There Is No Way Around the Transrapid
Packed roads, overloaded trains and crowded airports all across Germany. Road, rail and air travel are getting ever fuller, and nobody is doing anything about it. Long-distance rail in particular is burned out. On-time rates of only 65.2%, sluggish average travel speeds of just 160 km/h, constant braking on open track, countless slow-speed sections on the dilapidated rail network and regular cancellations: the railway is completely at capacity and urgently needs relief.
… if we want long-distance travel that actually works.
Packed roads, overloaded trains and, at the same time, crowded airports all across Germany.
Road, rail and air travel are getting ever fuller, and nobody is doing anything about it.
Long-distance rail in particular is totally overloaded. On-time rates of only 58.4%, sluggish average travel speeds of under 150 km/h, constant braking on open track, countless slow-speed sections on the dilapidated rail network and regular cancellations: the railway is completely at capacity and urgently needs relief. How is that supposed to be improved? By extending the rail network by a few kilometers? By sending even more ICE trains onto the overloaded network? All of this will almost certainly achieve nothing, since this is exactly what has been done for decades.
Rail freight transport performance in Germany rose by almost 100% from 1995 to 2022. For passenger transport, it is at least 30%. And all this while the rail network was reduced by 12%.
Intra-European air traffic, by the way, will more than double by 2037. Instead of pushing for new solutions, we do nothing more than stretch our existing modes of transport even further.
Over the past decades, this may have gone reasonably well, but it is slowly becoming unbearable.
To make long-distance travel usable again, there is no way around the Transrapid.
Its own independent infrastructure ensures high reliability that is affected neither by sluggish freight trains nor by dilapidated slow-speed sections.
On this infrastructure, the Transrapid reaches speeds of 430 to 500 km/h, enabling extremely short travel times. As a result, the Transrapid relieves not only long-distance rail but also air traffic, and does so under extremely environmentally friendly conditions.
At 350 km/h, a Transrapid needs 40% less energy per seat than an ICE. Depending on the energy mix, climate-neutral operation of a line would even be possible, which is impossible with aircraft.
It requires extremely little maintenance: maintenance costs for the overall system are expected to be 70% lower, despite nearly twice the speed.
It is extremely sustainable: the guideways last 80 to 100 years without major repairs. The raw materials and materials used last as long as possible, since there is no mechanical wear of wheels on rails.
It can be routed much more flexibly. Elevated, it needs far less land and does not interfere with other infrastructure such as roads and railways. Agriculture and wildlife crossings are not affected. It can also be built at ground level, which likewise requires less land. More than 50% of the planned Hamburg-Berlin line was to run at ground level: elevating the guideway is optional, not mandatory. Its climbing ability, almost 3 times that of an ICE, not only allows steeper gradients but also more flexible routing through hilly terrain, requiring fewer costly tunnels.
The high braking and acceleration capability also makes the Transrapid useful for densely populated regions: it accelerates to 300 km/h in just 4.2 km. An ICE needs 17.9 km for that.
Braking is twice as fast, too: from 300 to 0, the Transrapid needs only 3.6 km, compared with 6.9 km for the ICE.
This lets the Transrapid make more intermediate stops than an ICE. More citizens benefit from the Transrapid.
And all this for investment costs comparable to those of the ICE.
We urgently need to rethink our long-distance sector. Of course, we can pump even more billions into the railway, send even more trains onto the overloaded network and expand the network, which already spans all of Germany, by a few more kilometers.
But the question is: will that still achieve anything? After all, that is exactly what we have done for decades, without measurable success in long-distance travel. Literally a drop in the ocean.
That is precisely why German transport researchers and engineers developed the Transrapid 50 years ago: a 500 km/h alternative to road, rail and aircraft. But unfortunately, nobody in Germany wants to hear about it, and we are now obviously paying the price.
Let’s change that. A nationwide Transrapid network does not just move people quickly from A to B. It replaces domestic German air traffic, significantly relieves the congested railway and thereby frees up more capacity for local and freight transport, which in turn relieves the roads. A clear win-win-win situation.
Germany has no high-speed rail network of its own, which is actually urgently needed. For truly usable long-distance travel, new infrastructure has to be built anyway. The Transrapid is ideally suited for exactly that.
I stand by my statement: there is no way around the Transrapid. Not today either, as we obviously see and experience every day when driving longer distances by car and getting stuck in traffic, looking at the chaos at an airport at peak times, or riding an ICE that falls further and further behind schedule or is canceled altogether.
Current ICE punctuality figures at this link (in German).
