Fast food, fast internet, fast society. We live in a world where waiting is rarely an option. This need for speed is upending the world’s transport systems. Particularly rail, where a raft of new technologies promise to get people and goods to their destinations more quickly and more sustainably than ever before.
In the UK, the High Speed Two project aims to slash journey times between some of its largest major cities while California’s High-Speed Rail project promises a high-speed rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles basin no later than 2029. Yet the costs – estimated to be €65 billion and €53 billion, respectively – make both controversial.
High-speed rail (250 km/h and above) was first popularised in the 1960s by the famous Japanese Shinkansen, or bullet trains, and Japan did not stop there. Starting from 1969, Japan has been developing magnetic levitation (maglev) trains. With no friction, only drag slowing them down, maglev trains use a series of magnets to lift and propel them forward rapidly. The Japanese L0 Series took the world land speed record for a manned passenger train in 2015, running at a staggering 603 km/h.
Despite its high energy efficiency and low maintenance fees, maglev has been hampered by production cost and incompatibility snags. Only Japan, South Korea and China operate a handful of maglev lines today. Meanwhile, high-speed rail in general has blossomed, offering a greener alternative to road and air travel in terms of CO2 emissions (assuming all transport options are fully booked). The high-speed rail network now covers large swathes of Europe and Asia, and is even starting to proliferate elsewhere. Set to break ground this year, Texas Central, connecting Houston and Dallas, hopes to beat the California High-Speed Rail project to the punch. India’s first high-speed rail link, connecting Mumbai to Ahmedabad, is scheduled for operation in 2022.
Innovations from Spain
As a result, innovative companies have been pushing the limits of technology, focusing on sensors, smaller motors, lightweight and strong materials, and new track-laying techniques to ramp up speeds, improve energy efficiency and reduce costs. Take the Siemens design for Deutsche Bahn’s ICE 4 high-speed train, which will be officially introduced later this year. A radical new concept, ICE 4 will not only use 22 per cent less energy than its predecessor ICE 3, but all the carriages will operate as independent units. This will allow ICE 4 to be optimally configured for different gradients, the number of seats and speed, and enable it to complete journeys even if power is lost in one or more of the carriages. The 12-carriage variant can propel 830 passengers at 250 km/h.
Spain has the second largest high-speed rail network in the world. As a member of the EU, Spain has focused on ensuring that its trains can operate across borders. Train manufacturer CAF designed its Oaris train in cooperation with Spanish universities and technology centres to not only make it fast, light, energy efficient and comfortable, but also to bridge differences of voltage, signalling systems and track gauges.
China’s high speed network, with more than 20,000 km of track, two-thirds of the world’s total, is bigger still. It’s also a hotbed for innovation. Manufacturer CRRC is currently working on a bullet train with a top speed of 500 km/h which it hopes to mass produce by 2018. Unlike maglev, the Chinese technology uses permanent magnets in a hybrid propulsion system that does not lift trains off the tracks. This makes it both more easily adaptable and less costly.
Speed is, of course, not the only factor making rail technology fit for the 21st century. In Switzerland, Cargo Sous Terrain (CST) aims to develop an innovative goods transport system by 2030 that could dramatically improve commercial logistics. Still in the planning phase, CST’s system will consist of a continuous underground transportation tunnel and efficient, environmentally friendly distribution for goods from city to city. Transport units will be loaded automatically and move at a stately 30 km/h in three-lane tunnels until they reach a suitable access point, where they will be distributed to their final destination in low-noise vehicles. The amount of CO2 released per tonne of goods transported will be 80 per cent less than with conventional transport.
Touted as a “fifth mode of transport” (after cars, trains, planes and boats), Hyperloop would travel at speeds up to 1,000 km/h
The hype around Hyperloop
One concept that has gained huge media attention recently is Hyperloop, an idea made popular in 20th-century comic strips, sci-fi novels and even in the James Bond movie The Living Daylights. US tech entrepreneur Elon Musk outlined the design and technical details in a 57-page white paper in 2013, but has since left the task of actually developing it to anyone with the skill and ambition to do so.
“Elon essentially proposed the four cornerstones of Hyperloop: a low-pressure environment to reduce aerodynamic drag; levitation to reduce friction drag and the need for wheels; electric propulsion, rather than anything using fossil fuels; and a pod-like vehicle, rather than a very long train or plane,” explains Kaveh Hosseini, Lead Aerodynamicist at Hyperloop One.
Touted as a “fifth mode of transport” (after cars, trains, planes and boats), Hyperloop would travel at speeds up to 1,000 km/h, cutting the trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles – a six-hour drive if there’s no traffic – to just 35 minutes.
Scepticism abounds. Property laws, safety, terrorism and technical challenges are all cited as formidable hurdles. “It’s an idea that seems to have significant traction among futurists and the media,” says Brian D. Taylor, a transportation policy and planning expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But, as far as I can tell, it garners mostly shrugs and eye rolls from transportation researchers.”
Even so, four companies have taken on Musk’s challenge: Hyperloop One; Hyperloop Transport Technologies,Transpod; and the recently launched Arrivo, set up by former Hyperloop One employee Brogan BamBrogan.
Hyperloop One is generally regarded as the most advanced, with governments and companies in India, the United Arab Emirates, Finland and Sweden all in talks to be the first to install their system. In a successful public test of its electric propulsion, the company went to the Nevada desert last May to accelerate a custom-built sled to 187 km/h in 1.1 seconds – no small feat, but still a long way from a working hyperloop. Yet progress is fast, and Hyperloop One intends to conduct the world’s first full-size test in Las Vegas soon in what Hosseini describes as the company’s “Kitty Hawk moment”. “This year, we will demonstrate DevLoop. It will be our first flight, just like the Wright Brothers demonstrated the aeroplane’s first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903”.
