The following article is from our May 2005 issue.

A Whoosh to End the Rattle. At 300 mph, the 'maglev' train could halt Amtrak's woes. By Uwe Siemon-Netto

Five years ago, there were great hopes for the highspeed Acela train. Now its technology has shown itself to be inadequate. It could be replaced by the Transrapid, which is already up and running in Shanghai.

The day Amtrak beached its 20 hapless Acela Express trains for several months, I stood on the platform of New Rochelle's rail station with a sense of déjà-vu. As commuter trains and antiquated Metroliners rattled by, I felt I was in East Germany just before the Berlin Wall came down. The way the tracks looked - rails on wooden ties with bolts missing here and there - reminded me of communist-era decay.

It came as no surprise to me that the brakes of the high-speed Acela cars - nicknamed "le cochon" (the pig) by workers of their French and Canadian manufacturers because these vehicles are twice as heavy as their European equivalent - had developed dangerous cracks after only three years in service. Regular travelers on the Northeast Corridor's rails know all too well that these do not measure up to the high-speed lines in Europe or Japan.

As so often on this run I was in for an uncomfortable journey. My Washington-bound Regional Express arrived late from Boston. I had a hard time finding an empty seat. Again I wondered: with trains almost always full in the Northeast Corridor, how come Amtrak gobbled up $29 billion in federal subsidies since 1975? Ahead of me lay hours in a carriage quivering so much that I could not read.

When I got off at Washington's magnificent Union Station, I concurred with Rep. John L. Mica, R-Fla., who had told The New York Times: "At some point, Congress and the people in the Northeast Corridor are going to have to wake up and look at some serious alternatives to Amtrak. But maybe it hasn't gotten quite bad enough yet."
Might this quest for alternatives help usher in the age of smooth, safe and pollution-free Transrapid trains whooshing without wheels at 310 mph on magnetic fields, eventually connecting New York and Washington in 90 pleasant minutes rather than three and a half hours? Combined with other transportation woes - such as the rise of gasoline prices and the wasteful folly of short-haul flights - it just might, though not exactly tomorrow.

Once the political will is there and funds are available, trains with 1,000 passengers on board could glide on dedicated "guideways" of concrete or steel beams every 15 minutes from downtown to downtown in very few years. These "guideways" would not require any valuable real estate because they could be built alongside already existing paths for either rail or road traffic (interstates).

The trains are quiet. The only noise they give off is a hiss as they push air aside at full speed. There would be no rattling and screeching of wheels on steel rails; the Transrapid is propelled by magnetic force alone, requiring a third less electricity than traditional trains need for much slower runs.

One of the root causes of Amtrak's problems is the obsolescence of its rail technology that was developed 150 years ago. Even if straightened out at vast expense, it will never allow for speeds of more than 150 mph; yet speed is of the essence for all transportation systems designed to lure passengers away from cars and short-haul airline flights.

Thus by continuing to rely on wheels, Amtrak would never make commuter flights in the Northeast superfluous. This gives little solace to the airlines, which would prefer to concentrate on their more profitable long-distance routes. According to the Federal Railroad Administration, Transrapid trains might be a viable alternative to planes for distances of up to 600 miles. The busy air routes in the Northeast Corridor all fall in this category.

Moreover, the magnetic levitation (maglev) system, which was developed in Germany, is more than twice as fast, can climb steeper gradients and turn sharper corners than the most advanced Japanese or European trains on their straight but still traditional tracks, explains Reed Tanger, the Washington-based project manager for Transrapid International-USA, Inc.

Tanger says it would have helped sell maglevs in the United States, had Germany built the Hamburg-Berlin Transrapid line which was supposed to be in operation by now. Internet bloggers, deriding this new technology, taunt it by pointing precisely to Germany's failure to produce a good showcase for it. As the axiom goes, "Don't expect a baker to sell his rolls if he does not eat some of them himself."

But then a 19.5-mile Transrapid connection between Shanghai's Pudong International Airport and the city center has already shown how well the system works, whisking its passengers to their destination in eight minutes at a speed of 267 miles per hour. The construction of a similar run in Munich seems likely, despite much huffing and puffing by politicians, pundits and the press.

And though the Schröder government shelved the Hamburg-Berlin project because it threatened to become too expensive, Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit presented what he called his "mega vision" of a Transrapid line connecting the German capital with Warsaw and Moscow. Hamburg's business community followed suit by proposing a maglev link with the booming Danish-Swedish region around Copenhagen and Malmö.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder recently returned from a trip to the Middle East with hopes for a maglev route from the Gulf of Oman via Dubai and Abu Dhabi into Saudi Arabia. Ultimately hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims could be whooshed to Mecca every year on this floating train developed and tested on a 25-mile experimental track that for the last quarter of a century has adorned the pastures of the Emsland in northwestern Germany.

Ultimately, though, the U.S. offers the most stirring auspices for the maglev system, Tanger said: "It enjoys support on Capitol Hill as an attractive alternative to air and highway travel." The fact that it is technologically mature and available now adds to its attraction, he went on. The point is that it could expand from a patchwork of projected local runs in various parts of the country into substantial networks on both sides of the North American continent.

At the moment, several projected lines have moved, with federal funding, to "an advanced stage of pre-construction planning," says Tanger. Of these one would be good news for Washingtonians irate at the discomfort and expense in reaching Dulles International Airport, which is a 45-minute, $55 taxi ride away from the city center.

The proposed 29-mile Baltimore-Washington maglev project would bring relief. It would link these two neighboring cities in less than 19 minutes. The trains would stop at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, which would then only be a quarter of an hour away from the capital's Union Station. According to the Federal Railroad Administration, this proposed undertaking is seen as the initial stage of a maglev system serving the entire Northeast from Boston to Charlotte, N.C. Meanwhile, another project in the South foresees a maglev connection between Atlanta and its Hartsfield International Airport, with an eventual extension all the way to Chattanooga, Tenn.
The Baltimore-Washington line would cost about $60 million per mile to build, which would not be significantly more than the price of a traditional high-speed rail system. Once extended to the entire Northeast, it could also be used at night to rush cargo from Baltimore's harbor to New York in about one hour. And it could eventually be linked to what might be called maglev's flagship project in the U.S. - a proposed 54-mile run between Pittsburgh, its international airport and its eastern suburbs.

Later this line might be continued to Cleveland and finally to Chicago, thus eventually enabling high-speed travel from that Midwestern hub all the way to New York. This is an enticing thought to anyone who has ever undertaken the 19-hour Amtrak trip between these two cities, or spent five or more hours traveling these 1,000 miles by air, with lengthy taxi rides and waiting periods at either end.

Meanwhile out west, the first leg of an expensive grid of maglev lines in Southern California could be built within two years, Tanger estimates. It would be a 35-mile demonstration line between Las Vegas and Primm, Calif., which is anticipated to continue to Anaheim, altogether a 269-mile distance. It would be relatively cheap to build - the cost is estimated at $40 million per mile - because in the flat desert, the guideways would be put down at ground level.

Two decades from now, a substantial maglev network might conceivably cover the greater Los Angeles area, Orange County and San Diego. From there, a 110-mile maglev line would connect the city with the planned Imperial Valley Airport in Arizona, according to a proposal by Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif. It would take a train half an hour to cover that distance.

By mid-century, the whoosh of the Transrapid will by and large have replaced the train's rattle in America's principal population centers in the East, Midwest and West; that is, if a political will to initiate a transportation revolution can be mustered now.

"This will take a vision similar to the vision that created the interstate highway system in the 1950s," says Tanner who is fully aware that the law of inertia might preclude this eventuality. "It will require bidding farewell to our highway mentality that makes us add a couple of lanes every time congestion has become too bad."
Yet Tanger is hopeful because he discerns the growing awareness on Capitol Hill that the problems of Amtrak and the interstate highway system will be worse in the coming decade. "In 10 years," he warns, "we'd better have an alternative in place."

- Uwe Siemon-Netto is a Washington-based columnist and university lecturer.