levitating in china: shanghai's maglev train makes the ride to the airport a high-speed thrill

(Originally published in Everywhere Magazine, August 2008) 

 

There was a road on a large hill near my childhood home that everyone called “the Coaster.”  As kids we’d whizz down the Coaster on our Big Wheels, feet in the air, pedals spinning in a blur, wind on our faces, and no way to stop.  For years, it defined my concept of speed; I could conceive of nothing faster – until I visited Shanghai a few decades later.

Shanghai is the home to China’s Magnetic Levitation train, so named because the train levitates on a cushion created by the repelling forces of opposed magnets. (Think of how two magnets fight each other when you try to push the opposite poles together, and you get the basic idea).  It’s the only high-speed maglev in commercial service anywhere in the world.  The system cost roughly $1.2 billion to build, and it runs only 19 miles, from Pudong International Airport to downtown Shanghai.  By car, the journey takes well over an hour.  But at a speed of over 260 mph, the maglev makes the trip in just over seven minutes.

 

 
Looking out the window as you leave the station, you see the texture of Shanghai’s suburbs: people riding on bicycles, squat hutong alleyways, and the ugly, skeletal infrastructure that supports the city.  But as the train approaches top speed, the countryside flies by in a blur and the view out the window becomes like the feeling you get when you open your eyes underwater.  Other modes of fast transportation tend to accelerate quickly and then level off, but the maglev train never seems to stop accelerating.  The sensation is like a smoother, quieter jet takeoff, only instead of leaving the ground, it felt like we were stuck to the earth with the gravitational force of a speeding luge.  The sense of motion was visceral, at once steady and deliriously out of control.  Though the ride is smooth, winds constantly buffet the carriage from side to side.

I arrived feeling like I hadn’t even left yet.  We exited giddily and dashed to the other side of the platform for the return trip like kids getting off a carnival ride just to rejoin the line for another go.  Shanghai’s maglev experience resurrected a sensation of speed I had only previously known in childhood.  Except now I’d finally found something faster.

Comments

[garage equipment]

Maglev train will broke the boundaries of distance in the near future. Such innovation would put at into a different age.