began to be distributed into people’s homes, it was viewed with fear and amazement and was not well understood (and still isn’t by many). However, it was not long before societies came to rely on the now omnipresent supply of electric power to illuminate homes and factories in the evening, to cool and dry rooms in hot and humid climates, to safely power labor-saving machines, and to make instantaneous telecommunications possible worldwide. Indeed, it is our reliance on readily available supplies of reliable electricity that defines our world. Without it, our modern world ceases to be modern.
While Maglevs were conceived in the early 20th century, it was the rapid advancement in computer processing in the late 20th century that significantly propelled maglev development forward and transformed it into today’s premier transportation option. Maglev transport is simply a logical next step in our society’s electrical and transportation evolution (see graphic below).
As maglev systems continue to come on line around the world and as the price of oil continues to climb, questions surrounding this seemingly magical transport technology will naturally and inevitably arise. Meanwhile, maglev manufacturing, construction costs, operational costs, and maintenance costs continue to be driven lower. Questions surrounding energy efficiency, construction challenges, and the costs of system deployment, operations and maintenance can all be answered.
Maglev technology works. What does not work is America’s heavily politicized procurement practices and grossly outdated transportation policy. What person would not prefer fast reliable transport between cities less than 600 miles apart in all weather without the hassles that are now part and parcel of air travel in America? With a 50-minute maglev trip between downtown New York City and downtown Washington, DC every 10 or 15 minutes, who would ever fly that route again? With such frequent and reliable service, ridership would be extremely high which would mean that fares could be quite low compared to air or present rail travel.
The answer to the equally important accounting questions is the impact maglev will and can have on society: the reduced desirability or need to fly between cities 600 miles or less apart, reduced air pollution levels, quieter and cleaner cities, lower national energy consumption, less use of land corridors to transport more people per hour than any other mode, and the ability to locate stations in urban environments. Clearly, the many tangential benefits of maglev transport transcend the seemingly black-and-white fiscal considerations.
In spite of many erroneous reports to the contrary, maglev systems are cost effective and fit seamlessly into the vision of developing sustainable and livable pedestrian communities that enhance, rather than compromise, citizen mobility.
Shifting from hydrocarbon combustion to electric-powered transportation promises to dramatically alter America’s urban landscape for the better, improve the overall quality of life of its citizens, and improve America’s national security. Indeed, it is maglev’s promise of a more energy-efficient, cleaner, reliable, safer, quieter and more-sustainable transportation future that truly makes this technology so fascinating.
For more information on the electronics of maglev technology, see this link
and for the propulsion system, this link. Compliments of Larry Blow.
For information about pursuing maglev projects in the U.S., see
[1] While maglevs do not spew emissions along their rights of way, it is conceivable that the electricity generated to power them can come from less-than-green sources. That being said, a national energy policy dedicated to reducing or eliminating electricity generation plant emissions means that all electric-powered transportation becomes that much cleaner. Naturally, maglevs and other electric-powered modes are undeniably cleaner to operate along their ROWs than any combustion powered mode.