FeòragRe: last boost. The German transport minister would like to see maglevs back.
Also, this word meaning (I think) “Public Transport Financing Act” - Gemeindeverkehrsfinanzierungsgesetzes
Till Westermayer@feorag More or less, Gemeinde means communal (city/town/county) in this case.
Charlie Stross@_tillwe_ @feorag Thus ignoring the only sensible reason for going with maglev—sheer speed over long distance routes, competing with jet airliners—and ignoring that local transport needs to be cheap or free to get people out of their cars.
(Also, they don't seem to remember what happened to Transrapid. Oops.)
@cstross @feorag My guess: Friedrich Merz' frame of reference is 1998-2002, the year Merkel replaced him as chairperson of the CDU parliamentary party. Everything after this time is an error, to be ignored or corrected. (Or as one person in another thread on this asked: can I have back Grunge, too?).
@_tillwe_ @feorag There *might* be something I don't know—the new Chinese rare earth magnets this century have revolutionized car drivetrains, so they might no longer need superconductors for schwebebahn (i.e. light rail) applications?—but I doubt it's anything as forward-thinking as that, coming from the CDU.
datenwolfThe Transrapid doesn't use superconducting magnets.
Trouble with the TR is, that it spreads the costs in the trackway, instead of concentrating them in the vehicles.
Maritime shipping is cheap because the oceans are for free. Railroad tracks are incredibly cheap, compared to roads, that's why even in car dependent USA an absolutely enormous amount of goods is transported by train.
@datenwolf @_tillwe_ @feorag Also the Transrapid crash demonstrated an alarming failure mode of high speed maglev, i.e. at airliner speeds you have to observe airline industry safety standards or you get airliner disaster levels of fatalities: