Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy
Obviously maglev has proven it's technological viability but that is hardly the issue.
The issue is not, does "does it work?" but rather is it worth the money. It's called value for the dollar and is the untold billions that it would take to build it worth sacrificing all that money on one project as opposed to building a whole slew of projects that would carry many more passengers and many more destinations.
China has always been big on vanity projects but due to just printing money and controlling it's currency and banking system, this has allowed China to build many dubious infrastructure projects and especially housing developments.
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It's not even a matter of cost. It's a matter of values. Do people value rail transit here? No. Why? Because almost every living soul alive in 2020 grew up in the automobile age. Only a few cherished old-timers still pine for the days of rail. I don't joke about this. My 97 year old grandma is a huge rail fan and advocate. She grew up traveling between the family farm in Alberta and her families old home in Parry Sound, Ontario traveling by rail. She also loves the LRT and was one of the first commuters to use it when she worked at the flagship Bay on Jasper Avenue in Edmonton.
Europeans, Chinese and Japanese and now Russians, Koreans, Turks, etc know and value their HSR programs. I seriously doubt a single nation has never regretted it once it was built even if it went horribly over budget. Why? Because it's a useful piece of infrastructure.
As for value for dollar? I agree. Conventional HSR is much better at that now because it's been widely adopted and mass produced. Transrapid has only been built in smaller test sites including Shanghai. Want it to be a worldwide tech? We need to sign onto a global system that would call for tens of thousands of miles of globally linked track that would cost a fraction per mile due to economies of scale. Will it happen? Probably not. Should it happen. You bet your sweet bippy whatever the hell that is... ;-)