US Maglev trains coming this decade- LA to Vegas

Video of Prototype

As a proof of concept, the General Atomics maglev is impressive, but to fully grasp the potential of high-speed trains in this country, you still have to use your imagination. Here’s how it could work: You board a train in downtown Anaheim, Calif., at 5:30 on a Friday evening, destined for Las Vegas. Instead of inching out of the traffic-choked Los Angeles metro area on what is typically a 4- to 6-hour drive, or gambling that the 1-hour, 15-minute flight will depart on time, you glide out of the city, accelerating toward Barstow. As the train fires through the Mojave Desert, it hits a top speed of more than 300 mph, and then pulls into Vegas just 90 minutes after departure—in time for dinner before an 8:00 show.

That scenario won’t come to pass for years, but commercial high-speed train travel is no mere fantasy. In other countries, “steel-wheel” bullet trains have been in operation since the 1960s. Japan’s Shinkansen sails along the 645-mile route between Tokyo and Fukuoka at up to 186 mph. In France, the high-speed TGV tops out at 199 mph on the 480-mile run between Paris and Marseille, which takes 3 hours. Within the U.S., Amtrak’s seven-year-old Acela Express can reach speeds of up to 150 mph, although the tight curves and dangerous roadway crossings of the Northeast Corridor route curtail its average speed to 86 mph. Magnetic levitation, the technology floating the test train at General Atomics, has a smaller commercial footprint, but it has the most impressive capabilities in the world of superspeedy trains. A maglev train that began service four years ago in Shanghai runs 20 miles between Pudong International Airport and the city’s business district in just 8 minutes at speeds of up to 267 mph. And this past September, the city of Munich, Germany, announced plans to build a new maglev line that will cover the 25-mile route between Franz Joseph Strauss International Airport and downtown in 10 minutes.