DUESSELDORF, Germany — A high-speed levitating train project in western Germany was approved Friday by state legislators, who also backed funding for the link between Duesseldorf and Dortmund which should be opened in time for the 2006 soccer World Cup, reports a wire service.
The legislature of North Rhine-Westphalia cleared some 23 million euros (dlrs 20 million) in state funding for the next stage in planning the 79-kilometer (49-mile) link.
It’s one of two such projects in the planning stages in Germany. Also proposed is a 37-kilometer (23-mile) link between Munich and its airport.
North Rhine-Westphalia is slated to get 1.75 billion euros (dlrs 1.5 billion) in funding from the federal government, while the Munich link would receive 550 million euros (dlrs 480 million). The Duesseldorf project still needs to raise another 560 million euros (dlrs 487 million) from private investors.
A proposed Berlin-Hamburg route for the so-called Transrapid, which carries passengers along an elevated monorail at about 400 kph (250 mph), was scuttled in 2000, but the government later decided to take a fresh look at the technology.
Construction of the first Transrapid link is already underway in Shanghai, China, where the train that rides on a cushion of magnetism instead of wheels is to begin running next year. Two feasibility studies are also under way in the United States