d it can be elevated above the ground as to not interfere with traffic below. Efficiency does come with its costs though. The costs for the production of the maglev trainswould be about 3 times that of a conventional train. This does not include the cost of testing themaglev train systems. This is one of its greatest setbacks.Research on maglev technology has taken place since 1970 in Japan and Germany. So thequestion you might ask is why after 28 years has the maglev train system not boomed intoproduction? To my knowledge only one maglev train system has been used for commercial use. This system, which went from an airport in Birmingham, England to a conventional rail line, ranfor 11 years then was replaced by transit buses which were cheaper to fix and parts were readilyavailable. The facts are that instead of choosing a multibillion railway system, governments havesettled for the bland, conservative, less efficient options of transportation such as bus transit.When the financing is available, maglev technology is the key to progress and theconservation of the environment. As a New York senator writes, Because of faster acceleration,higher speeds around curves and the ability to climb steeper grades, a maglev train can makeevery stop and still equal the travel time of a nonstop railroad. Had Scientific American beenpublished in 1807, when Robert Fulton was developing the first steamship service between NewYork City and Albany, perhaps we would have read an article entitled Steamships: Racing toOblivion. The article would probably have pointed out that the latest Hudson River sloops, withmild wind, can make the journey on about the same time and at a much lower cost. Why wouldwe want to invest in what many engineers were calling Fultons Folly? There was no way ofanticipating the speedy and efficient ships that would eventually evolve from the technologydeployed in 1807; similarly, the limits of maglev are yet to be seen.( M...
