This page contains the UK Ultraspeed response to Sir Rod Eddington's strategic review of UK transport. Click here to view a pdf file of the UK Ultraspeed evidence to the Eddington Review. To download an MS Word version of this statement, click here.

UK ULTRASPEED RESPONSE TO THE EDDINGTON REPORT: 01/12/2006

UK Ultraspeed notes Sir Rod Eddington’s recommendation to improve transport connections between major cities. Reducing journey times and increasing passenger capacity are two key challenges that must be met.

We believe that maglev technology provides the best means of tackling these challenges for the following reasons:

Value for money

As the ongoing work on the West Coast Main Line has shown, spending billions of pounds attempting to upgrade existing rail networks will not deliver enough capacity to meet our future transport needs. Ultraspeed will provide a more cost-effective solution.

A maglev line requires up to 8 times less land and around half the vehicle fleet compared to high speed rail. Its modular track design makes construction costs more predictable and our detailed PPP proposals means that up to 100% of the finances required for building and operating the system can be sourced from the private sector with no requirement for up-front public sector grants.

Operating and maintenance costs will be 33% to 50% less than rail alternatives over the 30 year term of a typical PPP deal.

On a like-for-like basis each new seat-kilometre of transport capacity created by 500km/h Ultraspeed will cost between 83 and 97 pence. Upgrading the West Coast Main Line railway to only 200km/h cost between £8 and £32 per seat-kilometre of capacity created.[1]

500 km/h speed

Currently, it takes around four hours to travel to Liverpool from Newcastle. Ultraspeed’s maglevs could complete the trip in one hour. Ultraspeed would also transform regional connections between Liverpool and Manchester, Teesside and Tyneside or Edinburgh and Glasgow, all with journey times of between 10 and 15 minutes.

At a national level, in two hours 25 minutes a 500km/h Ultraspeed maglev could travel from Glasgow to London with intermediate stops in Edinburgh, Tyneside, Teesside, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and the M25. Ultraspeed therefore transforms access to the UK’s regional economies more comprehensively than any other road or rail project.

Environmental impact

In terms of land take, noise and emissions en route, maglev creates less all-round environmental impact that any other transport system, including rail. If powered by electricity generated at today’s power stations, Ultraspeed will emit around five to eight times less carbon dioxide than air travel and three to four times less than cars for the same transport capacity. If powered by the cleaner low-carbon electricity we are increasingly likely to see in the future, Ultraspeed can operate with much lower, or even zero, emissions. (And all of this whilst consuming up to 45 times less land than motorways.)

We are disappointed that the report did not endorse as a matter of priority the creation of a north-south high-speed link. However, we are in full agreement with Sir Rod that proposals for new lines should be rigorously assessed on their merits to ensure they offer the greatest returns on investment.

As the Rail Minister, Tom Harris, stated in the House of Commons on 11 October 2006 when confirming that maglev is under active consideration: “[in making] the choice between a high-speed link or a Maglev, we will need to take account of many factors to assess the most appropriate solution in considering such a step change. The most critical of those will include the overall cost — that is, up-front capital cost and whole-life costs — the environmental impact of any scheme, and the benefits that are accrued to the passenger and economy from journey time reductions.” (Hansard Col 142-143 WH)

We believe that the debate surrounding a new high-speed link will continue, as the case for its construction remains compelling, and that maglev provides not only the best return on investment and most robust whole-life business case, but also delivers the biggest economic benefits.

Economically, we must rebalance Britain. If the country is to remain globally competitive, we must find ways to deal with major challenges, such as the £29 billion annual cost of underperformance in the economies of northern England. There is a clear need to prevent the south-east’s economy from overheating, while making Scotland and northern England more attractive and accessible locations, both to attract inward investment and retain the jobs and skills already present, in the face of ever-increasing global competition.

We believe that a north-south maglev line, which includes a 60 minute east-west link from the Mersey to the Tyne via Manchester, Leeds and Teesside and a 12-15 minute connection between Edinburgh and Glasgow, will offer the greatest return on investment in solving these fundamental economic issues.

UK Ultraspeed looks forward to continuing our discussions with government and other stakeholders by providing the detailed economic, financial and environmental analyses that will underpin the case for creating a high-speed strategic maglev link.

Ends

For more information please contact UK Ultraspeed Press Office

Note

[1] The UK Ultraspeed case as presented to Eddington can be found here. The figures quoted here and throughout this release reflect our evidence to Sir Rod’s review.

Notes to editors

UK Ultraspeed is a new ground transport system, which drastically reduces journey times between major cities in Britain by operating at speeds of up to 500km/h (311mph).

Transrapid is the friction-free maglev [magnetic levitation] technology used by Ultraspeed. Developed in Germany, Transrapid has been tested to aviation standards under the most rigorous certification programme ever applied to ground transport. It is the only system in the world safety-certified to carry passengers at up to 500km/h on the ground.

Transrapid is also the only very high-speed maglev system in regular commercial service. It is completely different to the commercially unproven technology currently under consideration in Japan.

The Transrapid system consists of three main elements, all of which are fully integrated with each other:

• A fixed guideway housing an electromagnetic linear motor. This can be built at ground level, or elevated up to 20m above the ground, thus passing over existing infrastructure without complex and costly civil engineering. The linear motor is like a conventional, rotating, electrical motor which has been unwound and laid along the entire length of the guideway. Electric current is passed through the motor to propel the maglev vehicles, with the frequency of the current controlling the speed at which they move. On the Glasgow – Edinburgh route there will be two tracks, one eastbound, the other westbound, with points at each end to enable switching from one track to the other.

• Maglev vehicles, each with up to 10 cars, which are capable of seating up to 1,200 passengers in total (although around 500 seat seats in 5-car units will be used for the Glasgow – Edinburgh route initially). The vehicles levitate above the guideway and are steered along it by magnetic ‘cushions’. Constant measurement, thousands of times a second, maintains a 1cm gap between the vehicle and the guideway. The vehicles are propelled and braked by variable electrical current passed through the linear motor. There is no engine in the vehicle: the guideway is the motor, signalling system, power supply and positional feedback system all combined into one.

• The power supply to the guideway, and hence the movement of all maglev vehicles upon it, is overseen by the final part of the system, a highly automated Operational Control System [OCS]. The OCS engineers into Transrapid levels of safety and reliability which are impossible to achieve in rail, air or road transport. The OCS constantly monitors every vehicle’s speed and position and adjusts propulsion power supplied through the guideway to ensure that every vehicle operates at the prescribed speed for each route section, maintains the correct separation from other vehicles and operates precisely to a timetable defined to the second. Only the section of guideway through which a maglev is actually passing is powered up by the OCS; sections in front and behind are switched off to ensure that it is physically impossible for two maglevs ever to collide.

Transrapid is not a train. Although it superficially resembles a high speed train, Transrapid does not have wheels, does not run on railway tracks and does not require complex and failure-prone signalling or overhead power-supply systems. Its dedicated guideway, the vehicles which use it, and the OCS which controls it, are designed as a single, self-contained, integrated, system. Transrapid thus entirely avoids railway-style problems caused by poor integration of track, trains, signalling and power supply: in Transrapid these are one system

The world’s first ultra-high speed Transrapid system entered daily passenger service in Shanghai on 1 January 2004. It has since clocked up more than 225 million passenger kilometres at a faster speed than any other ground transport on earth.

Transrapid International (a joint venture between German giants Siemens and ThyssenKrupp) has provided full technical input to detailed preliminary studies. These were conducted by British specialists grouped into the UK Ultraspeed Project Team under the leadership of Dr Alan James, Chief Executive of UK Ultraspeed.

Views and opinions expressed by individuals and organisations at these sites are independent of UK Ultraspeed, except where it is explicitly stated that a particular statement is an official UK Ultraspeed position.