Maglev Train Seen Making Washington-to-Baltimore Trip at 311 MPH

Re:Maglev Train Seen Making Washington-to-Baltimore Trip at ... by mnw21cam on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @08:53AM (#8492438)

Surely the point of using a super-fast transport method is in order to traverse long distances. Say for example that the 40 mile journey could be done by a 60mph train in 40 minutes, whereas this new train will take 15 minutes. That's only a saving of 25 minutes. If the train is only running once every half an hour or once an hour, people will end up waiting around for a train for longer than sitting in it.

Run this over a 400 mile journey, and yes I'd say it was worth it.

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Re:Maglev Train Seen Making Washington-to-Baltimore Trip at ... by fennecfoxen on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @09:55AM (#8492684)

There's already a super-high-speed transit route between two major cities about 400 miles apart (e.g. Washington and Boston). It's called an airplane -- takes about 75 minutes, plus airport-related overhead on either end. This is the would-be 400-mile maglev's competition, not existing train service.

And yes, I'm sure the maglev would be more convenient and nicer and otherwise objectively Better in a variety of ways, but the capital expenditures needed to make these incremental gains happen is huge.

> If the train is only running once every half an hour or once an hour, people will end up waiting around for a train for longer than sitting in it.

No, people don't generally treat commuter trains the same way that they treat subway services and the like. They try to show up for a specific train at a specific time.

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Re:Maglev Train Seen Making Washington-to-Baltimore Trip at ... by mnw21cam on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @10:39AM (#8492886)

> No, people don't generally treat commuter trains the same way that they treat subway services and the like. They try to show up for a specific train at a specific time.

If they come in on a connecting service, they sometimes don't have a choice.

Agreed about the airplane, although airport-related overhead is usually quite a bit more than train station-related overhead.

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Re:Maglev Train Seen Making Washington-to-Baltimore Trip at ... by imgabe on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @10:17AM (#8492792)

If you think you're going to drive 60mph the entire way from DC to Baltimore, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

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