Is costly maglev just a boondoggle? Enthusiasts claim maglev trains travelling at 250 mph might cure congestion woes, but analysts say this hugely expensive technology is not cost-effective

Insight on the News, May 6, 2002 by Sam MacDonald

The Crestwood Improvement Association's April 2 meeting would have passed without much attention under other circumstances. Crestwood is a suburban enclave of 297 middle-class homes in the congested corridor connecting Baltimore and Washington. During the first half-hour of the meeting residents discussed a yard sale and a car break-in. But the 50 people on hand -- an enormous turnout in Crestwood -- soon dispensed with business as usual and turned their attention to a question that has gripped their sleepy community: how to stop plans for a $4 billion, 250 mph, magnetic-levitation (maglev) train scheduled to start barreling through Crestwood by 2010.

Welcome to the high-stakes world of federal transportation policy. In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), a $218 billion blueprint for America's transit systems, highways and bridges. It included $60 million from the Highway Trust Fund for the Magnetic Levitation Transportation Technology Deployment Program, and the possibility of $950 million more for construction in 2003. Seven states dipped into the money to develop their own maglev plans.

Just days before leaving office last January, Clinton secretary of transportation Rodney Slater narrowed the competition down to two potential maglev projects. One would connect Baltimore and Washington in 17 minutes, with one stop at Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) Airport. The other would connect downtown Pittsburgh and outlying suburbs to that city's growing airport. The projects would cost approximately $4 billion and $3 billion, respectively, with state and private sources providing the balance not covered by the $950 million federal grant. Congress would have to approve the funds once the Department of Transportation (DOT) picks a winner next year.

Elected officials are lobbying hard for their hometown proposals. Both senators from Maryland, the mayors of Baltimore and Washington, assorted Maryland congressmen and both candidates for governor have expressed strong support. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) thinks maglev is so impressive he has suggested funding both projects, and other members of the Pennsylvania delegation are falling in line. But not everyone thinks this pricey system is worth it. That 40-mile Baltimore-Washington link, for instance, would cost $100 million per mile.

Certainly the technology is fascinating: Powerful electromagnets lift an aerodynamic vehicle to propel it forward on raised guideways at up to 310 mph. There is no metal-to-metal contact between wheels and rails, so the maglev vehicles operate quietly and promise low maintenance costs. Proponents claim that maglev can compete with airplanes for short and midrange routes, connecting cities downtown to downtown.

Suhair Alkhatib, who heads the Maryland Mass Transit Administration's (MTA's) maglev project, claims studies show that upon opening in 2010 the system would carry approximately 35,000 passengers every day, saving as many as 30,000 car trips along the congested Baltimore-Washington corridor. At $26 for a one-way trip between Washington and Baltimore, Alkhatib says, the system would generate enough revenue to cover costs and interest on the privately invested funds. Advocates of the Pittsburgh project also claim that more than 30,000 people would ride their system every day, and that revenue from the fare box would support it.

Wendell Cox, a frequent critic of transit projects, disagrees. An independent transportation consultant who serves on the Amtrak Reform Council, Cox calls these rider projections "laughable." He says maglev proponents are interested primarily in securing federal support. "These are used-car salesmen with graduate degrees," he tells Insight. "You are talking about people who will say anything to get money." Other transportation consultants with whom Insight spoke about these projections used terms like "ludicrous" and "ridiculous."

J. Christopher Brady, president of Transrapid International-USA Inc., disputes those allegations. His company is a subsidiary of a German consortium that produces the maglev technology both proposed projects would employ. Brady assures that the estimates "are probably in the conservative-reasonable range." He argues that professional analysts who create these projections do not cook the numbers to please their employers, but exercise "internal discipline" because their reputations and future "bankability" are on the line. Alkhatib says the numbers are undergoing peer review and that federal rail officials will be the judge of their accuracy.

So who would ride maglev? If commuters are the target, projections for 35,000 daily riders in Maryland seem optimistic. The Maryland Rail Commuter system (MARC) operates 43 stations and 187 miles of track in the Baltimore-Washington area. A ticket between the two cities costs $5.75 one way or $10.25 round-trip -- substantially less than the $26 one-way fare proposed for maglev. According to Frank Fulton, a spokesman for MTA, the whole MARC system currently carries slightly more than 22,000 passengers every day as compared with the 35,000 maglev projection.