Transportation Deployment Casebook/2023/Shanghai

Introduction to Maglev

Technological Characteristics

    Maglev train is a high-speed railway vehicle that uses the principle of magnetic levitation and makes the train float on the track through the action of electromagnetic induction. The core of maglev train technology is the maglev system and power system. The magnetic levitation system includes the electromagnets on the track and the vehicle. By controlling the current of the electromagnet, the vehicle floats on the track, eliminating the friction between the wheel and the track on the traditional railway, and realizing non-contact and suspension operation. The train moves through changing magnetic fields because the power system is based on the interaction between a coil and a magnet.

Advantages

Maglev train technology has the following advantages：

• High-speed:

Shanghai Maglev

The maximum speed of maglev train can reach more than 600 kilometers per hour, which is several times that of trtra aditional high-speed railway.

• Comfortable and stable:

The maglev train operates without contact, and there is no vibration or noise caused by wheel-rail friction, so the ride is more stable and comfortable.

• High energy efficiency:

The maglev train doesn't have any surfaces that touch the ground when it's running. It uses less energy and can use recycled energy, which makes it more efficient at using energy.

Main Markets

At present, the main market for maglev trains is in in Asia, especially China and Japan. China has built the first commercial maglev train line in the worlthe - Shanghai Maglev Demonstration Operation Line, and Japan has also promoted the maglev train technology for 20 years. Also, maglev train technology has been used and improved in both Europe and the United States. Due to its high speed, comfort, safety, environmental protection, and other characteristics, the maglev train is expected to become an important developmefacttiffor of high-speed railways in the future.

History

Transportation mode before the Maglev

Before the maglev train, the main modes of transportation used by people included walking, horseback riding, carriages, railway trains, road buses, planes, etc. Among them, the railway train is a major land transportation mode, but the traditional railway train will cause large energy losses, noise, and vibration due to the existence of contact friction transmission, and the speed is also relatively slow. The maglev train uses the magnetic suspension principle to make the suspension work without touching the track. This means the train can go faster, use less energy, run more efficiently, and be more comfortable.

Invention of the Maglev

• Electromagnetic suspension（EMS）

The electromagnetic suspension (EMS) uses the attraction between the magnets on the side and bottom of the train and on the guide rail to levitate the train. A variant of EMS, called Trans rapid, uses electromagnets to lift the train off the guide rail. The attraction of the magnet around the rail at the bottom of the vehicle keeps the train about 1.3 cm (0.5 in) above the rail.

• Electrodynamic suspension（EDS）

The electrodynamic suspension (EDS) system is similar to the electromagnetic suspension (EMS) system in many ways, but instead of attracting trains to the guide rail, magnets push them away. These magnets have supercooling and superconductivity and can conduct electricity in a short time after powera failure. In addition, unlike EMS, the charge of the guide rail magnetizing coil in the EDS system will repel the magnetic charge on the train chassis, making it levitate higher (usually 1–10 cm above the guide rail). The EDS train lifts slowly, so the wheels must be deployed below about 100 kilometers per hour. But once the train is stopped, the guideway coil will move the train forward by giving it a force to move. Due to the AC power supply for the system, the guideway coil will continuously change its pitch.

• High-temperature superconducting（HTS）

High-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnetic levitation uses the magnetic flux pinning force between the onboard HTS block and the permanent magnet guideway (PMG) to achieve "self-stabilization" of levitation-guide integration. This has the advantages of being easy to set up, safe, and reliable.

Birthing phase

Early Market Development

In 1999, China carried out a pre-feasibility study of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway to meet China's growing travel demand. To verify the feasibility of high-speed maglev as one of the solutions. It is decided to build a commercial operation demonstration line first to verify the maturity, availability, economy, and safety of the high speed maglev system. The State Council looked over this proposal and approved it. In June 2000, after comparing and choosing between Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, it was decided that the building would be in Shanghai. Between Shanghai Pudong International Airport and the Longyan Road subway station is where the construction line is this time, Shanghai Metro Line 2 was already in operation. However, the emergence of maglev greatly shortened the time from downtown Shanghai to Shanghai Pudong International Airport, brought more passenger flow to Shanghai Pudong International Airport, which was hadt put been into operation at that time, and also helped the opening policy of Pudong New Area.

Policy in the 'Birth Phase'

As the first commercial maglev train line in China, the policy of the Shanghai maglev train has played a vital role in the birth stage. Mainly reflected in the following aspects:

Technical support policy: In order to promote the development of maglev train technology, the government has provided financial and technical support to help enterprises carry out the research, development, and application of maglev train. The government has protected the intellectual property rights of core technologies like the maglev train control system and maglev track with patents. This gives businesses the chance to use new technologies and be more competitive.

Policy on financial support: To encourage the development of maglev trains, the government has given a lot of money in the form of investments, building, transforming facilities, etc. For example, in order to support the development of maglev trains, the Shanghai Municipal Government has invested about 1.2 billion yuan to build the infrastructure of maglev trains.

Shanghai maglev line

Growth Phase

The public sector is mostly in charge of investing and overseeing the growth of the Shanghai maglev train, while the private sector is mostly in charge of building and running it. In terms of policy issues, it may involve capital, security, operation management, and other aspects, which need the joint efforts of the government and enterprises to solve.

Private Sector Contribution

In August 2000, Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Co., Ltd. was established by 7 companies, including Shanghai Shentong Group Co., Ltd., Shenneng (Group) Co., Ltd., Shanghai International Group Co., Ltd., Shanghai Baosteel Group Co., Ltd., Shanghai Automotive Industry (Group) Corporation, Shanghai Electric (Group) Corporation, and Shanghai Pudong Development (Group) Co., Ltd., with a joint investment of 3 billion yuan Implement the construction and operation of Shanghai Maglev Project in a market-oriented way.

Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Co., Ltd. and a group made up of Siemens, Thyssen, and Maglev International signed the Equipment Supply and Service Contract for the Shanghai Maglev Express Train Project. This contract is worth a total of DEM 1.293 billion. It signed a contract with the German track beam technology consortium for the transfer of technology for the concrete composite track beam system of maglev express train with a contract amount of DM 100 million. Relevant technologies were obtained in this way.

Public Sector Contribution

The government will take the lead in the construction of the Shanghai maglev train. On June 30, 2000, Xu Kuangdi, mayor of Shanghai, and Mr. Wahl, general manager of the German Maglev Railway International Corporation, signed the Agreement on Feasibility Study of Shanghai Maglev Train Demonstration Line jointly carried out by Shanghai City of the People's Republic of China and the German Maglev International Corporation (TRI) in Germany. On August 24, 2000, the Shanghai Maglev Train Demonstration Operation Line Project was given the green light by the State Planning Commission. This was done with the approval of the State Council. In October 2000, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and the Shanghai Municipal Government approved the establishment of the Shanghai Maglev Express Train Project Headquarters and appointed Wu Xiangming as the commander in chief, which provided a strong organizational guarantee for the project launch.

Policy Issues

The Chinese government has put together a set of laws and rules to control how maglev trains are built and run. For example, the Regulations on Urban Rail Transit promulgated in 2003 stipulates the maglev train, emphasizing that the maglev train should comply with national standards and industrial standards, and should be approved by relevant national departments; The Regulations on the Safety Management of Urban Rail Transit issued in 2017 provides more detailed regulations on maglev trains from the perspective of safety, including safety assessment, safety production, and emergency response. The Shanghai Municipal Government and China Railway Corporation both put money into the Shanghai Maglev Train Co., Ltd. so that it could develop and run maglev trains.

Mature Phase

On April 27, 2006, the Shanghai Maglev Line stopped doing test runs and started doing real business. The one-way ticket price of the Shanghai Maglev Line is 50 yuan per person, and it operates at 431 km/h. Although the ticket price of 50 yuan is far higher than the consumption capacity of Shanghai Metro Line 2 and most residents run on the same line, Shanghai Maglev Line lost more than 1 billion yuan in the three years from 2004 to 2006 due to the high cost and operating costs.The construction cost per kilometer of Shanghai Maglev is 39.759 million US dollars, and the maglev has been at a loss since its opening. Because of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak and the drop in passenger traffic at Pudong Airport, the maximum speed of the train was slowed to 300 kilometers per hour on May 1, 2020. This was done for the whole day.

Shanghai Maglev

The Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev transportation project is the extension of the Shanghai maglev demonstration operation line from Longyang Road to Hangzhou, but the construction has not been started since a large number of people launched a protest against the construction of Shanghai maglev. On April 20, 2013, Zhejiang Province canceled the leading group for the construction of Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev transportation project, so there is a view that the plan has been canceled. At the same time, the replacement project Shanghai Rail Transit Airport Link has been approved by the state, the position of the maglev station reserved during the construction of the Hongqiao Integrated Transport Hub will be used for the station of the airport connecting line, so it is believed that the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev project has been completely canceled or permanently shelved. Although the subsequent construction plan has been shelved, the Shanghai maglev train still maintains a certain increment in the future operation.

Opportunity to “Re-invent” the mode

On December 1, 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Outline of the Yangtze River Delta Integrated Development Plan", which includes actively and prudently carrying out the Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev research. At a mobilization meeting in Zhejiang Province on April 17, 2020, the Shanghai-Hangzhou super maglev project was brought up as a way to build a strong province with high-level transportation. The total investment of the project is expected to be 100 billion yuan, with a speed of 600 kilometers per hour. Although it was hoped to build a maglev rail transit network connecting various cities in China with high-speed advantages in the early stage, China's high-speed network construction has given way to high-speed rail technology but also benefited from the experience accumulated by the Shanghai maglev train. The use of magnetic suspension technology has moved from high-speed trains to medium- and low-speed trains, and it is now a key part of urban rail transit.

Quantitative Analysis

Based on the data collected on the official website of Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Co., Ltd., and the passenger volume data of Shanghai Maglev from 2005 to 2019, the three development stages of trams are determined: birth, growth, and maturity The three-parameter function of fitting data is:

$S(t)=S_{max}/[1+exp(-b(t-t_{i}))]$

Where:

• $S(t)$ is the status measure (e.g. Passenger-km traveled)
• $t$ is time (usually in years)
• $t_{i}$ is the inflection time (year in which$1/2S_{max}$ is achieved)

• $S_{max}$ is saturation status level, (Choose the maximum length of the streetcar system that you have recorded in the data).
• $b$ is a coefficient

Due to the limited time available for the data used, estimation using Ordinary Least Squares Regression is required for $S_{max}$ and b. The coefficients were estimated using the following formula:

$Y=bX+c$

Where:

$Y=\ln(Passenger/(K-Passenger))$

$X=Year$

Shanghai Maglev

Shanghai Maglev model results

Variable	Description	Value
$S_{\max }$	Saturation Status Level	13000
$b$	Coefficient	0.12123
$r^{2}$	R-squared	0.91066
$t_{i}$	Inflection Time	2018.256

The prediction is appropriate. From 2005 to 2019, it had a clear period of growth and a mature stage of its life cycle. However, because the research period was so short, there were no clear signs of growth and decline. From 2005 to 2006, the passenger traffic volume of Shanghai Maglev significantly decreased in the first year of its operation and then increased steadily. The growth stage of Shanghai is from 2005 to 2019. After 2018, it will enter the mature period. The decline stage lasts longer than the time range that was measured, and there is no clear sign of decline in the graph. Although the decline period of Shanghai Maglev is not shown in the quantitative analysis. However, as an alternative to the original high-speed rail network, it has now been reduced to a part of the urban rail transit, and the subsequent maglev construction plan has also been cancelled one by one. This means that the maglev train will definitely become less popular as a way to get around in China.