They were invented decades ago.
They have fewer moving parts than wheelbois.
They require less maintenance.
There’s obviously some bottleneck in expanding maglev technology, but what is it?
Where existing transit infrastructure exists, cities prefer upgrading existing infrastructure, rather than installing new infrastructure in its place, and where transit does not exist cities prefer not to install anything at all and favor cars typically. Maglev trains are extremely expensive to install the infrastructure, so gathering the money out of local budgets to invest in the extremely expensive maglev infrastructure is typically very difficult.
In the US in particular, politicians, just don’t look at the picture in the long term, and only focus on short term investigator as it pertains to their election schedule, and that is sad and has long-term impact on the local population.
Also for the US the automotive and oil industries have powerful lobbies and an obvious interest in preventing the proliferation of electric-powered public transport. They’ve spent decades centering personal automobiles as the default method of travel and attack these projects with enthusiasm.
It makes more economic sense to improve the rails we already have, and build faster trains to run on the existing rails (like the TGV), than building completely new infrastructure.
They’re quite expensive for a start and standard HSR does it’s job just fine.
Japan is the only country that’s building actual Maglev lines. It’s feasible in Japan due to popularity of rail and distance between the endpoints makes it worth it.
China has Maglev tech and also some demo Maglev lines. But they are committed to standard rail because it’s cheaper to build using a standardised process and works good enough on large distance travel required in China.
In the US, it’s nearly impossible because Petroleum companies and such hate the idea of cheap and efficient transport and just bribe the politicians to be against it.
I rode the maglev to the shanghai airport, it was awesome. The newer version in Beijing is significantly faster. But yeah super expensive to build.
How was the ride? Smooth/bumpy/not feel much movement?
My experience on a much slower HSR is being thrown around in the seat at certain times, wouldn’t want to be carrying an open drink of any kind tbh lol
Because it’s not currently profitable in most cases. Capitalism ensures that the merit of an idea comes secondary to it’s profitability. We don’t get the best things, we get the profitable things.
