Shanghaied Bob: The Maglev

I accompanied our house guests to the airport last week and I decided to take the SMT or the Shanghai Maglev Train to return home. It is a train that runs from the Shanghai Pudong Airport to a metro station in the eastern part of Shanghai. The Maglev means magnetic levitation, where magnets are used to suspend and propel the train without the use of wheels.

Based on the SMT site the Maglev is the next generation of high speed ground transportation. Most of the high-speed rail trains/bullet trains, have top speeds at around 300km/h or about 185 mph. Many of these trains currently operate in Europe, Japan and China. The Maglev has a top speed of 500km/h.

With a large population and the need to move this population around the country China has developed a high-speed network of trains crisscrossing the country. The "wheel-on-rail" technology is fully mature with many years of practice and progress being made. But there was a need to move even more people faster. A debate between industry experts in China started around 1999 about putting in maglev trains. At that time there were no maglev trains in use; the technology was new and never developed for large scale commercial use. Instead of putting in a maglev train from Beijing to Shanghai, a much shorter segment was installed to check on the commercial and economical feasibility and the safety of such a system. Leaders in Shanghai supported the project and a line was planned between the airport and the city.

In April of 2004 the SMT began commercial operation. It currently runs at a speed of 430km/h or 268mph, the length of the track is 30km or 19 miles long and the ride takes 7 minutes from Pudong airport to Longyang Rd metro station. Test runs on this line achieved a speed of 501km/h or 311 mph which would be the top cruising speed for longer intercity routes. The cost per ticked is 50RMB or $8.30 and there is 115 trips are made daily. Ridership was not the primary focus of this demonstration line that cost $1.2 billion to install. Once the government approves the next phase, the line will be extended to the South Shanghai Train Station and then on to the Hongqiao Airport on the western side of Shanghai. With new construction techniques being developed the price to finish the line will be greatly reduced and with the increase in ridership it should generate significant revenue for the SMT.

In regular traffic a car ride from the airport to the station takes about 40 minutes. The Maglev is an example of how the Chinese are able to build expensive, innovated infrastructural projects years before their time and then wait for the people to show up. Here are some photos of my ride.