“Building Maglev is about getting millions of people out of their cars and fighting climate change,” says Wayne Rogers, CEO of Northeast Maglev. The company plans to build a 500 km/h maglev railway between Washington DC and New York.
The project to implement the first Maglev train in the United States has several preliminary steps, since it began in 2011. In short, it is a separate passenger railway that will connect all the centers in the Northeast Corridor. Every 10 minutes, a train will run, covering the distance Washington DC – Baltimore in 15 minutes and from Washington to New York in one hour. Based on Japanese technology called SCMaglev, it will include a superconducting propulsion system that can go 500 kilometers per hour (311 mph).
“In 1964, Japan said: if we don't do something now, movement will become impossible. The Northeast Corridor can be considered to have already passed this point,” says Wayne Rogers. The freeway between Washington DC and Baltimore was built for 50,000 cars, now there are 120,000 cars a day, as he calls it. The Northeast Corridor contains 12 percent of all freeway miles in the US and 52 percent of the worst freeway congestion. Many people also travel by plane between cities, accounting for 30 percent of domestic air travel, and a fast train could mean a big reduction in air and car traffic.
Underground
Within the next two years, Rogers expects approval for the first phase of the project, from Washington to Baltimore, could be completed. This is under review by the Federal Railroad Administration. Construction of this section will take about 6 to 7 years, so the Maglev train could become a reality around 2030 at the earliest.
Unlike many regular rail lines, 70 percent of the route will be underground. Building about 60 or 70 meters deep, the vibrations are deep enough not to be felt above ground. For long sections, the only notable features are periodic emergency exit openings along the route that will be visible above ground. In Washington, D.C., the station will be under the subway, and there will be a station at Baltimore's Washington Thurgood Marshal International Airport.
One of the project's bottlenecks is the long and extensive process it has to go through. More than 30 agencies must give approval before construction can begin, which doesn't always go smoothly. Rogers: “The key is to put a shovel in the ground.”
Shrinking geography
When a Maglev train would run on the Northeast Corridor, mobility in the area would change drastically. “From Washington to Baltimore, you could go an hour – or often longer in traffic – by car or 15 minutes by train. The geography will shrink.” Each connection in the area would be reduced to less than an hour, Rogers says. “People from Washington could get to New York City (almost 250 miles) in the time it would take to drive to Baltimore. Short flights would largely disappear, it would literally change people's lives.”
One of the points of criticism is that a Maglev train would interfere with Amtrak, which runs the high-speed Acela trains on the same corridor. “Maglev won't do away with Amtrak, it'll be free,” Rogers responds to this. Acela trains are currently quite full, he says. “It's not about competing with other trains, it's about how we can get millions of people out of their cars and give them back time and fight climate change.”
In addition to the lower CO2 emissions of rail compared to cars, local pollution will also improve if there is a shift from road to rail. In the Washington/New York area, 41 percent of air emissions come from cars, Rogers says. NASA satellite images show that in 2020, a year with many lockdowns, there is less air pollution. Images during the stay-at-home orders show a drop in pollution, which can be attributed to fewer motor vehicles on the road.
That doesn't mean building maglev will remove the same amount of pollution from the atmosphere as lockdowns, Rogers notes, but it does show how much pollution is produced by cars and how air quality can improve when cars are taken off the roads. Northeast Maglev could fill their trains with 11 percent of the cars currently on the road, according to company estimates.
Breaking low expectations
Most people in the area are in favor of building the Maglev. Northeast Maglev polled local residents and more than two-thirds support the train, across all counties. “However, we have to work through the process and break the chain of low expectations in America,” says Rogers.
“We have a history in America of doing big things, like the Hoover Dam, but in recent decades we've become cynical. We put a man on the moon and in 2022 we couldn't build a train that already exists in Japan?'' This has become an obstacle to the implementation of such a project. President Johnson came up with a high-speed act in 1965. But that never happened, so the private sector is stepping up.”
Currently, passenger traffic in the United States is very low compared to other countries. “Some Americans say: I don't drive a train. We have to change American behavior.” The main thing that will convince people will be the fast intervals, he believes. “People want things immediately, we want it right now. Waiting an hour between trains wouldn't work, so it will run every ten minutes.'
The difference with Hyperloop
In the world of high-speed trains, the hyperloop is a newcomer that is getting a lot of attention. However, Hyperloop is still a work-in-progress technology, “not proven yet,” says Rogers. There were first tests with passengers last year, but the hyperloop capsule only did 170 kilometers per hour on the test track. “Maglev on the other hand is a proven technology, currently operating in Japan and China. Japan has spent 15 years on safety clearance.”
While both are high-speed rail systems and may look similar, a hyperloop has a completely different experience than regular high-speed rail, Rogers says. “In a hyperloop, you're sitting in a capsule of about 6 or 8 people and you're strapped in.” So Maglev is now the best bet. “You can fit 800 people on a Maglev train and it's a smoother ride than most current trains. You can walk and have a cup of tea.”
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