As we hear more and more about impending shortages of energy and the ongoing buildup of CO² emissions escalating global warming, I listened with interest to news articles on the BBC’s Today (scroll down to find the audio archive links for Maglev) program this week about a potential MagLev transportation system in the UK which seems to he attracting the attention of George Osbourne, the Shadow Chancellor.
Maglev, short for Magnetic Levitation has had a checkered history and has not been widely adopted in the past, the UK did have one of the first commercial operating Maglevs at Birmingham Airport for a number of years, but the technology was very temperamental and eventually it was replaced in 1995 by a less technological solution.
As the discussions continue about the use of newer and more efficient Maglev technology, real costs are being proposed for commercial lines in the UK for example £25 Mil. per kilometer for lines from London to Birmingham and London to Manchester. With proposed speeds 300/400 mph, these lines could be a serious competitor to domestic airline operation.
From an emissions point of view, Maglev certainly offers a much cleaner form of transportation for domestic use, though the generation of the massive amounts of electricity needed to run Maglev lines would need to be taken into consideration, perhaps another reason for Nuclear powered generation of electricity, cleaner than coal!
There is of course the question of funding and where the lines will run. It is unclear at the moment if there would be any government funding for the development of this type of transportation, so that will mean that private enterprise will have to stump up the money. I think thought that the building and planning permission will be the bigger hurdle to cross. Could the lines run on the same ground as current traditional railway lines, will new strips of land have to be carved out of the countryside? The UK is not known for quickly adopting new transportation schemes so it will be interesting to see how the proposed Maglev lines are received.
I think that Maglev offers a real solution to the current problems of traditional carbon-based burning transportation systems, it wont be cheap to implement, but it offers both a cleaner and more environmentally friendly answer to our future transportation needs.
Tags: Maglev, Transportation, BBC Today, Planning Permission
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