• Hond@piefed.social
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    13 days ago

    Fuck Maglev.

    Regular ass trains on steel tracks can go >200mph if built to spec. Suuuure, maglev can go even faster. But regular ass trains on steel tracks can actually be build on a realistic budget. Like in theory atleast. But before the US does something this sane they’re gonna nuke themselves. idk

    • TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca
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      13 days ago

      Regular ass train gang. Let’s stop trying to reinvent something that already works way better than whatever half ass bullshit you thought about for a couple hours.

      • Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        12 days ago

        Trams for short distance, metro for medium, trains for long and high-speed for very long.

        It’s trains all the way down.

    • BL4CKP1XX13@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      13 days ago

      I don’t know much about various train technologies, but surely that’s going to cause massive wear and tear on the tracks and need to be serviced very often right? And any debris on the track is probably going to cause quite bad damage to the wheels too.

      I don’t know, but I feel like your “if built to spec” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, what kind of spec? Is that sort of quality realistic for a real-world installation? Exposed to the elements?

      Maglev is definitely more expensive to build and probably to run, but it seems like it’d be far more reliable? And also a much smoother experience for those on-board?

      And I feel like Maglev has much greater theoretical speed limits than typical contact tracks, as, well, we basically remove the friction between the wheel and the track?

      Also imo Maglev is cool and gets style points.

      • SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social
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        13 days ago

        Most industry nations around the world are running high speed trains by now. They’re doing petty fine I’d say. China threw a ton of money into German maglev tech and there isn’t really much to see still. There’s a reason most countries gave up on it.

      • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
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        13 days ago

        Built to spec does do a lot of heavy lifting. American distances are larger than European distances. China has the advantage of a dictatorship which can be decisive.

        But the Interstate system was expensive and had a crazy spec and was built and continues to be maintained at an extremely high cost.

        Last I heard, maglev is mostly vaporware. Just build good tracks.

        • blx@piefed.zip
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          13 days ago

          China has the advantage of a dictatorship which can be decisive

          Not to worry! The USA is catching up real quick on that point

    • Asetru@feddit.org
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      13 days ago

      Maglev isn’t even more expensive. High speed rails that are built “to spec” for 400 km/h are expensive as fuck. Trains are usually shorter but frequency is higher, so per passenger it roughly evens out.

      The real deal breaker is the lack of compatibility. Can’t ever run a maglev train on legacy rail while your high speed train can use the existing system to bridge gaps in the high speed network.