Transrapid

Did You Know?

• On 22 September 2006, a Transrapid train collided with a maintenance vehicle at 170 km/h on the test track in Lathen, Germany, resulting in 23 fatalities.
• On 11 August 2006, a Transrapid train running on the Shanghai Maglev Line caught fire; the fire was quickly extinguished, and on-board batteries may have been the cause.
• In April 2006, Chinese officials announced plans to cut maglev rail costs by a third, leading to German concerns about technology theft; China denied plagiarism.

Technology

The Transrapid maglev system has no wheels, axles, gear transmissions, steel rails, or overhead pantographs. Vehicles hover above the track using attractive magnetic force between two linear arrays of electromagnetic coils, forming a magnetic dipole. The vehicle floats on a frictionless magnetic cushion with no mechanical contact. On-board electronics measure the dipole gap 100,000 times per second to maintain a constant 10 mm clearance; when levitated, the vehicle has about 15 cm of clearance above the guideway surface. The system requires less power to hover than to run its air conditioning. In versions TR08 and earlier, power for levitation and electronics came from physical connections below 80 km/h and from recovered harmonic oscillation of magnetic fields above that speed. The TR09 system eliminates physical contact for power at any speed. In case of track propulsion power failure, on-board backup batteries can temporarily power levitation.

Implementations

The only commercial implementation began in 2000 when the Chinese government ordered a Transrapid track connecting Shanghai to Pudong International Airport. It was inaugurated in 2002, and regular daily trips started in March 2004. The train maintains 431 km/h for 50 seconds on the 30.5 km track. The project was sponsored by German Hermes loans of DM 200 million; total cost is believed to be $1.33 billion. A planned extension to Shanghai Hongqiao Airport and onward to Hangzhou was repeatedly delayed and eventually cancelled, possibly due to the building of the Shanghai–Hangzhou Passenger Railway. Since 2020, this extension has been proposed again. The Emsland test facility, the only Transrapid track in Germany, has been deactivated and is scheduled for disassembly, with possible reuse as a test track for CRRC 600 or as a Hyperloop track.

Proposed systems

In 2007, Iran and a German company reached an agreement to use maglev trains linking Tehran and Mashhad. Munich-based Schlegel Consulting Engineers signed the contract with the Iranian ministry and the governor of Mashad, stating they were in a preparatory phase. The project could be worth between 10 and 12 billion euros. Siemens and ThyssenKrupp said they were unaware of the proposal and were not involved. In 2011, SwissRapide AG, with the SwissRapide Consortium, was developing a maglev monorail based on Transrapid technology, with planned lines including Bern–Zürich, Lausanne–Geneva, and Zürich–Winterthur. Transrapid is among companies seeking to build a 120-mile high-speed system parallel to I-70 in Colorado; no technology had been preferred as of November 2013. The California–Nevada Interstate Maglev project proposes a 269-mile line from Las Vegas to Anaheim, with top speed 310 mph; backers sought to revive interest in August 2014. Other US evaluations have been conducted but no project has started construction.

Rejected systems

Transrapid originated as a competitor to the InterCityExpress (ICE) in Germany; the ICE was adopted nationwide, but Transrapid development continued. The most recent German project, a 40 km airport connection from Munich Central Station to Munich Airport, was approved but cancelled on 27 March 2008 due to massive cost overruns. Costs had risen from €1.85 billion to well over €3 billion, mostly due to tunnel construction and civil engineering cost estimates after Deutsche Bahn shifted risk to subcontractors. The Transrapid was rejected in 2007 by the UK government for a maglev link called UK Ultraspeed between London and Glasgow.