also, monorails of any sort are harder to switch than dual-rail lines, making the networks less flexible.

I don’t know why you would want compatibility. The Shinkansen is also always on their own track. Air planes aren’t compatible with train tracks either, so if you look at it more from a perspective of what they’re trying to replace I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

I think it’s also mainly the start up and build costs, I think the wear of the rails of high speed trains on wheels is very costly

Not more expensive? Hard to say because also nobody builds them! But I don't think there's any specification you could make today that could be met cheaper with maglev than with old school big iron.

Trams for short distance, metro for medium, trains for long and high-speed for very long.

It's trains all the way down.

Well my train has blackjack and hookers

Passengers is the term you mean, not commuters. I read the first sentence and thought you were going to suggest something that is only open to people coming from and going to work.

But yes, we need passenger rail that's exclusively passenger rail.

Tbh they don't even prioritize the freight, that went away with psr

maglev is the closest we can get to a portal network.

Reverse the polarity

Don't worry, the cost inflation of HS2 could easily be achieved on any maglev project too.

Most industry nations around the world are running high speed trains by now. They're doing petty fine I'd say. China threw a ton of money into German maglev tech and there isn't really much to see still. There's a reason most countries gave up on it.

In the end the maintenance cost for maglev vs bullet trains are about the same. Bullet trains focus more on mechanical maintenance of the track and wheels. While the maintenance of maglev is typically more technical, it requires constant recalibration of the electronics and constant monitoring for alignment.

Maglev is definitely more expensive to build and probably to run, but it seems like it'd be far more reliable? And also a much smoother experience for those on-board?

Traditional steel on rail is actually more reliable in practice. Theoretically the basic mechanics of maglev are more reliable, but in practice they tend to suffer from longer delays when they do fail. This is mostly because the repairs/maintenance for traditional rail can be done by just about anyone, where maglevs tend to be locked in by a single vendor contract.

Maglev has much greater theoretical speed limits than typical contact tracks, as, well, we basically remove the friction between the wheel and the track?

They are theoretically faster, but in practice the speed of trains are most often governed not by the limitations of the trains themselves, but instead are limited by the surrounding infrastructure and terrain.

The cruising speed of railed bullet trains are around 200mph, while the cruising speeds of maglev is around 265mph. Maglevs have gone significantly faster around 375mph, but thats not really a realistic expectation for daily operations.

Imo both are extremely cool, but traditional rail is just a lot more practical for a plethora of reasons. The most important being that the installation and operational cost are just a lot more realistic than maglev. There's a reason there's only a total of 37 miles of maglev in operation today compared to over 30k miles of high-speed rail.

Built to spec does do a lot of heavy lifting. American distances are larger than European distances. China has the advantage of a dictatorship which can be decisive.

But the Interstate system was expensive and had a crazy spec and was built and continues to be maintained at an extremely high cost.

Last I heard, maglev is mostly vaporware. Just build good tracks.

“It seems like this experimental tech is going to be more reliable than the proven thing that’s existed since the 19th century.”

You sure about that, hoss?