KASSEL, Germany — A wire service reports that Germany sent the first levitating-train car to China on Thursday for a high-speed link between Shanghai and its airport, and the German transport minister said he hoped similar lines would soon be built here.
Transrapid, a German consortium including engineering giants Siemens and ThyssenKrupp, is building the 30-kilometer (19-mile) line. It should be completed by the end of 2002.
Transport Minister Kurt Bodewig, present when the first car was loaded onto a truck for shipment at a ThyssenKrupp works in Kassel, stressed “the necessity of high-speed magnetic-levitation links in Germany.”
The Shanghai line is the first commercial use of the technology, which carries passengers on an elevated track at speeds of up to 400 kilometers per hour (250 miles per hour). The trains ride on a cushion of magnetism instead of wheels.
German officials hope more projects will follow, such as a 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) route between Shanghai and the Chinese capital, Beijing.
Two lines are in the planning stage in Germany, but federal auditors this month said that they don’t make economic sense and couldn’t be built in time for the 2006 soccer World Cup in Germany as officials intend.