Environmental News Maglev trains race along an environmental track to reality Hoping that the environmental benefits of installing a magnetically levitated (maglev) train line will justify the extraordinarily high costs, federal transportation officials are promising to pay $950 million to build a demonstration line. Seven states are vying for the funds, which will be awarded to one candidate line based on its environmental impact. The rivalry is intense because of the project's high visibility—to date, no country in the world is operating a commercial maglev line—and the size of the prize, which the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) estimates is about two-thirds of the cost of building a short, regional line. Four contenders for the funds, which were authorized in the Transportation Equity Act (TEA-21) legislation passed in 1998, were already eliminated last year. The deadline for the seven remaining contenders to submit a detailed environmental assessment was February 29. These assessments must "fully consider" more than a dozen environmental issues, including environmental justice and energy use, said David Valenstein, environmental program manager for the FRA, which is overseeing the project for the Department of Transportation. The projects are all designed to serve airports and major urban or tourist centers (see box). They range in length from a 20-mile line linking Florida's Cape Canaveral cruise ship terminal, a regional airport, and the Kennedy Space Center, to a 70- to 75-mile line connecting Los Angeles's downtown Union Station railroad terminal with two nearby airports, including LAX International. Not surprisingly, the main environmental justification for these projects is the reduced pollution and increased energy efficiency that result from getting people out of their cars, said John Harding, special assistant in the FRA's Magnetic Levitation Technology Department. For that reason, the
This model TR08 maglev train developed by Germany's Transrapid International can easily achieve speeds of 250-300 mph. It is proposed for use in six of seven U.S. projects vying to win $950 million of federal funding to build a regional high-speed train line.
projects serving the largest populations (Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Maryland) have a good shot at the money, according to Ron Mauri of the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, though he stressed there were a number of other considerations. But despite widespread optimism that maglev will be the transportation mode of choice in the 21st century, the benefits of decreasing traffic jams and pollution have not yet elevated a maglev project to more than demonstration status. Both the Japanese and Germans have spent billions of dollars and many years researching the technology—which dates back to 1912—while the United States has scrapped a number of ambitious projects over the last decade. The concept is sufficiently well established to make installing a line technically feasible, but economics will dictate when that happens, said Daniel Brand, vice president of Charles River Associates, Inc., a business consulting firm. The Japanese plan to determine the fate of their maglev project this month, Hiromasa Tanaka of the Central Japan Railway told participants at the Transportation Research Board
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meeting held in Washington, DC, in January. He said the project will likely get a green light for five more years of research into how to reduce the technology's price. However, the disposition of a proposed line to link Hamburg and Berlin is still in question. Germany's Green Party opposes the project because of its high cost in light of the existing rail line between the cities. Few, if any, U.S. environmental groups have maglev on their radar screens, probably because the technology is so far from being deployed. But environmentalists are apt to raise concerns about the trains' noise level and the effects of being exposed to magnetic fields, Harding said. When the German Greens investigated these issues, they learned that neither was a real deterrent, said Karin Kammann-Klipstein, transportation counselor at the German Embassy. The electromagnetic radiation emanating from a maglev train is less than that of many commuter railways, and the noise level—lower than traditional trains—is highest when a maglev train reaches speeds of more than 200 mph, which is unlikely to occur in populated areas, Harding explained. Maglev trains can easily
Regional maglev rail projects competing for U.S. funding California: The state of California and the Southern California Association of Governments want to build a 70- to 75-mile line linking Los Angeles's Union Station railroad terminal with the LAX International Airport, a second regional airport, and eastern suburbs. Florida: The Florida Department of Transportation and Maglev 2000 are proposing a 20-mile link between the Cape Canaveral Space Center, a regional airport, and Port Canaveral, a major cruise ship terminal. Georgia: The Atlanta Regional Commission would like to run a 32-mile line linking the Hartsfield International Airport with the city and its northern suburbs. Louisiana: The 48-mile project proposed by the Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission would connect the Big Easy's downtown railroad terminal, its airport, and the suburbs north of Lake Pontchartrain. Maryland: The Maryland Department of Transportation wants to connect Baltimore's Camden Yards baseball stadium, Baltimore-Washington International Airport, and Washington, DCs Union Station railroad terminal with a 40-mile line. Nevada: The California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission's project is a 42-mile tourist-oriented line linking Las Vegas with its airport and casinos in Primm, NV. Pennsylvania: The Port Authority of Allegheny County and Maglev, Inc., are proposing to build a 45-mile line running between Pittsburgh, its airport, and the eastern suburbs.
travel between 250 and 300 mph, according to Transrapid International, the German company manufacturing the trains proposed for use in six of the seven projects. Maglev trains are visually appealing because their power is delivered by the single guideway they glide atop, which functions equivalently to the rails used by conventional trains, Harding contended. Other high-speed trains receive their electric power from the regularly spaced catenary towers built along their tracks. And public opposition to constructing new catenaries in New England almost derailed the highspeed Acela line that Amtrak put into service in the Northeast corridor at the end of January. The need to build these guideways is one of the reasons maglev train lines are so expensive, however. Because of the high speeds the trains achieve, their guideways must be protected in all urban areas, which necessitates the costly construction of tunnels, elevated piers, and fences, Valenstein said. But price may prove less of an issue in the geographically
spread-out United States than in Europe. Maglev trains are likely to attract more riders than more conventional high-speed trains, largely because the friction-free magnets enable the train to reach higher speeds, Brand said, quoting from research conducted for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is proposing to build a $25 billion line to link all the state's major cities. The Los
Angeles project competing for the TEA-21 funds could eventually become a spur in that larger line. In addition to ferrying passengers, some of the maglev projects in the competition are being promoted as ways to move freight. The technology could save the trucking industry money, and it might prove to be cheaper than pipelines for moving water in some arid regions, claims Jim Powell, the "American father of maglev". The visionary technology developed by his company, Maglev 2000, uses superconducting quadrupole magnets and is part of Florida's TEA-21 proposal. The environmental assessments for the seven candidate projects currently being evaluated by the FRA must discuss "routine" transportation infrastructure considerations, such as the effects a maglev line could have on solid waste, air and water quality, wetiands, and any endangered species in the vicinity, Valenstein said. The projects' proponents must also detail the broader environmental effects their proposed lines would have on issues like land use planning, sprawl, and public health. FRA's goal is to winnow the list of candidates down to two or three by this fall and pick a winner in 2001. If all goes well, the selected project could be operating by 2005, according to the FRA. —KELLYN S. BETTS
Notable Quotes "If no action is taken now, one-third of all plant species will be extinct or en route to extinction by the middle 2000s and two-thirds by 2100. This is about the proportion that became extinct 65 million years ago [suddenly, at the close of the Mesozoic Era]." Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Gardens and president of the International Botanical Congress, commenting on the bleak prognosis for the status of plant (and consequently, animal) biodiversity by 2100
"We have known for some time that barrel burning is a gross pollution problem, and it should be banned nationwide." Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, commenting on finding of large dioxin emissions from backyard trash burning
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