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?
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.
Look at HS2 in Britain and how people are against the cost for higher speed options, or California HSR. I'm all for it, it should absolutely be done, but getting taxpayers to see 10 years into the future is difficult.
Part of it, at least in California, is certain billionaire grifters derailing the effort to get high speed rail going at all and sucking up that subsidy money to do silly shit like LED-lit car tunnels.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/xhx6da/elon_musk_announced_hyperloop_to_kill_californias/
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.
I read it's the zoning and maintenance of the tracks. Since they probably have to be very precisely laid in order to support such a fast train.
That said I do wish for maglev trains to be accessible to all. I'd love to go across the states in a few hours on a train.
One other thing I've not seen mentioned yet is capacity. Switching a maglev track is difficult and very slow, which reduces the number of trains you can get through a switch and therefore the number of people your system can carry.
I remembered seeing a video by Real Engineering that explained a lot on Maglev and it's pros and cons but one of the summaries that really hit it off for me and if I remember correctly is that it cost 11 times more to build per kilometre compared to conventional high speed rail, for about 70% more top speed while using 30% more energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4L_0CDsd1I
Personally I feel unless they come up with better superconductors, there's still a long way to go before it really takes off.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=S4L_0CDsd1I
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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
Here's an interesting write-up about an attempt to develop a large-scale urban maglev system in the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krauss-Maffei_Transurban
tl;dr: there were so many technical issues that when the West German company developing the tech lost funding and the Ontario government took over the project, they immediately abandoned the maglev concept and replaced it with linear-induction propulsion with steel wheels on rails (the mag, without the lev).
Even this tech, which does have a few advantages over conventional rail and is still used today in cities like Vancouver, is falling out of favour due to general logistical issues with using bespoke technology over conventional rail -- fewer people know how to build and maintain it, you're relying on usually just one company to supply your trains and infrastructure until the end of time, you can't reuse any existing infrastructure, etc. I'd imagine these issues still get in the way of maglev development today -- even more so because you can't even reuse existing rails
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.
Sorry, that was supposed to be in response to a reply to one of my comments - my bad!
