Actually, this was a question I had when I first read about the CRH380 running on the Shanghai-Hangzhou route. Maybe the maglev been postponed?
Chinese Economics Thread
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Actually, this was a question I had when I first read about the CRH380 running on the Shanghai-Hangzhou route. Maybe the maglev been postponed?
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
I've read that most of the cost of building HSR and maglev lines is laying down the track, elevated structures, and bridges. So if they decided to change to maglev most of the costly infrastructure will already be in place.
Quickie
Colonel
Dual use or, in other words, killing two birds with one stone. The same developed technology can easily be adapted for other applications, including the magnetic catapult.
I think it's kind of costly to replace the HSR trains with maglevs considering the distruption in service and all. Probably the maglev running alongside part of the route in parallel for a start or an entirely new route.
I think it's kind of costly to replace the HSR trains with maglevs considering the distruption in service and all. Probably the maglev running alongside part of the route in parallel for a start or an entirely new route.
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bladerunner
Banned Idiot
From memory, approval for the Maglev line was given in April 2010. Unless theres been a change of mind again.
While Maglevs and HSR travelling at similar speeds, might be able to share the same infrastructure, according to Martins suppled article a different approach has to be adopted if the Maglev is to be able to match the operating speeds of airliners.
We dont know whether Maglev's using this underground vacuum less tunnel theory is for real or the result of somebody's fantasy, but. the additional cost of 2.5 million per kilometer to go underground does appear rather cheap.
Then again what the heck, being a train enthusiast it would be really neat to see trains reaching those speeds. Anyway if your airliners engines stop working while flying at 38000 feet, you can bend down kiss your backside goodbye. While in a HSR or Maglev , if the engines stop working ,you just glide to a halt.
Its also occurred to me that this super speed train line they hope to have up and running in 10yrs, is actually the Shanghai-Hangzhou route. . The fact that it is going to take 10yrs, made it feasible to have a regular HSR running in the meantime. So when completed, one has a choice of service, according to ones means. Something like a 747 Versus the Concord. (Hangzhou must be a real important place, more so then north to Beijing. But thats understandable I guess. Politicians should be avoided like the plague.
In all seriousness Shanghai must attach a lot of importance to Hangzhou for them to spend the extra money.
I vaguely recall that the Siemens Maglev came with some very expensive maintenence issues of its own,which no doubt had a part in deciding whether to go for HSR or stay with Maglev (something to do with replacing parts in the electro magnetic functioning dept I think?) and then there was the choice of using the German or Japanese solution for the trains levitivity, when developing their own version.?
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Martian
Senior Member
Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line is back on track
"Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line gets approval
Published: 15 Mar 2010 00:02:01 PST
The construction of a maglev line from Shanghai to Hangzhou was recently approved by the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the plan is now being studied, Zheng Jian, chief planner of the Ministry of Railways, revealed during the third session of the 11th NPC on March 13.
With a total investment of 22 billion yuan ($3.22 billion), this 199.4 kilometer-long line is the only maglev train program among the national medium and long-term plans.
While the low-speed maglev train runs at only 100 kilometers an hour, trains on the Shanghai-Hangzhou line will reach speeds of up to 430 kilometers an hour.
Sun Zhang, a professor with the College of Traffic and Transportation Engineering at Tongji University, told the media that as an extension of the maglev line from Shanghai Pudong Airport, the Shanghai-Hangzhou line can shorten the travel time between the two cities. The construction of the line will also boost the economic development and optimize resources of both cities.
After it is built, the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line will link Shanghai South Railway Station, Hongqiao Airport, Pudong Airport and Hangzhou together.
In 2006, the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line proposal was approved by the State Council. The total construction budget of the 175-kilometer line was estimated at about 35 billion yuan. The section within Zhejiang Province will be built from 2010 to 2014, with an investment of about 22 billion yuan.
Currently, the only maglev line in operation nationwide is the 31 kilometer-long maglev train from Shanghai Pudong Airport to Longyang Road, Pudong New Area."
"Hundreds protest Shanghai maglev rail extension
Updated Sunday, January 13, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Royston Chan and Sophie Taylor, Reuters
Shanghai residents shout slogans as they demonstrate outside the city government hall against the extension of the Maglev train into downtown Shanghai Saturday. Police in China’s commercial hub of Shanghai detained scores of people Saturday holding a protest against a planned extension of the city’s magnetic levitation train, or “maglev,” worried it would emit radiation. (Reuters)
SHANGHAI -- Hundreds of people marched through China’s financial hub of Shanghai on Saturday protesting a planned extension of the city’s magnetic levitation train, or “maglev”, worried it would emit radiation and sicken them.
Police initially detained dozens of people, bundling them into waiting cars, vans and buses, as protesters gathered in front of city hall shouting “We don’t want the maglev” and carrying placards reading: “No to maglev — bad for health.”
“We are afraid how the radiation will affect us. Why does the government not listen to our concerns?” said a protester surnamed Guan, adding the extension would pass within 100 meters (328 ft.) of her house.
As police cordoned off the city government in People’s Square, once home to a race track in Shanghai’s colonial heyday, demonstrators took off down the fashionable Nanjing Road shopping area.
The protest was the largest the cosmopolitan and wealthy city has seen since thousands took to the streets in sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005.
“I’m marching against the proposed line as it’s too close to town. It’s going to be noisy and emit pollution,” said another protester, who would only give his family name, Liu.
“If you have a house near the line, you will not be able to sell it for as much money,” he added.
Some demonstrators handed out anti-Nazi resistance poems in German, while others sang the Chinese national anthem.
In a prepared statement, a spokesman for the Shanghai city government said authorities had “persuaded” the protesters to disperse because they were affecting public order.
He said the government was still in the process of showing to the public a proposal for the maglev project, which would help to improve the transport system of the city and the whole country.
“We hope city residents will go through legal channels to express their opinions rationally, and not use methods that affect public order,” he added. The protest gradually dispersed peacefully under a light drizzle in the early evening. The police kept their distance as people left.
The country is grappling with an acknowledged rise in unrest, driven by anger at illegal land grabs, corruption, environmental woes and a rising rich poor gap, though large scale protests in big cities are rare.
“Yes, it’s an illegal protest. But we’ve been pushed into a corner,” said another protester.
China has the only commercial maglev in operation in the world, developed and built by the government and a German consortium including industrial giant Siemens.
Launched in 2003, the maglev floats on a magnetic cushion over a distance of 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) between an outlying part of Shanghai’s financial district in Pudong and the international airport.
The government wants to extend the train to downtown Shanghai, and then possibly to the nearby tourist city of Hangzhou.
An environmental assessment report released by the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences this month, compiled for the government after complaints by city residents, declared the extension plan was safe.
The maglev line would not affect air and water quality, and noise pollution could be controlled, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the report as saying.
However, Xinhua also quoted the report as saying a greenbelt buffer zone around the track would only be 22.5 meters wide, though an original blueprint by the local government showed a buffer zone of 150 meters on either side, and German specifications required 300 meters on each side.
Authorities planned to limit the maximum speed along the Shanghai section of the route to 200 km per hour, about half of the maglev’s speed on the existing section of track from the international airport, Xinhua said."
"Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line gets approval
Published: 15 Mar 2010 00:02:01 PST
The construction of a maglev line from Shanghai to Hangzhou was recently approved by the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the plan is now being studied, Zheng Jian, chief planner of the Ministry of Railways, revealed during the third session of the 11th NPC on March 13.
With a total investment of 22 billion yuan ($3.22 billion), this 199.4 kilometer-long line is the only maglev train program among the national medium and long-term plans.
While the low-speed maglev train runs at only 100 kilometers an hour, trains on the Shanghai-Hangzhou line will reach speeds of up to 430 kilometers an hour.
Sun Zhang, a professor with the College of Traffic and Transportation Engineering at Tongji University, told the media that as an extension of the maglev line from Shanghai Pudong Airport, the Shanghai-Hangzhou line can shorten the travel time between the two cities. The construction of the line will also boost the economic development and optimize resources of both cities.
After it is built, the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line will link Shanghai South Railway Station, Hongqiao Airport, Pudong Airport and Hangzhou together.
In 2006, the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev line proposal was approved by the State Council. The total construction budget of the 175-kilometer line was estimated at about 35 billion yuan. The section within Zhejiang Province will be built from 2010 to 2014, with an investment of about 22 billion yuan.
Currently, the only maglev line in operation nationwide is the 31 kilometer-long maglev train from Shanghai Pudong Airport to Longyang Road, Pudong New Area."
"Hundreds protest Shanghai maglev rail extension
Updated Sunday, January 13, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Royston Chan and Sophie Taylor, Reuters
Shanghai residents shout slogans as they demonstrate outside the city government hall against the extension of the Maglev train into downtown Shanghai Saturday. Police in China’s commercial hub of Shanghai detained scores of people Saturday holding a protest against a planned extension of the city’s magnetic levitation train, or “maglev,” worried it would emit radiation. (Reuters)
SHANGHAI -- Hundreds of people marched through China’s financial hub of Shanghai on Saturday protesting a planned extension of the city’s magnetic levitation train, or “maglev”, worried it would emit radiation and sicken them.
Police initially detained dozens of people, bundling them into waiting cars, vans and buses, as protesters gathered in front of city hall shouting “We don’t want the maglev” and carrying placards reading: “No to maglev — bad for health.”
“We are afraid how the radiation will affect us. Why does the government not listen to our concerns?” said a protester surnamed Guan, adding the extension would pass within 100 meters (328 ft.) of her house.
As police cordoned off the city government in People’s Square, once home to a race track in Shanghai’s colonial heyday, demonstrators took off down the fashionable Nanjing Road shopping area.
The protest was the largest the cosmopolitan and wealthy city has seen since thousands took to the streets in sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005.
“I’m marching against the proposed line as it’s too close to town. It’s going to be noisy and emit pollution,” said another protester, who would only give his family name, Liu.
“If you have a house near the line, you will not be able to sell it for as much money,” he added.
Some demonstrators handed out anti-Nazi resistance poems in German, while others sang the Chinese national anthem.
In a prepared statement, a spokesman for the Shanghai city government said authorities had “persuaded” the protesters to disperse because they were affecting public order.
He said the government was still in the process of showing to the public a proposal for the maglev project, which would help to improve the transport system of the city and the whole country.
“We hope city residents will go through legal channels to express their opinions rationally, and not use methods that affect public order,” he added. The protest gradually dispersed peacefully under a light drizzle in the early evening. The police kept their distance as people left.
The country is grappling with an acknowledged rise in unrest, driven by anger at illegal land grabs, corruption, environmental woes and a rising rich poor gap, though large scale protests in big cities are rare.
“Yes, it’s an illegal protest. But we’ve been pushed into a corner,” said another protester.
China has the only commercial maglev in operation in the world, developed and built by the government and a German consortium including industrial giant Siemens.
Launched in 2003, the maglev floats on a magnetic cushion over a distance of 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) between an outlying part of Shanghai’s financial district in Pudong and the international airport.
The government wants to extend the train to downtown Shanghai, and then possibly to the nearby tourist city of Hangzhou.
An environmental assessment report released by the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences this month, compiled for the government after complaints by city residents, declared the extension plan was safe.
The maglev line would not affect air and water quality, and noise pollution could be controlled, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the report as saying.
However, Xinhua also quoted the report as saying a greenbelt buffer zone around the track would only be 22.5 meters wide, though an original blueprint by the local government showed a buffer zone of 150 meters on either side, and German specifications required 300 meters on each side.
Authorities planned to limit the maximum speed along the Shanghai section of the route to 200 km per hour, about half of the maglev’s speed on the existing section of track from the international airport, Xinhua said."
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Schumacher
Senior Member
Many are starting to see that the so-called benign neglect of US$ by the US government is in fact far from benign and may even be a deliberate manipulation.
"Backlash against Fed’s $600bn easing
By Alan Beattie in Washington, Kevin Brown in Singapore and Jennifer Hughes in London
Published: November 4 2010 18:43 | Last updated: November 4 2010 18:43
The US Federal Reserve’s decision to pump an extra $600bn into the economy has galvanized emerging market central banks into preparing defensive measures and sparked criticism from leading global economies.
The Fed’s initiative, in response to rising concern about the weakness of the US economy, has fuelled fears of a sharp drop in the dollar and a fresh flood of capital inflows into emerging markets.
China, Brazil and Germany on Thursday criticised the Fed’s action a day earlier, and a string of east Asian central banks said they were preparing measures to defend their economies against large capital inflows.
Guido Mantega, the Brazilian finance minister who was the first to warn of a “currency war”, said: “Everybody wants the US economy to recover, but it does no good at all to just throw dollars from a helicopter.”
Mr Mantega added: “You have to combine that with fiscal policy. You have to stimulate consumption.” Germany also expressed concern.
An adviser to the Chinese central bank called unbridled printing of dollars the biggest risk to the global economy and said China should use currency policy and capital controls to cushion itself from external shocks.
“As long as the world exercises no restraint in issuing global currencies such as the dollar – and this is not easy – then the occurrence of another crisis is inevitable, as quite a few wise Westerners lament,” Xia Bin wrote in a newspaper under the Chinese central bank.
Korn Chatikavanij, Thailand’s finance minister, said the Thai central bank had told him it was “in close talks” with regional central banks over measures “to prevent excessive speculation.”..........................."
"Backlash against Fed’s $600bn easing
By Alan Beattie in Washington, Kevin Brown in Singapore and Jennifer Hughes in London
Published: November 4 2010 18:43 | Last updated: November 4 2010 18:43
The US Federal Reserve’s decision to pump an extra $600bn into the economy has galvanized emerging market central banks into preparing defensive measures and sparked criticism from leading global economies.
The Fed’s initiative, in response to rising concern about the weakness of the US economy, has fuelled fears of a sharp drop in the dollar and a fresh flood of capital inflows into emerging markets.
China, Brazil and Germany on Thursday criticised the Fed’s action a day earlier, and a string of east Asian central banks said they were preparing measures to defend their economies against large capital inflows.
Guido Mantega, the Brazilian finance minister who was the first to warn of a “currency war”, said: “Everybody wants the US economy to recover, but it does no good at all to just throw dollars from a helicopter.”
Mr Mantega added: “You have to combine that with fiscal policy. You have to stimulate consumption.” Germany also expressed concern.
An adviser to the Chinese central bank called unbridled printing of dollars the biggest risk to the global economy and said China should use currency policy and capital controls to cushion itself from external shocks.
“As long as the world exercises no restraint in issuing global currencies such as the dollar – and this is not easy – then the occurrence of another crisis is inevitable, as quite a few wise Westerners lament,” Xia Bin wrote in a newspaper under the Chinese central bank.
Korn Chatikavanij, Thailand’s finance minister, said the Thai central bank had told him it was “in close talks” with regional central banks over measures “to prevent excessive speculation.”..........................."
Yes, this has been building up over the last couple of months. This is why Geithner, at the G-20's finance ministers' meeting a couple of weeks ago switched his stance from attacking the renminbi exchange rate to something a bit more "neutral" (capping trade surpluses). Without spelling it out (though the German finance minister DID) many countries are accusing the US of currency manipulation. The American press tends to ignore this when it accuses China of doing the same, but American officials can't do this when talking to other countries' officials.
At that finance ministers' meeting, everybody agreed on the need to prevent "excessive volatility" in exchange rates. This is code language for the debasing of the dollar, to use the term used by a British official. Within a day or two of those promises, pundits everywhere were saying the promises meant nothing, and within a week, the talk of QE2 was in full force again. Essentially, this means the US prints money to buy its own debt. The excess liquidity thereby created, does nothing to help US recovery, but DOES apply upward pressure on everybody else's currency.
bladerunner
Banned Idiot
Martian
Senior Member
GM sells record 2 million cars in China, bests U.S. tally
"GM sells record 2 million cars in China, bests U.S. tally
Buick is happy about LaCrosse's sales in China
General Motors says it has become the first global automaker to sell 2 million vehicles in China in a single year.
But the bigger news is GM is on track to sell more cars in China than in the U.S. this year. Through October, GM has sold 1.8 million vehicles in the U.S.
Before you get too worked up about GM's China milestone, note the important word "global." We suspect -- and we feel like we're usually right -- that GM has been bested by the local competition. GM may have the better car, but it's not like saying you have the all-time best selling car in China.
Still bragging rights are what they are. And GM weighs in:
"This is another important milestone for General Motors in China," said Kevin Wale, President and Managing Director of the GM China Group. "It was only three years ago that GM became the first global automaker to reach the 1 million annual sales mark in China."
In 2007, GM and its joint ventures sold 1,031,974 vehicles in China. Last year, GM sold 1,826,424 vehicles nationwide.
October sales of Shanghai GM's Buick brand jumped 35.7% on an annual basis to 54,490 units. Demand for both the new LaCrosse sedan, seen in that photo above, and the smaller Excelle, known as the Regal in the U.S., rose more than 40% year on year."
"GM sells record 2 million cars in China, bests U.S. tally
Buick is happy about LaCrosse's sales in China
General Motors says it has become the first global automaker to sell 2 million vehicles in China in a single year.
But the bigger news is GM is on track to sell more cars in China than in the U.S. this year. Through October, GM has sold 1.8 million vehicles in the U.S.
Before you get too worked up about GM's China milestone, note the important word "global." We suspect -- and we feel like we're usually right -- that GM has been bested by the local competition. GM may have the better car, but it's not like saying you have the all-time best selling car in China.
Still bragging rights are what they are. And GM weighs in:
"This is another important milestone for General Motors in China," said Kevin Wale, President and Managing Director of the GM China Group. "It was only three years ago that GM became the first global automaker to reach the 1 million annual sales mark in China."
In 2007, GM and its joint ventures sold 1,031,974 vehicles in China. Last year, GM sold 1,826,424 vehicles nationwide.
October sales of Shanghai GM's Buick brand jumped 35.7% on an annual basis to 54,490 units. Demand for both the new LaCrosse sedan, seen in that photo above, and the smaller Excelle, known as the Regal in the U.S., rose more than 40% year on year."
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bladerunner
Banned Idiot
Re: GM sells record 2 million cars in China, bests U.S. tally
Quite impressive, too think not so long ago some people were dancing on GM's grave.
Quite impressive, too think not so long ago some people were dancing on GM's grave.