Transrapid
Transrapid at the Emsland test facility
The Transrapid is said too be more energy efficient than a standard train and considerably less noisy. This is chiefly due to the absent friction between train and track. (However, for high-speed trains in general, most energy is consumed to overcome air friction, as it scales, other than the wheels' friction, with the square of the velocity.) It is also capable too climb significantly steeper tracks, rendering it especially suitable for mountainous regions.
During the 1990s, intense political discussions about the Transrapid started in Germany. Though technically superior to normal railroad systems, the transrapid was considered too expensive, as the companies developping it relied on federal subsidiaries. The controverse especially raged over the question whether (rather large amounts of) public money should be invested into construction a track for commercial use. Plannings for a track from Berlin to Hamburg were cancelled because legislators were not convinced that the project would ever become profitable and hence unwilling to invest the money in times of tight budgets despite of the alleged importance of having a working Transrapid system in germany in order to ease the so far not very succesfull marketing of the system abroad.
The only success so far was in the year 2000, when the Chinese government ordered a Transrapid track to be build connecting Shanghai to its Pu Dong airport. It was inaugurated in 2002. Regular daily trips had started in March 2004. However, low ridership, due to factors like high relative costs have hampered the line. During the first week, the average number of riders per train was only 73 people out of a maximum seating capacity of 440 passengers. One way trip prices have recently dropped to 50 renminbi ($6 usd).
In the year 2002, it had been decided that a track connecting the cities of DÃÂüsseldorf and Dortmund via the city of Essen should be built with financial help by the federal government. Later, a second track between the two cities might have been built closing the loop via Wuppertal. This track was expected to be operational in 2007 though it was earlier expected to be ready for the 2006 soccer world championship in Germany. However, the project has been cancelled as of June 27th, 2003.
As an alternative, the proponents of the Transrapid (which here include the government of Bavaria) are now (as of 2004) planning to connect the city of Munich to its international airport in the state of Bavaria. However, this idea is controversial as well: Although the current connection via S-Bahn (German city railroad system) takes about 40 minutes for the distance, this is mainly due to the train stopping very often in between and an express train on the existing track would be only estimated 3 minutes slower than the proposed Transrapid.
For an overview of competitors to this system, see High-speed rail.See also