3 ms·

I'd be interested to read more about the actual problems and how maglev trains might make them worse. Not that I don't believe you, but it seems counterintuiti

• bluGill 4y ago
  The biggest problems is the high cost of building track. Remember that trains do not cover everything, so you have to pay for roads (though in the most transit friendly places the few trucks that are needed drive on the sidewalks next to pedestrians no problem). Automated rail is the cheapest to operate, but there are very high upfront costs that may never be paid for compared to running a bus. (when self driving cars arrive I look forward to self driving buses - they would solve something like 75% of what I'm looking to a train for) standardization is a very useful thing in the world. Standards mean you can buy from many different suppliers - if one train manufacture is busy find a different. Standards also mean you can share track with different lines spreading construction costs out. (this even includes freight trains) Standards mean manufactures can invest in jigs that are not worth building for custom things that nobody else needs - or worth building but the cost of the jig is spread out across more parts. One special case of a jig is a long assembly line - note that a modern car is very complex and yet new they start at only $16,000. While trains will never be in high enough demand to get that cheap, there is a lot of opportunity to lower costs if only there were more orders of the same thing (like cars you can choose what color paint you want and a few other options)
  • mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
    Right, I suppose that does make sense. What are the odds of a standardised high speed rail track being adopted at some point so that multiple manufacturers could build cars for that?