Maglev: The Next Generation of Boondoggles
7th November 2013
Maglev doesn’t solve any problems that high-speed rail doesn’t solve. It’s a little faster, but still not as fast as flying. It’s friction-free, but still requires a huge amount of energy to magnetically levitate a train. Most importantly, it doesn’t go where people want to go when they want to go there, which is why the Shanghai maglev has such poor ridership, filling an average of just 20 percent of its seats.
Some people wonder why the United States isn’t building a maglev line similar to the one planned for Japan. After all, says Slate staff writer Will Oremus, we spend more than $112 billion each year on highways. Yes, but unlike a 320-mile maglev, our 4 million miles of highways, roads, and streets go just about anyone someone could want to go.
And that’s why trains are stupid in the modern age. They’re good at taking a lot of people from point A to point B, but if you aren’t at point A, or if you don’t particularly want to go to point B, they don’t do you any good. Trains are primarily popular with people who live near the center of dense cities and can’t imagine anyone wanting to go anywhere except the center of another dense city, which is why they are loved by politicians and journalists. Ordinary people who need to get from their home to their job, neither of which is near (or likely to be near) a train station? Not so much.