China's new high-speed train just set a new record as the world’s fastest — and it could travel faster than an airplane
China's new high-speed train just set a new record as the world’s fastest — and it could travel faster than an airplane
When completed, the maglev train will reach 621 miles per hour, much faster than commercial flights.
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One of those crashing while going "faster than an airplane" would seem more catastrophic than an airplane crashing.
Are these bullet trains safer than planes or as dangerous as regular trains?
Japan's bullet trains have famously never had a fatal crash in it's 59 year history.
This cannot be said of their conventional trains.
That's what I wanted to hear! Amazing.
Hopefully, China's trains are as good as Japan's 😬
These also have less probability of crashing than commercial airplanes.
Uh... Considering the Transrapid's fatal crash and it's very few operating hours, I can't imagine that to be true.
I don't see your logic. That's like the only fatal Maglev crash so far and not even a commercial one (it's a test track). Every airplane also has limited operating hours.
Do you know how much maintenance and regulation goes into airplane management? All those regulations have been written blood.
They would make a decent start on regulations for high speed rail. In addition to the regulations that have made existing high speed rail safe...
Trains derail on occasion. Planes crash on occasion. But at least with trains we're not accelerating the death of the planet
But at least with trains we’re not accelerating the death of the planet
A mag lev train doing 500+mph is going to need a lot more energy than a normal train. It will probably be less than the plane but I'm thinking it won't be as much less as you might think.
Thae train is also doing those speeds at sea level vs the plane doing them at 35,000ft or higher, where there's less than 1/4 the atmosphere to fight.
It's way less than planes wayyy less than lots of cars. In fact maglev trains use less energy than normal trains. This is because they do not make direct contact with the track, and less energy is required to pull them.
How much is required to keep it floating?
At 480 km/h (about 300 mph) 0.4 megajoules per passenger mile, all things combined including power to track, according to Stanford. Also apparently the energy needed increases at lower speeds due to something about lift.
For reference https://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/January2019.pdf says
Jet airliners are surprisingly efficient, commonly requiring around 2 MJ/pkm (=3.22 MJ/pmile). With full flights and the latest airplane designs, they can do it at less than 1.5 MJ/pkm (=2.41 MJ/pmile)
So 6x is still a big difference. Not sure what I expected, but maybe this is smaller.
Trains don't leave exhaust in the upper parts of the atmosphere, though, and depending on how the electricity was created, it could be neither did its energy source—though I suppose there's no avoiding that manufacturing any kind of plant and the train itself did cause emissions.
@flux @QuinceDaPence Concrete and steel (for stations, track, etc) matter. So does the electricity used to maintain stations, not just propel the train. So lifecycle emissions of a train are immensely complicated, plus then you get into how to route a new rail line without destroying too many ecosystems.
Even so, clean electricity is the easy bit compared to making planes clean. More trains please.
@flux @QuinceDaPence The other common gotcha with new train lines (e.g. HS2) is:
What if we get a modal shift from internal flights to trains? If air demand is constrained by supply (i.e. landing slots), that means there will be more long-haul flights, and overall emissions increase!
There is some truth in this. But it just means we need to drastically reduce our aviation capacity, and increase prices, at the same time as building more train lines. We could start with a frequent flyer levy.
As far as I am aware no country on earth is CO2 neutral, so for these trains the emissions are still positive.
The planet will be here long after we've died out
We can still make the bed before we leave though
What's the reason for this assumption?
What assumption? It was just a thought, followed by a question.
It's a maglev "train". Quite different technology and hard to derail at least. But yes there have been fatal accidents with maglev trains before.