Economic features of freight maglev transport

Abstract

In the article considered the implementations of magnetic levitation technology (maglev) in the world, evaluated the advantages of implementation the maglev for all types of transportation. Introduction: Freight maglev transport is not implemented widely in the world transportation market yet. The most projects in the area of magnetic levitation are focused on passenger transportation. European, Asian and American specialists research, develop and implement technologies, which allow passenger transportation at highspeed, higherspeed and urban lines. Excellent operation and economics characteristics allow maglev to compete with railway transport in all areas: from highspeed to urban. Analysis: There is the evidence that freight maglev has an opportunity to change the transport logistics market radically in the nearest future. We consider the following approaches to provide it. The first, and main, approach is supposed growth of commodities circulation between Western Europe and South East Asian countries. It requires the stable transport corridor, like The Silk Road, connecting these wide apart regions. Maglev transport has an ability to transport mass cargo 3-5 times faster than railway transport or sea transport, which are the main transport modes for mass cargo transportation. Today there are 2 main transport corridors, which connect Western Europe and South East Asia: Deep Sea and Transsib. Transportation via Deep Sea takes 30-35 days (via alternative Northern Sea Route it is 25-35 days), and via Transsib it is up to 21 days. The second approach is that the demand in reducing the transaction costs caused by freezing of the floating capital in ‘goods in route’ that eventually influences all the areas of national economy. Results: The obvious economic advantages of freight maglev in comparison with conventional railway transport, accordingly to the calculations, are: capital expenses saving on the stage of infrastructure construction; operations sustainability; energy efficiency; freight transportation speed; investments recoupment and profitability; side effects appearing during operating of freight maglev. Conclusions: Today, as the world economics shows some crisis developments the basic economics notations are being revised. There is a strong belief that new economics model should be based on decreasing the transaction costs on all stages of production and consumption. The new logistic concept will be focused on increasing the speed of transportation with a use of freight maglev mainlines.