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Andy Deng in The Guardian describes the use of porous portals (which he calls “innovative soundproofing buffers”) as if they are a new invention of Chinese maglev researchers, and as if they hadn’t already been invented in Japan and developed further in the UK for use on HS2.
He also fails to mention that the Shanghai Maglev no longer runs at top speed due to excessive energy costs, and provides no evidence to support the “…are now making a comeback..” or “…is widely expected that a future line…” statements, which are both classic weasel words journalism. He also does a bait-and-switch comparing the the CO2 savings of high speed rail versus air travel, whereas of course Maglev energy use, and thus CO2 emission, is much higher.
Basically this seems to be a puff piece from the Chinese manufacturer CRRC who “launched” a new maglev design in 2021 that no-one’s been interested in because it turns out that Maglevs are enormously expensive to build, even more expensive to run, and not that environmentally friendly, so aren’t very practical after all.
Still, it’s been “widely expected” since the 1970s that commercial maglevs, monorails, hyperloops, hydrogen duckweed trains and other nonsense will take over the world any moment now…..
Paul
The real problem with maglevs is that they require an entirely new & incompatible right-of way, shoe horned into existing cities.
Whereas high-speed rail can & does run into normal, expanded termini & through stations.