As the United States struggles to keep its major cities connected by even the most barebones rail systems, China is screaming into the future with the development of a levitating bullet train.
Called “maglev,” short for “magnetic levitation,” the train system is designed to levitate via magnets as opposed to wheels. Maglev systems can reach higher speeds much more efficiently than their wheeled counterparts, though the infrastructure needed to run them is incredibly expensive.
While there are a handful of low-speed maglevs currently operating in countries like South Korea and Japan, Chinese engineers are plugging away on a maglev that they say hit spectacular speeds of 650 kmph, or 400 miles per hour. For context, that’s fast enough to connect New York to Los Angeles in under seven hours, or New York to Chicago in just two hours — assuming the political will to build all that maglev track, that is.
Chinese state media first bragged up the floating train’s prototype back in 2019, announcing the construction of an experimental R&D lab along with a trial production center in the coastal city of Qingdao.
After announcing the 650kmph achievement in June, developers showcased the high-speed maglev at the 12th World Congress on High Speed Rail in Beijing, giving transit nerds and press alike a glimpse of how it works.
The ride begins mundanely on track-bound rubber wheels, but quickly picks up as the train hits the 100-200kmph range. Once at optimal levitating speed, the rubber wheels retract, suspending the train less than half an inch off the track.
From there, it’s really just a matter of how fast you want to go, explained Li Weichao, director of the testing lab to CGTV. Li noted that successful test runs have shown the train can hit the 650kmph benchmark in a span of just 1,000 meters, but that “its typical operating speed is 800 kmph.” (That’s nearly 500 mph, for those not yet on the metric system.)
“The entire construction is expected to be completed by the end of this year, and the platform will meet the conditions for acceptance,” Li said, referring to the optimal operating speed. “This is the fastest speed in the world.”
While the tests bode well for maglevs in theory, putting them into practice remains a major challenge.
Japan — the original home to some of the world’s fastest bullet trains — pushed the deadline to complete its $64 billion maglev system back by nearly a decade, following a political dispute over the completion of a tunnel in the Japanese Alps.
A proposed high-speed maglev system that would theoretically connect Washington, DC to Baltimore in just 15 minutes is likewise in limbo as federal and state agencies wrestle with environmental studies.
China, meanwhile, already claims the world’s fastest operating levitating train, the Shanghai-Hangzhou Maglev, capable of a max operating speed of 431 kmph, or more than 265 mph. That also happens to be the world’s fastest operating train of any kind — meaning that if any nation can pull an 800kmph train off, it’s China.
