3.7 Normal-conductive Maglev Ë 79Fig. 3.9:Shanghai Transrapid Maglev [97] running line in China.
and currently 14 hours [95]. The relative speed between two opposite-direction trains
passing each other on neighboring tracks was up to 860 km/h on July 14, 2003. In April
2006, the Shanghai Maglev Line Project passed national acceptance and was officially
put into commercial operation. This is the first commercial automated high-speed EMS
Maglev system in the world [96].
Numerous studies have been completed in the USA, but no commercial Maglev
systems have been deployed [98]. The USA first invented Maglev in 1912 [18] and
put forward the concept of a superconducting Maglev in 1966. [20, 21] The American
government implemented the National Maglev Initiative (NMI) program in the early
- There are some Maglev projects, either low speed or high speed, in the USA
[99]. On January 29, 1999, the US Federal Transit Administration announced the
Urban Maglev Project (UMP) with a vision to “develop American magnetic levitation
technology to improve urban mass transportation.”
Since the mid- to low-speed EMS Maglev vehicle operation started in UK in 1984,
Japan and Korea also built the EMS Maglev vehicle system with better performance.
The HSST Maglev System (HSST-100 type) on a 9.2-km route began revenue service on
the Tobu Kyuryo Line in the suburbs of Nagoya in Japan, on March 6, 2005. The urban
Maglev system engineering program started in December 2006. This EMS Maglev
vehicle will be commercially operated on a 6.1-km line from the downtown area to
the Incheon International Airport.
China’s first Maglev train railway started construction in Changsha on May 16, - The Maglev railway will be completed in 2016. This will be the first commercial
operation in China of a low-speed Maglev train [100]. Changsha Maglev Railway is
owned by the Hunan Maglev Transportation Development Limited, and the design
and construction is being undertaken by China Railway Construction Corporation
Limited (CRCC). The Maglev line is 18.5 km in length from the Changsha Train South
Station to the Changsha Huanghua Airport, and the estimated total investment is
about 4 billion yuan. The maximum design speed is 120 km/h, so that it will take only
about 10 minutes to reach the airport by the Maglev train [100].