Tomorrow's maglev trains will replace air travel, experts say

By Dick Pelletier

      

    If you've been to an airport lately, you've probably noticed that air travel is becoming more and more congested. Despite delays though, airplanes still provide the fastest way to travel hundreds or thousands of miles.

    But newly-developing "maglev" technology, which allows trains to magnetically hover above tracks avoiding friction, will in the future, experts predict, achieve speeds up to 4,000 mph; which promises to radically change human transportation.

    China has become the leader in this futuristic technology with 4,000 miles of high-speed rails.

    In the past, China helped the U.S. build railroads when laborers laid the Transcontinental Railroad tracks in mid-1800s. And now California Governor Schwarzenegger has signed initial agreements with China to help build a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco maglev train.

    Although today's maglev trains achieve top speeds of only 310 mph (500 kph), futurists believe the technology will advance exponentially in the decades ahead. By mid-2030s, experts predict a New York-to-Los Angeles maglev trip will take 3 hours, as opposed to the current 3 days.

    MIT engineer Frank Davidson believes that by mid-century, this technology will achieve even faster speeds and could replace air travel altogether.

    Davidson, whose past accomplishment includes overseeing construction of the England-France Channel tunnel, dreams of one day building a "tube" under the Atlantic Ocean; allowing 90-minute New York to London travel.

    This futuristic idea would use magnets not only to levitate the train, but also to propel it with a series of magnetic pulses from the side of the track. Each push needn't be very large since it's the accumulation of pushes over many miles that achieve high velocities, Davidson claims.

    But there's a question of how much acceleration or deceleration people can comfortably bear. A reasonable amount might be a tenth of a "g"; a force equal to one tenth of one's body weight.

    The Atlantic tube train could accelerate constantly for the first six minutes, cruise at full speed for an hour and ten minutes, and then decelerate for the final 14 minutes. Each train could carry 1,000 passengers, the equivalent of two jumbo jets. But energy costs will be far less than for air travel; plus, maglev trains are pollution-free.

    Despite worldwide interest in maglev, costs have been a major barrier. Estimates in the U.S. range from $10 million to $30 million per mile.

    However, expected development of room-temperature superconducting magnets will lower costs, and if you consider another futuristic technology, molecular nanotechnology, which experts predict will be available by the 2030s, labor and material expenses will be drastically reduced making maglev construction affordable anywhere.

   Positive futurists envision a time when every community will be connected with maglev trains. But will this futuristic travel system be safe? Dedicated tubes for each direction will prevent head-on crashes and in the absence of wheels and rails, derailment would be impossible. Maglev could definitely become our preferred method of transportation as we trek through the century.

    Will maglev trains replace our dependence on air travel? President Obama recently called for "America to move to a system of high-speed rail travel which would ease congestion and air pollution as well as save energy." Yes, this "magical future" could become reality.

This article appeared in various print publications and on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.