WASHINGTON — According to the Washington Times, the Crestwood Improvement Association’s April 2 meeting would have passed without much attention under other circumstances.
Crestwood is a suburban enclave of 297 middle-class homes in the congested corridor connecting Baltimore and Washington. During the first half-hour of the meeting residents discussed a yard sale and a car break-in. But the 50 people on hand – an enormous turnout in Crestwood – soon dispensed with business as usual and turned their attention to a question that has gripped their sleepy community: how to stop plans for a $4 billion, 250 mph, magnetic-levitation (maglev) train scheduled to start barreling through Crestwood by 2010.
Welcome to the high-stakes world of federal transportation policy. In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the Tansportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), a $218 billion blueprint for America’s transit systems, highways and bridges. It included $60 million from the Highway Trust Fund for the Magnetic Levitation transportation technology Deployment Program, and the possibility of $950 million more for construction in 2003. Seven states dipped into the money to develop their own maglev plans.
Just days before leaving office last January, Clinton secretary of transportation Rodney Slater narrowed the competition down to two potential maglev projects. One would connect Baltimore and Washington in 17 minutes, with one stop at Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) Airport. The other would connect downtown Pittsburgh and outlying suburbs to that city’s growing airport. The projects would cost approximately $4 billion and $3 billion, respectively, with state and private sources providing the balance not covered by the $950 million federal grant. Congress would have to approve the funds once the Department of Transportation (DOT) picks a winner next year.
Elected officials are lobbying hard for their hometown proposals. Both senators from Maryland, the mayors of Baltimore and Washington, assorted Maryland congressmen and both candidates for governor have expressed strong support. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) thinks maglev is so impressive he has suggested funding both projects, and other members of the Pennsylvania delegation are falling in line. But not everyone thinks this pricey system is worth it. That 40-mile Baltimore-Washington link, for instance, would cost $100 million per mile.
Certainly the technology is fascinating: Powerful electromagnets lift an aerodynamic vehicle to propel it forward on raised guideways at up to 310 mph. There is no metal-to-metal contact between wheels and rails, so the maglev vehicles operate quietly and promise low maintenance costs. Proponents claim that maglev can compete with airplanes for short and midrange routes, connecting cities downtown to downtown.
Suhair Alkhatib, who heads the Maryland Mass Transit Administration’s (MTA’s) maglev project, claims studies show that upon opening in 2010 the system would carry approximately 35,000 passengers every day, saving as many as 30,000 car trips along the congested Baltimore-Washington corridor. At $26 for a one-way trip between Washington and Baltimore, Alkhatib says, the system would generate enough revenue to cover costs and interest on the privately invested funds. Advocates of the Pittsburgh project also claim that more than 30,000 people would ride their system every day, and that revenue from the fare box would support it.
Wendell Cox, a frequent critic of transit projects, disagrees. An independent transportation consultant who serves on the Amtrak Reform Council, Cox calls these rider projections “laughable” He says maglev proponents are interested primarily in securing federal support. “These are used-car salesmen with graduate degrees,” he tells INsiGHT. “You are talking about people who will say anything to get money.” Other transportation consultants with whom INSIGHT spoke about these projections used terms like “ludicrous” and “ridiculous.”
J. Christopher Brady, president of Transrapid International-USA Inc., disputes those allegations. His company is a subsidiary of a German consortium that produces the maglev technology both proposed projects would employ. Brady assures that the estimates “are probably in the conservative-reasonable range.” He argues that professional analysts who create these projections do not cook the numbers to please their employers, but exercise “internal discipline” because their reputations and future “bankability” are on the line. Alkhatib says the numbers are undergoing peer review and that federal rail officials will be the judge of their accuracy.
So who would ride maglev? If commuters are the target, projections for 35,000 daily riders in Maryland seem optimistic. The Maryland Rail Commuter system (MARC) operates 43 stations and 187 miles of track in the Baltimore-Washington area. A ticket between the two cities costs $5.75 one way or $10.25 round-trip – substantially less than the $26 one-way fare proposed for maglev. According to Frank Fulton, a spokesman for MTA, the whole MARC system currently carries slightly more than 22,000 passengers every day as compared with the 35,000 maglev projection.
On the other hand, frequent stops make for slow going on MARC. The trip from Baltimore to Washington takes 57 minutes. Amtrak’s Acela Express is faster. Spokeswoman Karen Dunne says customers can make the $38 trip from Baltimore to Washington on the Acela Express in 34 minutes. The service was available for 10 months of fiscal year 2001, during which time just 3,166 customers rode the route. Acela regional service takes 44 minutes, but costs only $25. In all of fiscal 2001, Dunne says, just 107,897 customers rode it between Baltimore and Washington.
Phyllis Wilkins, executive director of Maglev Maryland (an outgrowth of the Baltimore Development Corp.), says the maglev- ridership projections rely on the region’s rapid growth. She predicts the system will create its own demand, drawing business people, shoppers and tourists who would not otherwise travel between the two cities. MTA estimates that only about 20 percent of the projected daily ridership would be commuters.
In other venues, officials selling the system are not so quick to discount commuter interest in maglev. The first line of a glossy MTA brochure offers this alluring pitch: “Imagine replacing your rush- hour commute with a 17-minute ride in a vehicle traveling 240 miles per hour – without losing a drop of your morning coffee.” Advocates of the Pittsburgh project say the system is perfect for commuters. According to a Website maintained by Maglev Inc., a consortium of Pennsylvania business, labor and academic interests funded primarily by federal grant money, “the Pennsylvania Project will really be a commuter-type operation that will become an intercity operation as the system is extended.”
Vukan Vuchic, a planning consultant and professor of transportation engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that in their rush to study how many people might ride maglev, planners have ignored a more important question. An advocate of highspeed rail, Vuchic concedes that maglev technology works, but argues that TEA21 does not consider cheaper alternatives. In a report Vuchic compiled for the Citizen Planning and Housing Association of Baltimore in January 2001, he argues that traditional high-speed rail systems soon will be able to cruise at speeds approaching 200 mph, cutting into maglev’s speed advantage. He also says that short systems such as the ones being proposed make little sense because the maglev train barely will have a chance to get up to speed covering such distances.
Vuchic tells INSIGHT that a maglev train from Boston to Charlotte, N.C., would require all new stations, guide rails and tunnels, including pathways around, over or underneath obstacles such as Manhattan. He suggests it makes more sense to upgrade existing tracks or build a separate but more traditional high-speed rail system. According to Vuchic, such systems could operate at high speed in the open, then use existing tracks, tunnels and stations as they approach cities. “You would sacrifice a few minutes,” Vuchic says, “but it would save you many billions [of dollars] and many years” in development and construction.
Kevin Coates, who handles communications for Transrapid International– USA, stresses that upgrading existing lines to carry faster trains is not an easy process. He also notes that Amtrak’s effort to implement upgraded service has seen mixed results.
Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad
Passengers (NARP), tells INSIGHT that his organization has not taken a formal position on maglev, but adds of Vuchic: “If we had to take a position, we certainly hold his in high regard.” NARP does advocate stronger support for Amtrak. Capon poses an interesting question: “If maglev is so great, how come this hasn’t happened in Germany, where it has gone a lot further?” Despite billions spent on research and development and a history of support for ambitious rail projects. Germany has not vet tested maglev in a commercial setting. In 1994 officials unveiled their plans to connect Hamburg and Berlin with a maglev system, but those plans were shelved in early 2000, in part because of rising costs.
Brady says that the lengthy route “was seen as perhaps an overly ambitious first test for maglev implementation.” He argues that a change in government and unexpected costs associated with Germany’s reunification also factored into making implementation difficult. He adds that two smaller projects – a commuter service around Disseldorf and an airport connector in Munich – now are on the drawing board. Brady also reports that China plans to open a short Tansrapid maglev system linking Shanghai and its airport by early 2003. BBC News and the International Railway Journal report that the German government is helping to finance the Chinese project, although the details are unclear. A representative from the Embassy of China in Washington tells INSIGHT that the German government has granted 100 million deutsche marks to the project.
Federal financing for the U.S. maglev system still is far from certain, but support remains strong on Capitol Hill. Maryland General Assembly Delegates Don Murphy and Jim Rzepkowski, both Republicans who oppose maglev, visited Washington in March to talk to national leaders. The delegates say staffers were shocked to hear that anyone was opposed at the local level. Murphy says he expects that support will grow as the time to appropriate the $950 million approaches. Both Murphy and Rzepkowski note that the Maryland maglev proposal counts on $500 million from state coffers.
Test buks: The Transrapid prototype in Germany is operated from this control room.
Ironically, Murphy and Rzepkowski say the strongest support for their side has come from Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), a maglev enthusiast and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Young is distressed that both finalists for the maglev money are East Coast projects. He has voiced strong support for a project linking Las Vegas with southern California, one of the proposals rejected last January. The chairman did not provide a statement which INSIGHT requested for this article, but media sources indicate that he still is lobbying for the Las Vegas project. On Jan. 22 the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Associated Press reported that Young said at a Nevada transportation summit, “I can stop the Baltimore-Washington project.”
On the other hand, Murphy and Rzepkowski might be in for a lesson in Beltway politics. Congressional aides who asked not to be identified indicate that Young’s move actually might be a ploy to secure funding for two projects-one in the East and one in the West. The Maryland lawmakers also must deal with Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who traveled to Washington in the last days of the Clinton administration to lobby Slater to select the Maryland project as a finalist before leaving office. Townsend now widely is considered the front-runner in Maryland’s gubernatorial race.
The Bush administration’s position still is unclear. President George W. Bush’s security-minded budget proposal for the DOT would slash billions from the highway trust-the primary source for maglev money. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has indicated support for high-tech projects such as maglev in the past, and both he and Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson once were high-ranking executives at Lockheed Martin Corp. In October 2000, that company announced a partnership agreement with Transrapid “to pursue maglev opportunities, including a project to build a federally supported, highspeed maglev line in a heavily traveled US. corridor.”
Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), tells INsIGHT that both Mineta and Jackson have recused themselves from maglev decisions. The decision on whether to choose the Baltimore or the Pittsburgh project will rest with the FRA administrator. That position currently belongs to Allan Rutter, who was deputy executive director of the Texas High-Speed Rail Authority before joining then-governor Bush’s administration at Austin in 1995. Flatau says officials still are formulating an administration position on maglev.
For now it is unclear when, where or whether maglev will proceed. Activists from Crestwood and state officials such as Murphy and Rzepkowski have vowed to resist it despite the system’s impressive political and corporate support. On March 13, more than 100 protesters picketed an MTA-sponsored community meeting about maglev at a middle school near BWI.
Some observers suggest that antimaglev forces would be better off minimizing the project’s impact instead of opposing it. They advise that residents should consider accepting maglev in exchange for a host of goodies such as parks and road projects. Rzepkowski rejects those notions, citing the intrusions and congestion from BWI, Interstate 95, the Baltimore beltway, a lightrail system and other transportation projects that already burden his part of the state. “I think my community has given enough blood to the MTA,” he says.
Speed bump: A long-distance maglev system would require new guide rails and tunnels in and around cities.