The Regional Transportation District is now considering proposals to create America’s first operational magnetic levitation rapid transit line.
A “maglev” line racing from Denver International Airport to Union Station would be a spectacular way to usher travelers into the Mile High City. It might also provide a technological key to unlocking the gridlock on the Interstate 70 mountain corridor – which a recent study said costs the state $839 million a year in lost business and tourism as well as reductions in the quality of life that lures so many citizens to Colorado in the first place.
Maglev is by no means a sure thing for Denver. RTD has merely agreed to review proposals by three different companies to build maglev lines along one or more of the rapid transit corridors approved by voters in 2005 as part of the FasTracks program. It remains to be seen if such advanced systems can be built on time and within the budget allocated to those lines. RTD hopes to finish evaluating the proposals by year’s end.
For all its futuristic image, the theory behind magnetic levitation is familiar to any kid who ever pushed two magnets together. Bring unlike poles together, and they’ll attract each other. Push like poles together, and they’ll push themselves apart. Advanced electromagnetic systems controlled by computers can use the same principle to suspend trains above a frictionless surface while magnetic induction pulls the cars swiftly forwards.
Rapid transit using maglev can be really rapid. In Shanghai, a demonstration line began running in 2004. It can travel the 19 miles to the city’s airport in 7 minutes, reaching speeds of 270 miles per hour. The line, using German technology, cost the equivalent of $1.2 billion. But the three contending companies now working with RTD might be willing to help finance the line with a long-term design-build-operate-maintain contract to get a foothold in what could eventually be a huge U.S.market. The federal government might also help underwrite a demonstration if the new technology seems promising.
And if maglev can work in the metro area, tourists and experts alike would obviously urge using it to bring high-speed transit to the congested I-70 mountain corridor, whose steep grades resist traditional steel-wheels on steel-rails service.
RTD is wise to consider this gee-whiz option.
