There is one phrase that turns up almost ritually in German debates about the Transrapid: "Too uneconomical." It is delivered like a law of nature, like a settled truth that cannot be argued against. And it is invoked - and this is the fascinating part - almost exclusively for maglev trains. Not for roads. Not for airports. Not for the regular rail network. Only for the Transrapid.
Yet it is worth looking at the sober numbers behind the German rail system. A look that quickly shakes this supposed matter of course.
What the state actually puts into the rail system
Public transport (ÖPNV) in Germany is not an economic system - it is a state-subsidized one. That is not criticism, it is a simple fact that nobody seriously disputes. And the numbers behind it are impressive.
€26 billion a year flows into public transport across Germany alone, according to the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV) - and rising. By 2040,
public funding needs according to a VDV study could grow to as much as €80 billion per year. The basic financing of public transport rests on two pillars: ticket revenue and public subsidies -
each about half.
At Deutsche Bahn AG, the figure in 2024 was around
€22 billion in direct and indirect state funds - including investment grants from the federal budget (via LuFV, BSWAG and others), regionalization funds and equity increases. The result: an
annual loss of €1.8 billion all the same. The group's explanation? The poor condition of its own infrastructure.
For comparison: DB itself puts its
investment needs for the next ten years at around €290 billion. For less than half of that, a Transrapid network of around 2,800 kilometers could be built - a network connecting all of Germany's major cities.
What the Transrapid actually costs - and saves
Anyone who calls the Transrapid "uneconomical" has to answer: compared with what? Because the technical data of maglev technology,
gathered by TU Dresden among others, tell a different story.
No wheels. No axles. No rolling resistance. The drive components sit in the guideway, so the vehicle itself is correspondingly lighter. That explains the
drastically reduced wear - and with it the lower operating costs over the service life. The Transrapid is designed for speeds of 400-500 km/h, at which conventional trains become massively less efficient because of rising air resistance and energy consumption.
The real joke: nowhere is rail transport "economical"
This is the core of the argument that Transrapid critics consistently ignore: in Germany, no public transport is profitable in the market-economy sense. Trams, S-Bahn suburban trains, regional trains - they all work only thanks to massive state cross-financing. That is entirely legitimate in terms of social policy, because
mobility is part of public services of general interest.
The road network is financed entirely from taxes, without anyone ever discussing the "uneconomical" nature of a federal highway. Air traffic benefits from
tax-exempt kerosene and subsidized airports. Motorists enjoy company-car taxation and the commuter allowance. Suddenly a different standard is supposed to apply to the Transrapid alone.
Telling: a
request to the Bundesrechnungshof (Federal Court of Audit) asking whether the multibillion-euro funding of DB AG violates the efficiency requirement under Section 7 of the Federal Budget Code has so far gone unanswered. The relevant audit documents from earlier periods have - remarkably - already been destroyed.
Why did the Transrapid really fail?
Not because of the technology. Because of political will. The
Hamburg–Berlin line failed after DB chief Hartmut Mehdorn lost interest - a group CEO whose interest in a competitor to his own ICE network was probably not particularly great. The Metrorapid in North Rhine-Westphalia failed because of budget deficits and coalition issues. No technical inadequacy. No objective uneconomic nature.
Political decisions.
State Secretary Rainer Bomba put it unusually openly in 2010: the technology had been
"developed 50 years too early." That sounds like an admission - not about the technology, but about political readiness.
Conclusion: the same standards for everyone
The debate about the Transrapid is not a technical one - it is a political one. Technically, the superiority in high speed, maintenance effort and energy efficiency is
well documented. Economically, the comparison is distorted from the start, because the Transrapid is held to a standard that no other transport system in Germany would have to meet.
