Chinese experts are opposed to maglev for rail link project

A leading railway technology researcher on Friday said most Chinese experts do not favor the use of magnetic levitation technology, or maglev, for a planned high-speed link between Beijing and Shanghai.

"Most of the experts consider it is rational to stick to conventional railway technology [for the Beijing-Shanghai line]," Wang Derong (王德榮), vice director of the China Transport Association, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

A maglev line would be too expensive and too hard to integrate with conventional lines, said Wang, a retired railway engineer who has researched technology for the proposed Beijing-Shanghai line for the past 10 years.

A conventional line would cost only about half as much as a maglev one, he said.

Wang's comments follow a China Daily report saying China has abandoned plans to build a high-speed magnetic-levitation railway between Beijing and Shanghai.

The reports say that China has decided to build less expensive conventional trains instead.

A maglev system can cost up to 300 to 400 million yuan (US$36 to US$48 million) per km, twice that of wheel-track lines, the paper said.

The paper, citing unidentified sources, said Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) was involved in making the decision Jan. 7 during a meeting of the State Council, the country's cabinet. The Communist Party newspaper People's Daily also reported the decision.

The Railways Ministry had no immediate public comment on the matter. At least one newspaper, the Beijing Morning Post, said the decision to abandon the maglev plan had not been finalized.

The scrapping of the nine-year-old maglev notion -- two weeks after the country's first maglev, a short stretch in Shanghai, began regular operation -- represents a setback for the development of maglev technology in China, which many had seen as one of maglev's key markets.

It also appears to open the market for alternatives on the proposed Beijing-Shanghai line.

Other options for the railway, according to state media, include styling it after the Shinkansen, Japan's high-speed bullet train, or two methods used in France -- TGV and Inter-City Express. The Shanghai maglev is German-built.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Friday he still believes there are chances for the German Transrapid consortium in China, despite the reports that China will not use the group's maglev technology for the Beijing-Shanghai line.

In comments aired on German, Schroeder said he believed "that the train which functions well ... will have its chances" in China.

China began daily runs of the world's first commercially operated maglev in Shanghai on Jan. 1, but the US$1.2 billion German-built system spans only 30 km. It connects Shanghai to its 3-year-old airport, the city's second.