PROPOSAL FOR A MAG-LEV TRAIN TO EDINBURGH

From Neil -

Our former Executive have been floating the idea of a bullet train or more fun yet a magnetis levitation (Mag-Lev) train between Glasgow & Edinburgh. Interest in this stirred when Nicol Stephen visited China & saw their train set & wanted to play too. Now normally I am entirely in favour of high technology projects but was put off by the price. I have commented on this previously [ http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2006/07/bullet-train-from-glasgow-to-edinburgh.html }.

The idea was floated in the Herald { http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1345823.0.0.php ] & shot out of the water by all & sundry including myself.

Particularly interesting was this from an accountant Robert Fotheringay

The overall structured costs of this project are indeed in the region of £7.5 billion,startup costs to and including completion are estimated at between £1.7 billion and£4.8 billion depending on what figures and criteria you believe,what is not in dispute is that the overall all in total will be around £7.5 billion.As an accountant with knowledge of this proposal all I can say is that it is totally not feasable,the figures outlays and returns,are wishful thinking.

UK Ultraspeed posted a long justification which you can see on the link, if you have nothing better to do. It shows how much palpably untrue things a flack can believe. My reply 7 another commet are here

To reach £150 million from tickets at £8.95 single would (assuming there are no return tickets) require 16,759,776 travellers - about 10 times the current rate. Taking about half the traffic as going on weekday rushours (104 hours a year) we get about 80,000 an hour. Assuming a train each way every quarter hour each train would have to carry about 10,000 passengers. If this number was achieved it still wouldn't cover the subsidy to run the thing, let alone start to pay the cost of building it.These people expect the electorate to swallow this nonsense.

Posted by: Bill Forbes, Cambuslang on 1:29am Sun 22 Apr 07
Can’t disagree with your arithmetic Neil; but you should have taken it further: With £150,000,000.00 Annual Revenue @ £8.95 Per Ticket = 16,759,776.54 travellers p.a. With 500.00 Passengers/train = 33,519.55 Trains/annum There are 365.00 Days Which = 91.83 trains per day And a service of 8.00 trains per hour (four each way) Equates to 11.48 Hours of jam packed Maglevs travelling in each direction The big assumption (if those were not big enough already) is that there would be no competition to the Maglev, i.e. the existing train services and M8 bus services would simply disappear without as much as a whimper. The other big assumption is the time quoted of 15 mins for the journey. With a minute to accelerate to top speed and a minute to slow down this leaves 13 mins for the approx 73.5km journey or an average speed of about 340 km/hr. The Shanghai Maglev has an average speed of 250 km/hr and if this service is used as a comparison the likely journey would take closer to 20 mins. With a service frequency of 15 mins this means that bigger stations will be needed and more train sets as trains arrive at the station before the previous one has started the return journey. With that sort of arithmetic it is clear that someone should lend the SPT a calculator. But there is an easier way to assess it. The man from Ultraspeed admits that this will cost the taxpayer a subsidy of between £100m - £150m every year. That would buy a good sized hospital every year.
Can’t disagree with your arithmetic Neil; but you should have taken it further:With £150,000,000.00 Annual Revenue@ £8.95 Per Ticket= 16,759,776.54 travellers p.a.With 500.00 Passengers/train= 33,519.55 Trains/annumThere are 365.00 DaysWhich = 91.83 trains per day And a service of 8.00 trains per hour (four each way)Equates to 11.48 Hours of jam packed Maglevs travelling in each directionThe big assumption (if those were not big enough already) is that there would be no competition to the Maglev, i.e. the existing train services and M8 bus services would simply disappear without as much as a whimper. The other big assumption is the time quoted of 15 mins for the journey. With a minute to accelerate to top speed and a minute to slow down this leaves 13 mins for the approx 73.5km journey or an average speed of about 340 km/hr. The Shanghai Maglev has an average speed of 250 km/hr and if this service is used as a comparison the likely journey would take closer to 20 mins. With a service frequency of 15 mins this means that bigger stations will be needed and more train sets as trains arrive at the station before the previous one has started the return journey.With that sort of arithmetic it is clear that someone should lend the SPT a calculator. But there is an easier way to assess it. The man from Ultraspeed admits that this will cost the taxpayer a subsidy of between £100m - £150m every year. That would buy a good sized hospital every year.

On my previous discussion of this I thought this far more expensive than our automated rail proposal - I did not imagine that anybody would have the arrogance & idiocy to try to land us with this at a cost of £7.5 billion. I clearly overestimated our leaders.