What are some maglev statistics compared to other trains?

Question

Energy, costs, speed, etc.

Anything that can be used to make a chart/graph.

Answer 1

Well speed wise there isn't much in it. The top speed for a Maglev is 581km/h and for Conventional trains the top speed is 574km/h (for the non metric thats less then 5mph difference - I can't remember the mph figures)

Maglev, does have a higher in-service speed of about 250mph, Conventional High speed rail on the Spanish network will shortly rise to 220mph when the new advanced signaling system goes live (currently the speed with the existing signaling is 186mph)

Maglev's biggest problem is that it needs all new lines. Presently the TGV routes into Paris finish a few miles out from the city centre, with trains running at reduced speed (~120mph) on 'classic' lines shared with normal trains. There isn't much of a time penalty as the trains would be braking anyway for the station. However, blasting a new alignment into the city at immense cost isn't worth the small time savings. (London was an exception, as the London suburban rail network is full to bursting with high frequency commuter trains it was worth the cost to build a new 150mph tunnel into the city centre)

Maglev would require new routes and stations to be driven through urban areas unless you want to build stations outside the city (Like France does with minor TGV stops with varying degrees of success)

Answer 2

Horribly expensive and hardly any faster than conventional high speed rail, such as France's TGV or Japan's bullet trains. for the money spent, a very poor investment.

The figures for Japans maglev (Linimo) was $100,000,000 per mile to build, compared to $1,500,00 per mile of conventional high speed rail.

In actual use the current record for Maglev is 361 MPH, and conventional high speed rail is about the same.

Proponents of Maglev keep saying better things are on the way but so far it has not been proven. The incredibly powerful magnetic fields associated with maglevs are suspected of causing some serious health problems.