this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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I feel that even if someone succeeds with Maglev it will at best be the Concorde of the railways due to the higher costs and inconvenience of using a niche technology with a limited supply chain and limited number of engineers available to build and maintain lines. Proprietary tech also limits your ability to shop around or negotiate better prices. Remember that Concode was profitable but was retired because it was uneconomical.
I also wanted to draw attention to the diminishing returns higher speeds deliver: 100km/h train = 4 hour journey 200km/h train = 2 hours 300km/h train = 1 hour 20 mins 400km/h train = 1 hour 500km/h train = 48 mins 600km/h train = 40 mins
This ignores acceleration and breaking times and the faster your train the sooner it has to start decelerating in order to avoid overshooting it's destination. One overlooked time saving that HSR delivers is that the need to build straight tracks and skip stops to maintain speed means a more direct route to your destination delivered at the expense of the places in between. High speed service is actually a downgrade for many communities as the trains no longer serve local stations.
It feels like you're scoring returns logarithmically as you move the scale additively here. The faster you go, the sooner you arrive, it's simple and linear. I'm not actually sure if acceleration and deceleration has been a big issue at the scales involved.
Edit: As is the author. Really, added cost per added speed is the important function, which isn't gone into in any detail.
Agreed, It'd be interesting to see the cost breakdowns.
I guess you have to spend more on tracks to get higher speeds, but still to get to 600kph you must put a lot of electricity into that thing.
If sort of feels like maglev should be able recover a decent amount of electricity during braking, but maybe there are practical constraints - or just too much loss to wind resistance.
Maybe it comes down to just a handful of magnets round a few axles being cheaper than a long line of magnets the length of the track.