UK Ultraspeed was a proposed high-speed magnetic-levitation train line between London and Glasgow, linking 16 stations including Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and six airports. It was rejected in 2007 by the UK government, in favour of conventional high-speed rail. The company behind the proposal ceased efforts to promote it in early 2013.
The 2005 UK Ultraspeed proposal was submitted as part of the UK's general effort to upgrade train service. German company Transrapid, developers of the only operational high-speed maglev system, backed the Ultraspeed group to promote their technology as an alternative to conventional high-speed train sets like those being used on High Speed 1. Transrapid is a joint venture of Siemens and ThyssenKrupp, both major suppliers to the transportation industry.
The proposed 800 km (500 mi) [1] route would have served cities currently served by both the West Coast Main Line and East Coast Main Line, with a spur serving Liverpool. Three stations were to serve London: Heathrow Airport, a Park and Ride at the M1/M25 junction, and either Stratford or King's Cross station. [2] The route roughly followed the West Coast line from London to Manchester, then turned slightly east towards Newcastle before roughly following the East Coast line to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Inter-city speeds would be as high as 500 km/h (310 mph), reducing a London-Manchester trip by half, from about 128 minutes to a claimed 54. The savings in time were possible due to rapid acceleration, new station locations, and greatly simplified loading and unloading procedures. These advantages would reduce total trip time to below that of regional aircraft serving the same route. [2] The projected total cost was £29 billion including all guideways, land and 27 train sets. [2]
Ultraspeed was deliberately aimed at the same market as the proposed High Speed 2 (HS2). HS2's mainline runs from London to Birmingham, with branches to Manchester and Leeds. [3] In spite of being much shorter, at 531 km (330 mi), HS2 was estimated to cost between £52 billion (UK Government) and £80 billion (Institute of Economic Affairs). [4]
The proposal caught the eye of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was said to be clearly excited by it. This led to comments from the transport minister, Alistair Darling, that the issue of north–south links had to be re-considered. This was the latest in a series of flip-flops on the matter, which started with a 2004 report from the Strategic Rail Authority that stated that new high-speed line was "urgently needed", a report that the government had attempted to bury. Blair was noted as saying that a cross-country link of this sort would "bring Britain together", [5] although this was called "pie in the sky" by critics. [6] Alan James, director of UK Ultraspeed, took the opportunity to claim that it was the fastest and safest system in the world. [5]
Competing political interests initially claimed that Blair's sudden support for the issue was nothing more than electioneering. [5] However, this was soon followed by a Commons All-Party Rail Group visit to China and Japan to visit the maglev systems there. Shadow transport secretary Chris Grayling returned "positively bouncing with enthusiasm", noting that even at full speed the train was quieter than a Virgin Voyager. This led to full party support for the proposal on both sides of the aisle. [7] Blair's support led to an official study into the Ultraspeed concept, as well as competing long-distance lines using TGV-like equipment. [5]
This was all taking place just after the well-reported opening of the Shanghai system, and the announcement that the Chinese government was examining a 170 km extension of that line. Transrapid was also actively pitching the system for several other lines. It appeared that the maglev's day had finally come. It was also noted that the maglev system had originally been invented in the UK, and the first maglev system built and operated there – the Birmingham Maglev of 1984. [8]
Shortly after James' comments on safety, the Transrapid test facility in Emsland suffered the fatal Lathen train collision in late 2006. This quickly revealed "major safety failings" and led to the German transport minister asking "whether the Transrapid's safety measures were adequate". [9] The company quickly responded by noting the accident had nothing to do with the technical aspects of the system. [10]
When Ultraspeed was being proposed, only two Transrapid tracks existed; the original Emsland test facility, and the 30.5 km (19.0 mi) Shanghai Maglev Train. Transrapid was also part of a number of other active proposals at the time, notably a 37 km (23 mi) airport link in Munich similar to the Shanghai installation. All of these were much shorter than the Ultraspeed line, so there was an increased element of technical risk involved in the UK proposal. [11]
Much of the proposal's claimed advantage was based on the cost of installing the tracks. As the maglev line is elevated, many of the problems with ground-based high-speed rail are mitigated. There is no need to fence off an area on either side of the track, and the total amount of land removed from use is lower, as farming can take place below the track. The Ultraspeed promoters claimed the cost would be £20M–24.75M per kilometre, about the same as Shanghai's £28M/km, and dramatically lower than High Speed 1's known £46M–48M/km price. However, rail experts were quick to point out that the actual price of the Shanghai system was £33M/mile, [12] or £21M/km. This was in stark contrast to the known $11M/mile (~$7M/km) cost of recent extensions to the French TGV network. [12]
More damning was the Munich system's rapidly inflating price throughout this period, from the original €1.85bn complete with train sets and stations, to a new price of €3.4bn. Most of the increase was attributed to increased costs of track construction. [13] The cost overruns alone, €1.85bn, represented €50M/km which is more than the predicted cost per km in the Ultraspeed system. Cost overruns on the Munich system ultimately led to its cancellation. [14] [15]
As part of the preparation for a major white paper on the topic, in early 2007 the government commissioned Roderick Smith and Roger Kemp to study the Ultraspeed proposal in depth. In addition to the issues with technical risk and cost estimates, they noted that once other factors were considered a number of the secondary advantages of the system either did not exist or were actually the opposite of those claimed. [11]
For instance, the promoters were claiming that the much higher speeds of the Ultraspeed system would allow it to take some traffic off aircraft, in contrast to other high-speed routes where aircraft traffic was actually seen to increase after the rail links opened. As a result, total CO2 emissions would be lowered. However, the reviewers said that the total CO2 emissions of the system, largely due to the coal-based electricity that would provide the majority of the power, were higher than conventional high-speed rail. More importantly, the suburban locations of the new stations that were part of the proposal would mean travellers would drive to the stations. Such was the case for the Shanghai system, where the end stations are "in the middle of nowhere". [14] Total CO2 emissions on inter-city trips were predicted to be higher than a car making the same trip. [11]
The official white paper, "Delivering a Sustainable Railway", was published on 24 July 2007. It strongly rejected the Ultraspeed proposal, outlining a wide variety of reasons. Primary among these was the estimated construction costs of £60 billion, over double that predicted by the company, and more in-line with known costs from the Munich system. [16] [4]
The promoters responded with a note demonstrating that a major amount of the additional costs in the government estimate, £29 billion, were due to "excluded land-take", and that these were not included in the estimates for the competing HS2 proposal. Their complaints fell on deaf ears, and despite numerous attempts to have this issue reconsidered, HS2 continued to move forward. The company eventually gave up, and ceased operations in 2013. [17]
After decades of development and sales efforts, the Transrapid group also decided to fold operations starting in 2010. In 2012, the Emsland track and the associated factories and facilities were slated for removal or redevelopment. [18]
Hypothetical journey times in minutes compared with present journey times by train. The table also includes the hypothetical journey times of High Speed 2.
| Between | Present time | High Speed 2 time a [19] | Ultraspeed time b [2] |
|---|---|---|---|
| London and Birmingham | 84 minutes | 49 minutes | 30 minutes |
| London and Manchester | 128 minutes | 68 minutes | 54 minutes |
| London and Liverpool | 128 minutes | 96 minutes | 73 minutes |
| London and Leeds | 132 minutes | 82 minutes | 74 minutes |
| London and Glasgow | 248 minutes | 218 minutes | 160 minutes |
| Manchester and Liverpool | 50 minutes | N/A c | 18 minutes |
| Manchester and Leeds | 54 minutes [20] | N/A c | 19 minutes |
^a High Speed 2 times based on limited stopping service with 1, 2 or 3 stops depending on the route.
^b Ultraspeed times include stopping at every intermediate station.
^c Not part of the current proposed route for High Speed 2.
A linear motor is an electric motor that has had its stator and rotor "unrolled", thus, instead of producing a torque (rotation), it produces a linear force along its length. However, linear motors are not necessarily straight. Characteristically, a linear motor's active section has ends, whereas more conventional motors are arranged as a continuous loop.
Transrapid is a German-developed high-speed monorail train using magnetic levitation. Planning for the Transrapid system started in 1969 with a test facility for the system in Emsland, Germany completed in 1987. In 1991, technical readiness for application was approved by the Deutsche Bundesbahn in cooperation with renowned universities.
The Chuo Shinkansen is a Japanese maglev line under construction between Tokyo and Nagoya, with plans for extension to Osaka. Its initial section is between Shinagawa Station in Tokyo and Nagoya Station in Nagoya, with stations in Sagamihara, Kōfu, Iida and Nakatsugawa. Following the completion of the Tokyo-Nagoya line, the line will extend to connect stations in Mie, Nara and Osaka. The line is expected to connect Tokyo and Nagoya in 40 minutes, and eventually Tokyo and Osaka in 67 minutes, running at a maximum speed of 505 km/h (314 mph). About 90% of the 286-kilometer (178 mi) line to Nagoya will be tunnels.
Maglev is a system of train transportation that is levitated along a guideway through the use of magnetic forces. By levitating, maglev trains remove the rail-to-wheel contact present in conventional railways, eliminating rolling resistance.
The Shanghai maglev train (SMT) or Shanghai Transrapid is a magnetic levitation train (maglev) line that operates in Shanghai, China. The line uses the German Transrapid technology. The Shanghai maglev is the world's first commercial high-speed maglev and has a maximum cruising speed of 300 km/h (186 mph). Prior to May 2021 the cruising speed was 431 km/h (268 mph), at the time this made it the fastest train service in commercial operation.
The SCMaglev is a magnetic levitation (maglev) railway system developed by Central Japan Railway Company and the Railway Technical Research Institute.
A vactrain is a proposed design for very-high-speed rail transportation. It is a maglev line using partly evacuated tubes or tunnels. Reduced air resistance could permit vactrains to travel at very high (hypersonic) speeds with relatively little power—up to 6,400–8,000 km/h (4,000–5,000 mph). This is 5–6 times the speed of sound in Earth's atmosphere at sea level.
The California–Nevada Interstate Maglev project was a proposed 269 mi (433 km) Maglev train line from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Anaheim, California. One segment would run from Las Vegas to Primm, Nevada, with proposed service to the Las Vegas area's forthcoming Ivanpah Valley Airport. The top speed would be 310 mph (500 km/h). Though $45 million was appropriated in 2005 for the planning phase for the first 40 mi (64 km) segment, the money was never spent, and was finally reallocated to a highway project in a Las Vegas Airport in June 2010. The maglev project was not in the 2012 transportation plan under consideration by the Southern California Association of Governments. Removing it from the plan means that the project cannot receive federal funds, even for studies. The Southern California Association of Governments did leave a small portion of the route – from Anaheim to Ontario – in their 2012 transportation plan.
Linimo, formally the Aichi Rapid Transit Tobu Kyuryo Line is a magnetic levitation train line in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, near the city of Nagoya. While primarily built to serve the Expo 2005 fair site, the line has since operated to serve the local community.
Regional Eurostar was a planned Eurostar train service from Paris and Brussels to locations in the United Kingdom to the north and west of London.
High-speed rail in the United Kingdom is provided on five upgraded railway lines running at top speeds of 125 mph (200 km/h) and one purpose-built high-speed line reaching 186 mph (300 km/h).
On 22 September 2006, a Transrapid maglev train collided with a maintenance vehicle near Lathen, Germany, killing 23 people and wounding 11. It was the first fatal accident involving a maglev train.
The high-speed rail (HSR) network in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the world's longest and most extensively used – with a total length of 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi) by the end of 2023. The HSR network encompasses newly built rail lines with a design speed of 200–380 km/h (120–240 mph). China's HSR accounts for two-thirds of the world's total high-speed railway networks. Almost all HSR trains, track and service are owned and operated by the China Railway Corporation under the brand China Railway High-speed (CRH).
High Speed 2 (HS2) is a planned high-speed railway line and network of passenger train services in Great Britain. The new railway line, which is currently under construction in England, is to run between the West Midlands and London, with a spur to Birmingham. A network of train services will use the new line and existing conventional track to reach their destinations in the Midlands, North West England, and Scotland. HS2 is to be Britain's second purpose-built high-speed line after High Speed 1, which connects London to the Channel Tunnel. The majority of the project is planned to be completed between 2029 and 2033.
Siemens Mobility is a division of Siemens. With its global headquarters in Munich, Siemens Mobility has four core business units: Mobility Management, dedicated to rail technology and intelligent traffic systems, Railway Electrification, Rolling Stock, and Customer Services.
Manchester Airport High Speed Station was a planned High Speed 2 station at Manchester Airport, on the southern boundary of Manchester, England, next to Junction 5 of the M56 motorway on the northern side of the airport 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north-west of Manchester Airport railway station.
Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), sometimes referred to unofficially as High Speed 3, is a proposed major rail programme designed to substantially enhance the economic potential of the North of England. The phrase was adopted in 2014 for a project featuring new and significantly upgraded railway lines in the region. The aim is to transform rail services between the major towns and cities, requiring the region's single biggest transport investment since the Industrial Revolution. The original scheme would have seen a new high-speed rail line from Liverpool to Warrington continuing to join the HS2 tunnel which it would share into Manchester Piccadilly station. From there, the line would have continued to Leeds with a stop at Bradford. The line was intended to improve journey times and frequency between major Northern cities as well as creating more capacity for local service on lines that express services would have been moved out from.
The history of High Speed 2 is the background to the planned construction of High Speed 2 (HS2), a new high-speed railway in Great Britain that would connect London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and other cities in the UK.
HS4Air is a proposal for a 140-kilometre (87 mi) high-speed railway line in the United Kingdom, put forward in 2018 by a British engineering consultancy, Expedition Engineering.
