The change agents bringing tradition-bound NASA into the future

The rap on NASA is that it’s risk-averse, stuck in the old ways of doing things, stymied by a big 60-year-old bureaucracy that was chastened by two fatal space shuttle disasters.
That was the mind-set that seemed to greet SpaceX’s controversial fueling plan. Instead of filling the rocket with propellant before the astronauts board, the company proposed doing it after.
Loading a combustible mix of propellants underneath NASA’s finest set off alarms inside some parts of the agency and among safety experts, who warned that it was contrary to decades of spaceflight procedure. One watchdog group called it a “potential safety risk” — a spark during fueling could set off an explosion, many in NASA feared. That’s what happened when a SpaceX rocket blew up while being fueled in 2016.
But then NASA recently announced that it would allow SpaceX’s fueling procedure, informally known as “load and go,” under the condition that the company demonstrate it five times before receiving formal certification. The decision was a significant one for NASA and signals an ongoing cultural shift as the agency partners with a growing commercial space industry that thrives on pushing boundaries.
NASA’s evolution has been years in the making, officials said, as it grows more comfortable giving industry more autonomy and freedom, which many hope will spark the kind of innovation necessary to make spaceflight more routine.
Over the years, it has developed deep partnerships with several companies, awarding them billions of dollars in contracts to carry out crucial services. Under the George W. Bush administration, NASA decided to hire contractors — SpaceX and Orbital ATK — to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.
Then, under President Barack Obama, it awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing to fly crews there, with the first flights expected next year. In doing so, the agency allowed the companies to build, design and operate their spacecraft. And while NASA laid out a list of requirements that the companies must meet, it did not dictate how they should meet them.
Being able to rely on private companies to provide a delivery service to the space station “was one of the major shifting factors,” said Eric Stallmer, the president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. “That played a huge role.”
Trading knowledge
NASA does lend its expertise and oversight, but at the same time, the companies are teaching the agency a thing or two about how to apply business practices to open the frontiers of space. None more so than Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which from the beginning of its partnership with NASA ran into resistance, a clash of Silicon Valley-style ethos with government bureaucracy, youthful impatience with aged bureaucracy.
Now President Trump and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine have gone out of their way to praise the efforts of private space companies and make it clear that the agency intends to rely on them.
“Rich guys, they love rocket ships,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting this year. “That’s good. That’s better than us paying for them.”
In a statement to The Washington Post, Bridenstine said that industry has had a transformative effect on the agency: “Our commercial partners are challenging us to be more agile, think differently, buy smarter and develop more efficiently.”
SpaceX isn’t the only company seeing the benefit of NASA’s shift. The agency is being far more welcoming to private-sector input in the first component of its proposed lunar gateway program, a space station to float in the vicinity of the moon.
Instead of dictating the requirements and design of the part of the gateway that would provide power and propulsion, NASA reached out to industry for suggestions, said Mike Gold, vice president of regulatory at Maxar Technologies, one of the companies to study the power and propulsion module.
“Load and go is just another example of an evolution that is occurring across the agency where we are seeing NASA embrace commercial practices and commercial experience in a wide variety of programs,” he said.
A new approach to fuel
For years, the thinking was that you fuel the rocket, make sure it’s stable and then allow the astronauts on board. That would limit their exposure to a disaster. That’s how the space shuttle program did it. And that’s how Boeing, which also has the contract to fly astronauts for NASA, plans to fuel its rocket.
But SpaceX likes to do things differently.
To get more power out of its Falcon 9 rockets, it chills its propellants, liquid oxygen and refined kerosene, to extremely low temperatures. As a result, they become denser, allowing SpaceX to pack more fuel into its rockets, giving them more performance. But because the fuel is so cold, it can warm up quickly, which is why it needs to be loaded at the last minute.
The company, which has never flown humans to space before, says that safety is its top priority and notes that the Falcon 9 also comes with an escape system that would allow the Dragon spacecraft to quickly fly away from the rocket booster in the event of an emergency on the pad or during flight.
“We would never have proposed it had we thought that it was a less safe way to go,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, told reporters this month. “The vehicle has more margin when we load the fuel quite close to liftoff.”
She added that the astronauts are “protected by the launch escape system. They’re protected by the heat shield between Dragon and the rocket.”
Since its rocket exploded while being fueled in 2016, the company has notched 33 successful launches in a row using this fueling technique and has completed dozens more engine test fires.
In a statement, Kathy Lueders, the manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said the agency decided to go along with SpaceX’s plan after conducting “an extensive review of the SpaceX ground operations, launch vehicle design, escape systems and operational history. Safety for our personnel was the driver for this analysis, and the team’s assessment was that this plan presents the least risk.”
Still, before signing off on the procedure, she said, SpaceX would have to demonstrate it five times, and then “NASA will assess any remaining risk before determining that the system is certified to fly with crew.”
If all goes to plan, the astronauts would board the SpaceX craft about two hours before liftoff. Then the ground crews would leave the launch site, the escape system would be activated, and fueling would begin about 38 minutes before launch.
“NASA has learned a number of things from SpaceX,” said George Nield, a member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. “There’s not just one way to do these things. And with new technology and thinking out of the box, there are other ways that can be beneficial to not just the companies but to the government itself. . . . And load and go is an example that NASA has slowly warmed up to.”
Speaking to reporters last spring, Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive, said that the rocket was designed to be the most robust in the world and dismissed concerns over the fueling.
“I really do not think this presents a safety issue for astronauts,” he said, calling it an “overblown issue.”
Still, he said that launching rockets is a dangerous business that always carries some level of risk.
“There could be a thousand things that could go right with this rocket and one that goes wrong,” he said. “The reason it is so hard to make an orbital rocket is that your passing grade is 100 percent.”
christian.davenport@


Provide information regarding the possibility of sabotage being responsible for the SpaceX Falcon 9 explosion.

I am interested in information concerning the possibility that sabotage might have been responsible for the September 2016 explosion of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.  Details of the explosion itself and any observations are relevant. Details of the investigation into the explosion, including evidence pointing toward or away from sabotage, and any conclusions are all relevant. Omit documents referring commercial purposes.

Investigate the cause of an event to answer this question.

Rocket problem prompts NASA and SpaceX to delay next launch of astronauts

NASA announced Saturday that SpaceX’s next mission flying astronauts to the International Space Station will be delayed until early or mid-November after the company experienced a problem with the first stage of a booster rocket during a recent launch.
In a blog post, the agency said that the extra time would allow “SpaceX to complete hardware testing and data reviews” of an issue with an engine gas generator. NASA said it has “full insight into the company’s launch and testing data.”
“We have a strong working relationship with our SpaceX partner,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s human exploration and operations mission directorate, said in the post. “With the high cadence of missions SpaceX performs, it really gives us incredible insight into this commercial system and helps us make informed decisions about the status of our missions. The teams are actively working this finding on the engines, and we should be a lot smarter within the coming week.”
SpaceX declined to comment.
Earlier this month, after the company had to delay a couple of launches because of mechanical issues, Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, said on Twitter he was going to Cape Canaveral to conduct a “broad review” of operations there.
The mission, which had previously been scheduled for Oct. 31, would launch NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover as well as Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi to the space station for a stay of about six months.
It would be SpaceX’s first operational mission of flying full crews for extended stays after it successfully completed a shorter test mission with two astronauts in August to verify the performance of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft.
NASA and SpaceX said that test mission, from launch, to docking to splashdown, went flawlessly. But since then SpaceX said that it had redesigned a portion of the capsule’s heat shield after noticing what Hans Koeigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president of build and reliability, said was “a little more erosion than we wanted to see.” The erosion was in a few small areas where the crew capsule joins the spacecraft’s trunk, an unpressurized cargo hold that is discarded before the spacecraft slams into the atmosphere.
The friction between the thickening air and the speeding spacecraft generates temperatures as high as 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit and engulf the capsule in a fireball. The heat shield covers the bottom of the spacecraft and keeps the crew safe.
Speaking to reporters recently, Koenigsmann stressed that there “was nothing to be concerned with at all times. The astronauts were safe, and the vehicle was working perfectly."
Earlier this month, SpaceX scrubbed a pair of launches late in the countdown, prompting Musk’s plans for "a broad review of launch site, propulsion, structures, avionics & regulatory constraints this weekend.” He added that he would make a trip to Cape Canaveral “to review hardware in person.”
A launch on Oct. 2 of a GPS satellite for the U.S. Space Force was scrubbed two seconds before liftoff after what Musk described as an “unexpected pressure rise in the turbomachinery gas generator,” which helps power the rocket’s Merlin engines.
A day earlier, SpaceX scrubbed a launch of its Starlink satellites with 18 seconds to go in the count because of a problem with a ground sensor. After scrubbing the Starlink mission, SpaceX bounced back and launched the batch of 60 satellites on Tuesday. Still, SpaceX’s goal is to launch much more frequently, and Musk said on Twitter recently that: “We will need to make a lot of improvements to have a chance of completing 48 launches next year!”
The GPS launch has not yet been rescheduled.
The company’s Falcon 9 rocket has flown more than 90 times, the most of any U.S. rocket currently in operation and is considered a reliable workhorse. NASA uses it to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station and has certified it for human spaceflight as well.
But it has had problems. In 2015, a rocket carrying cargo to the station exploded some two minutes into flight after a steel strut failed, causing helium to overpressurize a second stage liquid oxygen tank. Then, in 2016, another exploded while being fueled on the launch pad ahead of an engine test after a helium tank buckled.
Last year, the company lost its Dragon spacecraft in an explosion ahead of an engine test fire. NASA and SpaceX investigated all three incidents and eventually cleared SpaceX to fly again.
Noguchi, a veteran of the three space missions, recently told reporters that it is important "to be diligent and don’t be complacent. We have to ask the right questions at the right time to make sure the space vehicle is safe enough. Of course we trust the system. But as a crew we have to persuade ourselves that this vehicle is safe to fly.”


Lost in space? Questions mount over fate of secret satellite as SpaceX pushes ahead

The top-secret satellite known only by a code name, "Zuma," was a mystery from the start. Its classified mission was intentionally inscrutable, whether to detect missile launches, spy on adversaries or track ships at sea with a space radar.
The satellite was so highly secretive that it was not publicly released which government agency — The National Reconnaissance Office? The CIA? — was responsible for it. During the launch on the evening of Jan. 7, SpaceX cut short its webcast so that it wouldn't reveal details of where the satellite was going or what it looked like.
Now there's another mystery: What happened to Zuma?
After reports Monday that the satellite suffered some sort of failure, SpaceX rushed to defend its reputation, denying that it had done anything wrong. Its Falcon 9 rocket "performed nominally," it said.
Then, on Tuesday morning, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell issued a more strongly worded statement, saying: "For clarity: after review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night. If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately."
Shotwell pushed back on reports that seemed to implicate SpaceX with the satellite's demise, saying "information published that is contrary to this statement is categorically false."
Northrop Grumman, the satellite's manufacturer, said it could not comment on a classified mission. As members of Congress began requesting classified briefings about what, if anything, went wrong, Pentagon officials were also mum.
For SpaceX, the stakes are especially high — not just because a valuable national security asset valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, that it was hired to launch was possibly lost. It had fought so hard for the right to compete for national security launches. After a bitter legal and lobbying battle, the Pentagon certified SpaceX's Falcon 9 for the missions and now is relying on SpaceX to reliably fly its satellites to orbit.
Furthermore, NASA is counting on Elon Musk's company to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, with test flights as early as this year.
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), who said he received a "preliminary briefing," had two concerns about the possible loss of the satellite.
"One is the loss of the intelligence that would have been available," he said. "The second concern is the reliability of the delivery systems. And that issue is being debated between the contractors, SpaceX and the satellite manufacturer, Northrop."
While he said he did not know who was to blame, he indicated that the dispute might lead to litigation. "Those two companies are going to have a long and, I suspect, very expensive discussion," he said.
SpaceX's resolve and relentless drive were unchanged by the mystery surrounding Zuma (which included the possibility that nothing went wrong and that the satellite was, indeed, in orbit). Last year, the company launched 18 times successfully, a record for SpaceX. This year, it plans to break that record, continuing its disruption of an industry Musk first targeted when he founded SpaceX in 2002.
As critics were quick to call SpaceX's reliability into question, the company rolled its new powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy, onto the same launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center that hoisted the Apollo astronauts to the moon. An engine test fire had been postponed earlier in the week and was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Despite the Zuma mystery, SpaceX vowed to continue with its manifest without delay.
That in itself was a statement: "They're not going to launch again if they think there's a chance it was their fault," said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Matt Desch, the chief executive of Iridium, a communications satellite company that is one of SpaceX's biggest customers, said in an interview that he "absolutely" had full confidence in SpaceX and that he had no qualms about proceeding with the four launches Iridium has on the Falcon 9 this year.
"We're moving forward with plans for our next launch," he said. "I know there are people who would love SpaceX to be taken down a few notches. And I'd be glad to hold them accountable for things they should be held accountable for. But this isn't one. I believe they weren't really responsible."
Meanwhile, SpaceX's chief rival made a statement of its own on Friday. After a couple-day delay, the United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, launched a Delta IV rocket carrying a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
After a successful liftoff, the rocket was traveling at Mach 1, the speed of sound, within 49 seconds, as it burned through propellant at a rate of 1,950 pounds per second.
"Delta is ripping the sky at incredible speed," Tory Bruno, the United Launch Alliance's chief executive, wrote on Twitter.
'What an incredible way to start off 2018'
On Jan. 7, the SpaceX launch appeared to go smoothly. The company cheered a successful liftoff and then the touchdown of its first-stage booster back on land so that it could be flown again, a practice designed to lower the cost of spaceflight.
Musk on Monday tweeted a long-exposure picture of the launch showing its fiery trail to space — and then the return of the booster, which has become routine for the company.
The Air Force's 45th Space Wing congratulated SpaceX in a tweet: "What an incredible way to start off 2018 w/the world's 1st successful launch and landing of this year!"
The launch was an important one for the California-based company founded nearly 16 years ago. Since its early days, Musk has waged war against the traditional contractors, namely the United Launch Alliance, in an attempt to compete for national security launch contracts, generally worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
For years, Musk proclaimed that SpaceX could save taxpayers millions by offering the Pentagon launches for far less than its rival. Meanwhile, the United Launch Alliance maintained that responsibility for vital national security satellites that cost hundreds of millions should not be decided on just price.
More than 10 years ago, even before it had flown a rocket to space successfully, SpaceX sued Boeing and Lockheed Martin in an attempt to block the formation of the United Launch Alliance, which it said was using "strong-armed tactics to demand that the Air Force grant them exclusive long-term contracts." But SpaceX was derided as an "ankle biter" by its competitors, and the lawsuit went nowhere.
In 2014, SpaceX sued again in an attempt to end the nearly decade-long monopoly the United Launch Alliance held on national security launches, arguing that it should be able to compete for the launch contracts. By that point, SpaceX had been flying its Falcon 9 rocket successfully, and the Air Force settled the case with SpaceX, eventually granting it the certification required for it to compete.
Under mounting pressure from SpaceX, Bruno vowed to "literally transform" the company to compete — and he also continued to champion the firm's track record of more than 100 successful launches in a row.
Since the contracts became competitively bid, SpaceX has won two of three contests.
'Space is a risky business'
But it has also had its setbacks. In 2015, a Falcon 9 rocket blew up while carrying cargo to the space station. Then, in 2016, another rocket exploded while being fueled ahead of an engine test. No one was hurt in either explosion, but the payloads, worth millions of dollars, were lost.
In both cases, the company was grounded while it investigated the cause of the problems. As of now, SpaceX is moving ahead with its launch manifest.
"Since the data reviewed so far indicates that no design, operational or other changes are needed, we do not anticipate any impact on the upcoming launch schedule," Shotwell said.
As for Zuma's fate, little is known.
This week, members of Congress began receiving briefings but were tight-lipped about the classified sessions.
U.S. Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, said in a statement that while he couldn't comment on classified matters, "space is a risky business." He said his committee would provide "rigorous oversight that accounts for that risk and ensures that we can meet all of our national security space requirements as the Air Force looks to competitively procure space launch services in the future."
Harrison, the defense analyst, said that SpaceX is in a frustrating position because it is limited in what it can say publicly about what happened.
"It's a particular nightmare if nothing went wrong on their part and they can't prove it because of the classified nature of the mission," he said.
christian.davenport@washpost.com


After 2016 rocket explosion, Elon Musk’s SpaceX looked seriously at sabotage

His rocket had blown up into a spectacular fireball. The Cape Canaveral launchpad that SpaceX had essentially built from scratch was now in ashes. And Elon Musk was dumbfounded.
A week after the explosion in September 2016, with still no idea what caused the rocket to suddenly explode while being fueled ahead of an engine test, Musk vented on Twitter that the loss of the rocket was “turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years.”
On the Internet, where conspiracy theories were already percolating, some speculated that the “something else” was a projectile, maybe even a bullet or UFO. On Twitter, Musk was asked about the possibility of something hitting the rocket, and he fueled speculation even further by saying, “We have not ruled that out.”
Although they didn’t say so publicly at the time, SpaceX investigators were looking seriously at sabotage, Musk and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in their most extensive public comments since the explosion.
“We literally thought someone had shot the rocket,” Musk said in an interview last summer at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. “We found things that looked like bullet holes, and we calculated that someone with a high-powered rifle, if they had shot the rocket in the right location, the exact same thing would have happened.”
If someone did shoot the rocket, SpaceX knew it needed to collect whatever evidence it could as fast as possible. “So for sure, we put pressure on the Air Force and the [Federal Aviation Administration] to go collect whatever forensic data was possible,” Shotwell said. “The first thing you do is think it’s some outside force, right. Because we couldn’t figure out how in the world this could have happened.”
Early indications were that something caused an upper-stage helium bottle to explode, and at the SpaceX test site in McGregor, Tex., engineers were trying to replicate the explosion. But “we were having a hard time blowing these bottles up,” she said.
So, instead, they got a rifle, “and we shot it,” Shotwell said. “And the signature on the bottle was just like the signature on the bottle that we recovered. That was an easy test to do. It’s Texas, right, everybody’s got a gun and you can blow stuff up.”
But who would want to?
About two weeks after the explosion, a SpaceX employee suddenly appeared at a Cape Canaveral facility of one of the company’s chief rivals. For years, SpaceX had been battling the United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, over lucrative contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to launch military satellites. At first, SpaceX was dismissed as an “ankle biter” and wasn’t taken seriously.
But SpaceX had become more successful than anyone predicted. It had also settled a lawsuit with the Air Force, which granted the company the right to compete against ULA. SpaceX now posed a serious threat.
The SpaceX employee who showed up at ULA’s facility had an odd request: Could he have access to the roof?
The reason, the employee explained, was that SpaceX had still images from a video that appeared to show a shadow, then a bright white spot, coming from the roof. ULA’s building was about a mile away from the launchpad and had a clear line of sight to it.
ULA was incredulous, and refused to let the SpaceX employee into the building. Instead, it called Air Force investigators, who inspected the roof and found nothing amiss.
It took months for SpaceX to complete its investigation into the cause of the explosion. Ultimately, it concluded there was a problem with a pressure vessel in the second-stage liquid oxygen tank. The FAA ruled out sabotage -- by rifle shot or any other means -- as a cause, and granted SpaceX a launch license so that it could return to flight.
Musk concluded that SpaceX, not ULA or anyone else, was to blame. “It was a self-inflicted wound,” he said in the interview. “It took us a long time, but we were able to re-create the failure.”
SpaceX returned to flight in early 2017. And then in February of that year, it had a triumphant launch in its first flight from the Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A, the site that sent the crew of Apollo 11 -- Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins -- to the moon.
SpaceX pressed ahead, but Musk grew wary. Even if he had ruled out foul play, the incident “did alert us to the fact that sabotage was a real thing, so we upgraded security,” he said.
A crew from CBS’s "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," which was being escorted by Boeing officials, stopped outside the gates to check out pad 39A, SpaceX called security on them.
They were stopped and questioned. After showing identification, they were allowed to go.
This story is adapted from a forthcoming book, "The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos."


That SpaceX explosion blew up one of Facebook’s most ambitious projects

An explosion at a SpaceX launch site in Florida occurred during a static test fire. The explosion destroyed a satellite that Facebook help fund which was designed to provide Internet access to areas in Africa. "SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload,” the company said in a statement. “Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries." A Falcon 9 rocket set to take a satellite into space on Labor Day weekend exploded during testing days before. Courtesy of http://www.uslaunchreport.com/. It's unclear what Facebook plans to do next to compensate for the loss of the AMOS-6 satellite, whose 18 Gbps connections it planned to lease in partnership with Eutelsat for $95 million across five years. The company declined to comment on the explosion.

An explosion at a SpaceX launch site in Florida occurred during a static test fire. The explosion destroyed a satellite that Facebook help fund which was designed to provide Internet access to areas in Africa.
SpaceX is reeling after an early-morning explosion took out its rocket on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. The incident is a major setback for chief executive Elon Musk. But odds are the tragic news is disappointing another U.S. tech billionaire, too.
You see, the rocket destroyed Thursday was bearing a satellite that Facebook intended to use to beam Internet access to developing nations. When the rocket went up in smoke, so did the cargo inside, according to SpaceX.
"SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload,” the company said in a statement. “Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries."
Last year, Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said he was eager to use the AMOS-6 satellite to deliver broadband connectivity to hard-to-reach parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Facebook has some 84 million users in the region.
"To connect people living in remote regions, traditional connectivity infrastructure is often difficult and inefficient, so we need to invent new technologies," he wrote in a Facebook post in October.
Zuckerberg has spoken proudly of the initiative to connect the world's next billion people to the Web. On Monday, Zuckerberg met with Pope Francis and presented him with a model of the Aquila drone that Facebook expects to help beam Internet down to the Earth. The drones are meant to work together with Facebook's satellite plans by essentially creating a single wireless network in the atmosphere. The company has also developed terrestrial equipment that can either act as standalone mobile data hotspots or as a hub for a local data network.
A Falcon 9 rocket set to take a satellite into space on Labor Day weekend exploded during testing days before. Courtesy of http://www.uslaunchreport.com/.
"As I'm here in Africa, I'm deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. "Fortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as well."
It's unclear what Facebook plans to do next to compensate for the loss of the AMOS-6 satellite, whose 18 Gbps connections it planned to lease in partnership with Eutelsat for $95 million across five years.
The company declined to comment on the explosion.


Japan is backing it's magnetic-levitation railroad technology in the US.

The Japanese government has promoted it's high-speed maglev rail technology in the US for years, in particular for a project between Baltimore and Washington.  Discuss Japan's role in building this segment and why it is promoting this technology. Relevant documents will discuss time savings of such technology or the specific speed of the trains.

Research the background and motivations behind a specific technology promotion question.

background motivations technology promotion

Backers of high-speed ‘maglev’ train to Washington claim $5 billion in funding

The L0 series magnetic-levitation train, developed by Central Japan Railway Co., moves along a test track near the control center during a trial run in Tsuru City, Japan, on Aug. 29, 2013. (Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg) The commitment is from the Japanese government, which hopes to showcase the technology behind superconducting magnetic levitation or “maglev” trains to an American audience, the company behind the proposal wrote to the Maryland Public Service Commission on Wednesday. Such trains are capable of extreme speeds, thanks to their frictionless, magnetically-controlled motion above their tracks. The technology has been approved in Japan and is to be rolled out next month on an initial stretch of track that planners hope will eventually connect Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. In addition to the $5 billion commitment from the public Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the private Central Japan Railway Co. has agreed to waive any licensing fees for use of its maglev technology, wrote attorneys for the Annapolis-based Baltimore Washington Rapid Rail LLC. The details were included in Rapid Rail’s filing Wednesday asking Maryland regulators for the old state franchise rights of the former Washington Baltimore & Annapolis Electric Railroad, a once-busy interurban electric rail car system that linked the three cities in the early 20th century. A spokeswoman for the Maryland PSC, which regulates “common carriers” in the state, including passenger rail providers, confirmed receipt of the application. The agency will open a case on the application, accept comments from staff and others, and conduct a hearing on whether granting Rapid Rail’s request “is consistent with the public convenience and necessity,” said Regina L. Davis. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s office welcomed the new details about maglev. “Because Baltimore provides millennials and empty-nesters with affordable city living, this speedy mode of transportation will provide residents who work in D.C. with a convenient alternative, while also giving tourists throughout the country who visit our nation’s capital easier access to enjoy all of the attractions Baltimore has to offer,” said Caron Brace, a spokeswoman for the mayor. “Ultimately, this would help the local economy, as well as help to grow the city. It could be a game-changer for Baltimore.” While maglev is a tantalizing technology for high-speed transportation, there are many barriers to its implementation, including concerns over the difficulty of assembling a route, its effect on neighbors and its sheer cost. The Japanese financing has been hinted at for nearly a year.

The L0 series magnetic-levitation train, developed by Central Japan Railway Co., moves along a test track near the control center during a trial run in Tsuru City, Japan, on Aug. 29, 2013.  (Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg)
An investor group hoping to build a high-speed train capable of cutting the travel time between Baltimore and Washington to 15 minutes says in a filing to state regulators that it has lined up more than $5 billion in financial backing.
The commitment is from the Japanese government, which hopes to showcase the technology behind superconducting magnetic levitation or “maglev” trains to an American audience, the company behind the proposal wrote to the Maryland Public Service Commission on Wednesday.
Such trains are capable of extreme speeds, thanks to their frictionless, magnetically-controlled motion above their tracks. The technology has been approved in Japan and is to be rolled out next month on an initial stretch of track that planners hope will eventually connect Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.
In addition to the $5 billion commitment from the public Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the private Central Japan Railway Co. has agreed to waive any licensing fees for use of its maglev technology, wrote attorneys for the Annapolis-based Baltimore Washington Rapid Rail LLC.
The details were included in Rapid Rail’s filing Wednesday asking Maryland regulators for the old state franchise rights of the former Washington Baltimore & Annapolis Electric Railroad, a once-busy interurban electric rail car system that linked the three cities in the early 20th century.
“In a back-to-the-future type way, you see that there was already a Baltimore-Washington service that previously existed. . . sort of sitting on the shelf waiting for people to pull it off and dust it off, for us to get back to providing what they had in 1935,” said Wayne Rogers, a major shareholder in Rapid Rail and chairman and chief executive of The Northeast Maglev, a separate Washington-based company backing the project.
A spokeswoman for the Maryland PSC, which regulates “common carriers” in the state, including passenger rail providers, confirmed receipt of the application. The agency will open a case on the application, accept comments from staff and others, and conduct a hearing on whether granting Rapid Rail’s request “is consistent with the public convenience and necessity,” said Regina L. Davis.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s office welcomed the new details about maglev.
“Because Baltimore provides millennials and empty-nesters with affordable city living, this speedy mode of transportation will provide residents who work in D.C. with a convenient alternative, while also giving tourists throughout the country who visit our nation’s capital easier access to enjoy all of the attractions Baltimore has to offer,” said Caron Brace, a spokeswoman for the mayor. “Ultimately, this would help the local economy, as well as help to grow the city. It could be a game-changer for Baltimore.”
While maglev is a tantalizing technology for high-speed transportation, there are many barriers to its implementation, including concerns over the difficulty of assembling a route, its effect on neighbors and its sheer cost.
The Japanese financing has been hinted at for nearly a year. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe talked up the project to the Obama administration last year. Northeast Maglev said it could count on financing from a Japanese government bank, citing that support as the key difference between its proposal and others in the past that fizzled out with little outside investment and a lack of federal will to assist.
Still, Northeast Maglev did not disclose details about the Japanese commitment until now.
The total cost of the Baltimore-to-Washington leg of the project is unknown and would depend largely on the final route of the mostly underground track, Rogers said, but it would cost at least $10 billion.
Some critics say even that price tag is too low to make maglev a reality.
“Unless someone has all the cash to build the whole system all in one go, or at least in rapid phasing, the whole thing doesn’t make sense,” said Andy Kunz, president and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, which supports more conventional high-speed rail systems. “Who is going to come up with the other $5 billion, or probably $10 billion more?”
Kunz said some estimates put maglev costs at five times those of high-speed rail systems that now can reach speeds of 220 mph — like those currently being built in California.
The investment needed to build a maglev line between Washington and New York, the only connection that would make sense for the system, is so huge that it will never get built, Kunz said. He predicted that if the Baltimore to Washington stretch gets built, it will end up like other short-track maglev experiments around the world.
“If this does get built, it’s going to end up looking just like the Chinese maglev, which is almost a joke. People ride it as a novelty, but not for transportation,” he said. “I would really be [angry] if our government forked over $5 billion for this little system to Baltimore” when it could move more people farther distances with the same amount in California.
Rogers said his hope is that the promised investment from the Japanese will spur interest among more investors, eventually allowing the extension of the line from Baltimore to New York.
The Japanese hope the same, and that U.S. commitment to the technology along its busy Northeast Corridor will be copied around the world — creating a new export market for Japan’s rail industry.
The Baltimore Sun


Hypersonic jet: just one project to get you there faster

In this July 17, 2009 photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, an X-51A WaveRider hypersonic flight test vehicle is uploaded to an Air Force Flight Test Center B-52 for fit testing at Edwards Air Force Base. Four scramjet-powered Waveriders were built for the Air Force. The Los Angeles Times says the unmanned X-51 WaveRider is expected to reach Mach 6 _ or about 3,600 mph _ Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012, when it's dropped by a B-52 bomber and takes flight off the Southern California coast near Point Mugu. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force, Chad Bellay) (Chad Bellay/AP) The world is getting smaller and moving faster, leaving many unsatisfied with the time it still takes to get anywhere these days. That’s why there’s been so much buzz around the X-51A Waverider — a hypersonic jet being tested Tuesday that is theoretically capable of going six times the speed of sound. The jet is just one avenue of high-tech, high-speed transit floated over the years; here’s a look at it and other projects hatched in the name of speed and where they stand today. X-51A Waverider: Concorde: As The Associated Press reported at the time, many were sad to see the flights end. “Many Britons expressed pride in the technological achievement the Concorde embodied but sadness that its days in the skies were ending without a supersonic successor to take its place,” read an article on the plane’s last flight. Maglev trains: As Ho reported, the project is still “in its infancy.” High-speed rail: California recently approved a high-speed rail project — one that the San Jose Mercury News reports is the most expensive project in the state’s history. The California Senate passed the first $8 billion of the project on July 6, by one vote. Related stories: Hypersonic craft X-51A put to the test Washington to New York City in 60 minutes by train VentureBeat: SFO to JFK in less than an hour? It could happen.

In this July 17, 2009 photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, an X-51A WaveRider hypersonic flight test vehicle is uploaded to an Air Force Flight Test Center B-52 for fit testing at Edwards Air Force Base. Four scramjet-powered Waveriders were built for the Air Force. The Los Angeles Times says the unmanned X-51 WaveRider is expected to reach Mach 6 _ or about 3,600 mph _ Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012, when it's dropped by a B-52 bomber and takes flight off the Southern California coast near Point Mugu. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force, Chad Bellay) (Chad Bellay/AP) The world is getting smaller and moving faster, leaving many unsatisfied with the time it still takes to get anywhere these days. That’s why there’s been so much buzz around the X-51A Waverider — a hypersonic jet being tested Tuesday that is theoretically capable of going six times the speed of sound. The jet is just one avenue of high-tech, high-speed transit floated over the years; here’s a look at it and other projects hatched in the name of speed and where they stand today. X-51A Waverider: Concorde: “Many Britons expressed pride in the technological achievement the Concorde embodied but sadness that its days in the skies were ending without a supersonic successor to take its place,” read an article on the plane’s last flight. Maglev trains: As Ho reported, the project is still “in its infancy.” High-speed rail: Related stories: Hypersonic craft X-51A put to the test Washington to New York City in 60 minutes by train VentureBeat: SFO to JFK in less than an hour? It could happen.


Organizers line up big names to push new high-speed rail line linking D.C. to N.Y.

magnetic levitation system that would bring passengers from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes and to New York in 60 minutes, at speeds of 311 miles an hour. The company, which according to its chairman has raised $50 million in private funding, plans to announce today it has enlisted several of the region’s business and political leaders to join its advisory board: Under Armour founder and chief executive Kevin Plank; former chief executive of Northwest Airlines Doug Steenland; former transportation secretaries Mary Peters and Rodney Slater (now a lobbyist at Patton Boggs); and George Pataki, Christine Todd Whitman and Ed Rendell, former governors of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively. The board is being led by former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who is now an adviser at DLA Piper, the international law firm that the Northeast Maglev has hired to lobby on its behalf before Congress. The rail line would include stops at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport in Baltimore, Philadelphia International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport. The project is unrelated to Amtrak’s $151 billion plan to develop a high-speed rail system — that would go from Washington to New York in 94 minutes — in the Northeast corridor by 2040. The Northeast Maglev chairman Wayne Rogers said his firm does not have a cost estimate for the entire project but that the Washington-Baltimore leg would cost at least $10 billion. He said he expects it to take at least three years to navigate the regulatory, environmental and planning process and another 10 years for construction. The company is working closely with engineers from Central Japan Railway, which operates the bullet train in Japan. In Washington, they are considering station locations on K Street, near Metro Center, near the convention center and around Union Station, Rogers said. Roger said his company has met with representatives from the Maryland Transit Administration and D.C. government. It is not the first time there’s been interest in building a maglev system in the Northeast, but previous attempts were halted by lack of support from lawmakers and funding shortfalls. In 2001, transit officials from Maryland, the District and Baltimore formed the Baltimore-Washington Maglev Project, which competed for Federal Railroad Administration consideration to develop a 39-mile maglev line linking Camden Yards in Baltimore, BWI and Union Station in Washington. But the project, which in 2007 was estimated to cost $5.1 billion, lacked legislative support.

The privately owned Washington company that last year began lobbying to build a high-speed rail line between Washington and New York has lined up some prominent names to press its ambitious plan to improve congestion in the Northeast corridor.
The Northeast Maglev, the 25-employee company founded in 2010, is looking to develop a high-speed magnetic levitation system that would bring passengers from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes and to New York in 60 minutes, at speeds of 311 miles an hour.
The company, which according to its chairman has raised $50 million in private funding, plans to announce today it has enlisted several of the region’s business and political leaders to join its advisory board: Under Armour founder and chief executive Kevin Plank; former chief executive of Northwest Airlines Doug Steenland; former transportation secretaries Mary Peters and Rodney Slater (now a lobbyist at Patton Boggs); and George Pataki, Christine Todd Whitman and Ed Rendell, former governors of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively.
The board is being led by former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who is now an adviser at DLA Piper, the international law firm that the Northeast Maglev has hired to lobby on its behalf before Congress.
The rail line would include stops at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport in Baltimore, Philadelphia International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport. The project is unrelated to Amtrak’s $151 billion plan to develop a high-speed rail system — that would go from Washington to New York in 94 minutes — in the Northeast corridor by 2040.
The Northeast Maglev chairman Wayne Rogers said his firm does not have a cost estimate for the entire project but that the Washington-Baltimore leg would cost at least $10 billion. He said he expects it to take at least three years to navigate the regulatory, environmental and planning process and another 10 years for construction. The company is working closely with engineers from Central Japan Railway, which operates the bullet train in Japan.
In Washington, they are considering station locations on K Street, near Metro Center, near the convention center and around Union Station, Rogers said.
“Lots of items that go into that selection [process],” he said. “Connectivity to Metro is one consideration, constructability is another consideration, connecting with the population and business centers — where office centers will be — it’s a complicated equation,” he said. “All those are being studied and put together. We’re looking to be able to connect near Metro. . . . Our goal is to connect city centers and airports.”
Roger said his company has met with representatives from the Maryland Transit Administration and D.C. government.
It is not the first time there’s been interest in building a maglev system in the Northeast, but previous attempts were halted by lack of support from lawmakers and funding shortfalls. In 2001, transit officials from Maryland, the District and Baltimore formed the Baltimore-Washington Maglev Project, which competed for Federal Railroad Administration consideration to develop a 39-mile maglev line linking Camden Yards in Baltimore, BWI and Union Station in Washington. But the project, which in 2007 was estimated to cost $5.1 billion, lacked legislative support.


Maryland Gov. Hogan is entranced by Maglev

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (Patrick Semansky/Associated Press) Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) campaigned on cutting costs. Since taking office, however, he’s expressed interest in throwing big money at numerous transportation programs — just not the transit lines that actually work and that businesses and residents want. His latest big spending idea: A $10 billion magnetic levitation train, or “maglev,” between the District and Baltimore. Hogan is in Japan right now on a trade mission, and according to WAMU’s Martin di Caro, has agreed to work with Japan and seek federal funds for a study of what it would take to build a maglev line here at home. The Federal Railroad Administration has $27.8 million available for a maglev study, but Maryland is the only state interested in the money. Japan is offering $5 billion in loans to help make the line happen, but that money would have to be paid back. The maglev line could run more than 300 miles per hour and, di Caro reports, possibly go from the District to Baltimore in 15 minutes (though time estimates for transportation facilities often are rosy before the gritty details come in). However, to run that fast, the tracks would have to be very straight. There’s no place to put very straight tracks right through the mostly suburban area in between; instead, maglev supporters expect the line to be mostly in a tunnel. According to contributor and maglev supporter Peter Dovak, Japan’s maglev (which is different from its well-known “Shinkansen” high-speed trains) will run in a tunnel for 85 percent of its length. That makes it very expensive. [Continue reading David Alpert’s post at Greater Greater Washington.] David Alpert is founder and editor of Greater Greater Washington. The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (Patrick Semansky/Associated Press) The Federal Railroad Administration has $27.8 million available for a maglev study, but Maryland is the only state interested in the money. Japan is offering $5 billion in loans to help make the line happen, but that money would have to be paid back. The maglev line could run more than 300 miles per hour and, di Caro reports, possibly go from the District to Baltimore in 15 minutes (though time estimates for transportation facilities often are rosy before the gritty details come in). However, to run that fast, the tracks would have to be very straight. There’s no place to put very straight tracks right through the mostly suburban area in between; instead, maglev supporters expect the line to be mostly in a tunnel. According to contributor and maglev supporter Peter Dovak, Japan’s maglev (which is different from its well-known “Shinkansen” high-speed trains) will run in a tunnel for 85 percent of its length. That makes it very expensive. David Alpert is founder and editor of Greater Greater Washington. The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.


Germany has highways for bikes. You can learn from that, America

People ride D.C.'s Metrorail system the day after a train filled with smoke, leading to the death of one woman. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)
As hundreds of thousands of D.C. commuters tried to get to work on Wednesday during a 24-hour Metrorail shutdown for an emergency safety inspection, many might have wondered: Why is our infrastructure system so broken?
These five lessons from abroad might help understand what is going wrong in the United States.
1. Germany has highways for bikes
German autobahns are renowned all over the world for having no general speed limit. Now, the country is at the forefront of a new kind of highway — for bikes. German engineers recently finished construction on the first section of what will become a 62-mile network of bike highways in and around the Western German city of Duisburg.
2. Switzerland, ranked the country with the world's best infrastructure, shows that good infrastructure depends on political commitment
Journalists walk through an emergency tunnel during a media visit near the town of Sedrun, Switzerland, on Thursday. (REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann)
According to the World Economic Forum, Switzerland has the world's best infrastructure, even though everyone who has been to the country in the center of Europe knows that its mountainous landscape is far from being perfect to build modern infrastructure systems.
For every highway or train line, construction workers need to tunnel through mountains and hills. Having one of the world's highest transport system densities, Switzerland primarily proves that it is governmental commitment to infrastructure that makes the difference.
3.  Money matters — and banks aren't much interested in long-term projects
Given the United States' size, developing countries like India or China might be a better comparison than Switzerland. Writing in the Financial Times, Patrick Jenkins argues that it's all about money. Infrastructure projects often face financing gaps because banks have abandoned the idea of financing such long and massive projects. "This is partly a result of a shrunken risk appetite across banking. It is also thanks to tougher capital charges on such assets, imposed by global regulators," Jenkins writes.
4. In Copenhagen, you can travel on a driverless metro running 24/7
One does not have to change the entire banking and financing system to improve American infrastructure, though. The example of Copenhagen shows that smaller steps might be equally helpful. The Copenhagen metro runs 24/7 because it operates without drivers.
5. This Japanese train could get you from San Francisco to New York City in seven hours
The Maglev (magnetic levitation) train is seen on an experimental track in Tsuru, west of Tokyo, in May 2010. The train set a world speed record on April 21, 2015, in a test run near Mount Fuji, clocking 375 miles an hour. (KATORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images)
Japan's magnetic-levitation trains set a new world record last year when they reached 375 miles per hour on a test run. That means travelers could go from San Francisco to New York City in only seven hours because the trains do not touch the steel tracks because of magnetic power.
The "bullet" trains are primarily a prestige project. Critics have said the expensive investment makes little sense for a country like Japan that has a rapidly aging and declining population. Last year, U.S. officials appeared to show interest in implementing a similar system between Washington and Baltimore.
There's still hope for commuters in and around D.C.


Japan’s maglev train sets second world record

The maglev train on experimental track in Tsuru, west of Tokyo, in 2010. (Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images)
A high-speed Japanese bullet train bested its previous world record for speed by traveling 374 mph on Tuesday, according to news reports.
The Central Japan Railway’s seven-car maglev — short for magnetic levitation — topped its 366 mph record (set last week) on a test track track near Mount Fuji, according to the Guardian.
The previous record of 268 mph stood since 2003, according to NBC.
Maglev trains use magnets to push the train 4 inches off the tracks and propel it forward, according to CNN.
With 49 railway employees on board, the train covered 1.1 miles in about 11 seconds, the company reported, according to the Guardian.
That, as CNN helpfully pointed out, "is nearly 20 football fields in the time it took you to read the last two sentences."
Japan's maglev train sets world record speed of 375 MPH. http://t.co/1SWRWtuR3N http://t.co/tYDRa0hPSB
“The ride was comfortable and stable,” Yasukazu Endo, the head of the Maglev Test Center, told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. “We would like to continue analyzing data and make use of it in designing the cars and other equipment.”
In the future, maglev trains, which are expected to run between Tokyo and Nagoya, will top off at 313 mph, according to the New York Post.
The trip — which takes five hours by car — will last 40 minutes, which is less than half the time the journey requires on current bullet trains, according to CNN.
Takeo Ookanda, who runs an exhibition center next to the test track, told CNN that witnesses erupted in applause when the record was announced.
"I was moved just like many other visitors here today," he said. "This maglev project... [increases] the hope that Japan can have a good growth again in the future."
There is talk of bringing the trains to the United States. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "is set to pitch the new technology to the American market, including for a Washington-New York train link" during a visit that begins next week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
"By contrast, the fastest train in the United States, Amtrak's Acela Express, is only capable of 241 kilometers per hour (150 miles per hour), though it usually plods along at half that speed," CNN reported.
Were the trains exported abroad, the Guardian notes, they could revolutionize travel times, especially in countries where air travel is less common. Here are few examples the paper came up with:
New York to Los Angeles – 7 hours 45 minutes (currently a 68 hour trip)
Cape Town to Cairo – 17 hours 30 minutes
Sydney to Perth – 7 hours 20 minutes
Moscow to Vladivostock – 15 hours
MORE READING:
Abe urged to uphold Japan’s apology for wartime aggression
U.S. top diplomat Kerry to host Japan PM in Boston


A floating train from New York to Washington, via Japan

Thursday. “Tonight I just want to get home fast. I’ve had a long week.” The prime minister has touted the “dream technology.” “It would free people from the congested roads that frazzle their nerves while saving not only 443,000 gallons of gasoline but also 682,000 hours of time that are now wasted annually,” Abe said last year at the New York Stock Exchange. The prime minister took America’s ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, for a 300-plus-mile-per-hour spin on the duck-nosed train earlier this month. Japan has a 27-mile initial maglev line outside of Tokyo, and is slated to begin construction later this year on the rest of a privately financed 178-mile line between the capital and Japan’s third largest city, Nagoya, according to Yoshiro Taguchi, transportation counselor at Japan’s Embassy in Washington. Much of it will be underground and it is set to be completed by 2027, Taguchi said. Plans also call for the line to be extended to Osaka by 2045, though there is pressure for that portion to be speeded up, Taguchi said. It will cost $54 billion to Nagoya, and another $36 billion to reach Osaka, Taguchi said. Once completed, the American line would have a super express version – making one stop in Philadelphia and reaching New York in an hour. There would also be a slightly more local version with traditional East Coast stops in places like Baltimore, Wilmington and Newark. Each way, up to six trains can run per hour, with 1,000 people per train, Taguchi said. The Northeast Maglev YouTube video from The Northeast Maglev. The Central Japan Railway Company has agreed to transfer the technology — in which powerful magnetic forces lift and propel a train four inches above a U-shaped guideway that acts as an extended channel — “without charge,” Rogers said, adding that construction costs are only part of the picture. “Many times we focus on the cost of doing something but ignore the cost of inaction,” Rogers said. “At $14.5 billion in lost productivity per year in our corridor and growing, these hidden costs need to be considered. . . . Can we afford to do nothing?” Rogers has sought to build bipartisan support with an advisory board that includes Rendell and former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) as well as former Republican governors Christine Todd Whitman (N.J.) and George Pataki (N.Y.), among others. He declined to

The L0 series magnetic-levitation train, developed by Central Japan Railway Co., moves along a test track near the control center during a trial run in Tsuru City, Japan, on Aug. 29, 2013.  (Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg)
The idea of getting from Washington to Manhattan in an hour on a floating train would seem a tad less fanciful if a similar system weren’t already being built in Japan.
That’s not to say the idea isn’t a serious stretch. Even the backers of a Washington company’s proposal to build a superconducting maglev train line concede the pervasive doubt.
“People dismiss it as unrealistic,” said former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who has been talking about speeding up trains along the East Coast since he was elected Philadelphia’s mayor in the early 1990s. “But I guarantee you when Lincoln talked about building the transcontinental railroad people said, ‘Are you crazy? You can’t get that over the Rockies!’”
In the car-loving context of the American transportation system, where political gridlock and scarce funding mire down many big ideas, there are countless questions. Among them: Which private investors will pony up for a magnetically levitated train that boosters say will cost $100 billion or more? How much will the federal government, already struggling to keep up with aging infrastructure, chip in? Can skittish residents in the train’s path be convinced, or at least bought off relatively affordably? Do American policy makers – and Americans themselves – have the inclination, and imagination, for such a venture? And can a nudge from one of the United States’ top allies make a difference?
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying.
Caroline Kennedy, U.S. ambassador to Japan, left, speaks to Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, as they sit on board the MAGLEV train undergoing testing at the Yamanashi Maglev Test Track in Tsuru City, Japan, on April 12. (Koji Sasahara/Via Bloomberg)
Abe pushed the proposal in a meeting this week with President Obama in Tokyo, and the Japanese government has offered a low-interest loan to finance up to half the $10 billion-plus first leg of a new maglev line from downtown Washington to Baltimore. That ride would take 15 minutes.
“I would love it. It would make my life a whole lot more comfortable,” said Marianne Matheny-Katz, an economist for the Army who commutes from Baltimore to Washington four days a week and stood in a snaking Amtrak line at Union Station Thursday. “Tonight I just want to get home fast. I’ve had a long week.”
The prime minister has touted the “dream technology.”
“It would free people from the congested roads that frazzle their nerves while saving not only 443,000 gallons of gasoline but also 682,000 hours of time that are now wasted annually,” Abe said last year at the New York Stock Exchange. The prime minister took America’s ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, for a 300-plus-mile-per-hour spin on the duck-nosed train earlier this month.
Japan has a 27-mile initial maglev line outside of Tokyo, and is slated to begin construction later this year on the rest of a privately financed 178-mile line between the capital and Japan’s third largest city, Nagoya, according to Yoshiro Taguchi, transportation counselor at Japan’s Embassy in Washington. Much of it will be underground and it is set to be completed by 2027, Taguchi said.
Plans also call for the line to be extended to Osaka by 2045, though there is pressure for that portion to be speeded up, Taguchi said. It will cost $54 billion to Nagoya, and another $36 billion to reach Osaka, Taguchi said.
Once completed, the American line would have a super express version – making one stop in Philadelphia and reaching New York in an hour. There would also be a slightly more local version with traditional East Coast stops in places like Baltimore, Wilmington and Newark. Each way, up to six trains can run per hour, with 1,000 people per train, Taguchi said.
The Northeast Maglev
YouTube video from The Northeast Maglev.
Wayne Rogers, a Naval Academy graduate and Maryland businessman who heads the Northeast Maglev, the Washington firm developing detailed plans for the line, said the United States should embrace maglev technology its scientists invented decades ago. “It’s time to deploy our ideas at home,” Rogers said.
The Central Japan Railway Company has agreed to transfer the technology — in which powerful magnetic forces lift and propel a train four inches above a U-shaped guideway that acts as an extended channel — “without charge,” Rogers said, adding that construction costs are only part of the picture.
“Many times we focus on the cost of doing something but ignore the cost of inaction,” Rogers said. “At $14.5 billion in lost productivity per year in our corridor and growing, these hidden costs need to be considered. . . .  Can we afford to do nothing?”
Rogers has sought to build bipartisan support with an advisory board that includes Rendell and former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) as well as former Republican governors Christine Todd Whitman (N.J.) and George Pataki (N.Y.), among others. He declined to offer a range of maglev ticket prices, though he said they “will be competitive with existing transit options.” The route is also yet to be determined.
Robert J. Puentes, director of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative at the Brookings Institution, said the maglev train offers a concrete way to explore the realities of big, creative, and difficult ideas at a time when traditional U.S. government funding is tightly limited.
“We’ve talked about infrastructure in the abstract for too long,” Puentes said. Brookings is organizing a session next month with key American and Japanese players to wrestle with issues raised in the effort. “This represents a way to think about what kind of transportation infrastructure projects we need in the future. . . . There’s lots of interest in private sector investment in traditionally public-sector infrastructure.”
Amtrak says its Acela train travels at an average of speed of 83 miles per hour between Washington and New York, hitting a high of 135 mph and reaching Manhattan in about 2 hours, 45 minutes. Officials said the government-backed train system is working to purchase 28 new higher-speed trains, and has long-standing, multi-decade plans to build new rail-lines along the Northeast to ramp up train speeds.
“As the most knowledgeable and successful intercity passenger rail operator in the U.S., Amtrak is prepared to operate maglev trains as part of a coordinated intercity passenger rail system” whenever such a system exists, said spokeswoman Kimberly Woods. She added that Amtrak is “mindful” that such an effort “will face major funding and logistical obstacles that only a new paradigm in support for public transportation can address.”
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World’s fastest passenger train breaks its own speed record

Central Japan Railways says its magnetically levitating train has broken its previous world speed record in a test-run at a special track West of Tokyo, reaching a speed of more than 374 mph. Now that’s what we call fast. Many Americans have long dreamed of high-speed rail, but efforts to build such a system in the United States have moved forward in fits and starts. In Japan, bullet trains are the norm, and despite its tiny size, the country has long been the leader in high-speed train travel. But when fast is the norm, apparently faster is even better. Which is why news that a Japan Railway maglev train hit 374 miles per hour on a test track is causing much excitement in that country. A spokesperson told CNN that the train covered 1.1 miles in 10.8 seconds. Yes, seconds. Apparently, the previous record, set last Thursday was a mere 366 miles per hour. Compare that to the fastest train in the United States — Amtrak’s Acela Express, which is capable of going 150 miles per hour. On the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak says Acela trains travels at an average of speed of 83 miles per hour between Washington and New York, hitting a high of 135 mph. It takes roughly 2 hours, 45 minutes to get from D.C. to Manhattan. The record setting Japanese train uses different technology. It doesn’t travel using traditional metal tracks. Rather, it floats four inches above special guideways thanks to magnets. Don’t believe it? See the video above. And there is a chance — albeit small — that such maglev technology may come to the East Coast. The Japanese government is all for building a line that would carry passengers between Washington and New York. The Northeast Maglev is a Washington-based company that “developing detailed plans for a line,” The Post’s Michael Laris reported last spring.

Central Japan Railways says its magnetically levitating train has broken its previous world speed record in a test-run at a special track West of Tokyo, reaching a speed of more than 374 mph. Now that’s what we call fast. Many Americans have long dreamed of high-speed rail, but efforts to build such a system in the United States have moved forward in fits and starts. In Japan, bullet trains are the norm, and despite its tiny size, the country has long been the leader in high-speed train travel. But when fast is the norm, apparently faster is even better. Apparently, the previous record, set last Thursday was a mere 366 miles per hour. Compare that to the fastest train in the United States — Amtrak’s Acela Express, which is capable of going 150 miles per hour. On the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak says Acela trains travels at an average of speed of 83 miles per hour between Washington and New York, hitting a high of 135 mph. It takes roughly 2 hours, 45 minutes to get from D.C. to Manhattan. The record setting Japanese train uses different technology. It doesn’t travel using traditional metal tracks. Rather, it floats four inches above special guideways thanks to magnets. Don’t believe it? See the video above.


D.C. to Baltimore in 15 minutes?

Japan wants to loan the U.S. $4 billion to build a 15-minute "super train" between D.C. and Baltimore. http://t.co/NWiMWmUIdq So really? A 15-minute trip between D.C. and Baltimore? You could get to Camden Yards quicker than you could make it Nats Park! Japan is well known for its super-efficient bullet trains. And while travelers in the U.S. always have been enamored with the idea of high-speed rail, efforts to build such as system have been stymied by myriad issues. According to The Telegraph newspaper, however, the Japanese government is eager to promote “Super-Maglev” trains — an even faster solution. The D.C. to Baltimore link would be part of a large rail line that would connect D.C. with Boston. The proposal for the Maglev route was put forward last year by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during talks with President Obama, the newspaper reported. The Japanese government would be willing to pay half of the $8 billion it would cost to install the tracks. According to The Telegraph: “Maglev vehicles have no wheels and are propelled along their track through electromagnetic pull – doing away with friction and, hence, providing a smoother and quieter ride at a faster speed. Conventional Maglev technology is already in use on a number of short routes around the world, but is limited to a speed of around 267mph. Japanese “Super-Maglev” trains are already operating on test tracks at speeds of more than 310mph.” Considering the bumpy road advocates have already encountered when it come to high speed rail, it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll see Super-Maglev trains anytime soon. But in a region looking for smart solutions for its congested roads, it’s always nice to dream.

D.C. to Baltimore in 15 minutes?

Japan wants to loan the U.S. $4 billion to build a 15-minute "super train" between D.C. and Baltimore. http://t.co/NWiMWmUIdq So really? A 15-minute trip between D.C. and Baltimore? You could get to Camden Yards quicker than you could make it Nats Park! The D.C. to Baltimore link would be part of a large rail line that would connect D.C. with Boston. The proposal for the Maglev route was put forward last year by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during talks with President Obama, the newspaper reported. The Japanese government would be willing to pay half of the $8 billion it would cost to install the tracks. According to The Telegraph: “Maglev vehicles have no wheels and are propelled along their track through electromagnetic pull – doing away with friction and, hence, providing a smoother and quieter ride at a faster speed. Conventional Maglev technology is already in use on a number of short routes around the world, but is limited to a speed of around 267mph. Japanese “Super-Maglev” trains are already operating on test tracks at speeds of more than 310mph.”


Japan is backing it's magnetic-levitation railroad technology in the US.

In Japan, Md. governor is wowed by super-fast trains — with big price tags

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan sits on board a magnetic-levitation (maglev) train at the Yamanashi Maglev Test Track. (Ko Sasaki/For The Washington Post)
TSURU, Japan —
Hogan wants Maryland to get these “maglev” trains — short for magnetic levitation — and Japan wants to sell them.
“There is no question that this is the future of transportation,” Hogan, a pro-business Republican whose victory in November shocked his heavily Democratic state, said after taking four trips along the 26-mile test track near Mount Fuji.
If he’s right, it’s an expensive future — even many in Japan are balking at the multibillion-dollar cost of the fast new trains. And in the United States, such trains would face daunting questions concerning not only cost (and more importantly, who would bear it) but the need to find a right of way through the most congested and perhaps litigious part of the country. It would take an unusual amount of national willpower to make the idea a reality.
Japan is already renowned for its shinkansen bullet trains, which whiz between the main cities at speeds of up to 200 mph, are almost always perfectly on time and have not had a fatal accident in 50 years of operation.
Central Japan Railways says its magnetically levitating train has broken its previous world speed record in a test-run at a special track West of Tokyo, reaching a speed of more than 374 mph.
But the maglev is something else.
Visiting the test site Thursday, Hogan walked past departure screens showing imaginary journeys to Baltimore (“on time”) and boarded a train that still had that new-car smell. As the train picked up speed, screens inside the car showed the view from cameras on the front of the fully automated train, which doesn’t have a windshield because there’s no driver who needs to see out.
The train quickly hit 150 mph — the top speed of Amtrak’s Acela — and passed through 200, then 300 mph. It topped out at 314, well below the world record of374 mph that the maglev hit during tests in April.
The point of Thursday’s runs was not to prove how fast these trains can go but rather to convince Hogan that Maryland needs them. And Hogan, who inherited the proposed maglev project when he took office in January, seemed convinced.
“It’s the most advanced technology in the world,” said the governor, who has focused much of his energy on giving Maryland’s business climate a boost. He said traveling from Baltimore to Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport in five minutes or from Washington in eight minutes could be “incredibly transformative” for the region.
The Japanese maglev trains start moving on wheels. When they hit a certain speed, magnets push the cars up almost four inches above the guideways and propel the train forward without the friction associated with traditional tracks. When it slows down to200 mph, it feels like the train is barely moving. Then when it reverts to using its wheels, passengers feel a bump akin to a gentle airplane landing.
Japan Railways is already working on plans to build a maglev line between Tokyo and Nagoya, 200 miles away, to start running in 2027. The journey time, currently 100 minutes by shinkansen and just over four hours by car, would be cut to 40 minutes.
The problem, on both sides of the Pacific, is money.
In Japan, there are critics who say that the shinkansen is perfectly adequate and that the country does not need to spend the billions of dollars that would be needed to build a maglev system. The cost of building the line to Nagoya is estimated at almost $50 billion, largely because it would require tunneling through many mountains along the way.
For the United States, maglev technology is much more expensive than building a shinkansen line or any of the other high-speed options the Obama administration has been promoting.
A 40-mile maglev line between Baltimore and Washington would cost at least $10 billion.
Japanese media have reported that the government has offered $5 billion in financial backing for a Maryland line, while Central Japan Railway Co., the train operator, has said it will not charge any licensing fees for the technology.
The Northeast Maglev
Hogan, who is at the end of a 12-day trip that also took him to South Korea and China, met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe before he went on the maglev, but he declined to comment on the specifics of any financing deal — including whether Maryland would be expected to cover part of the costs.
Hogan is expected to decide later this month whether to pull the plug on a different long-planned transit project, the light-rail Purple Line that would connect Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. As a candidate and since taking office, he has criticized the overall cost of the Purple Line and questioned whether it is a wise investment for the state.
But as for the maglev, the state government is “very interested in studying it further and taking it to the next level,” he said, and the Japanese government is “very interested in being involved in financing the project.”
The two leaders agreed on a “memorandum of cooperation” that addresses liquefied natural gas exports to Japan, scientific and cultural exchanges — and maglev rail.
Certainly, Japan is also desperate to sell the high-tech trains. Abe has been busy touting its rail technology as part of his plan to get the world’s third-largest economy back on track.
In addition to promoting maglev for the Northeast corridor, when he visited the United States in April, Abe tried to persuade California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to choose Japanese companies to build a $68 billion high-speed non-maglev railway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A separate project is underway to sell Japanese trains to Texas, linking Dallas and Houston.
But, as with so many things in Japan, this is also about China.
China is fast catching up with Japan when it comes to train technology, and its companies are also looking for export opportunities.
In a time of increasing concerns about China, Abe has suggested that the maglev could stand as a testament to the strong alliance between the United States and Japan. “I have just proposed to President Obama that this technology be introduced to the Northeast part of the United States as a symbol of Japan-U.S. cooperation,” he said last year on the 50th anniversary of the shinkansen, a train he said was “symbolic of safety and peace of mind.”
In the wake of the Amtrak accident near Philadelphia that killed eight people last month, Japan’s safety record could be its strongest selling point. Asked about the crash, Hogan said that “one of the beautiful things about this technology is that an accident like that couldn’t happen.”
“You can’t have driver error because there is no driver,” Hogan said.
For his part, Hogan seemed sold. As he left the maglev site on Thursday evening, he joked to his Japanese counterparts: “You had me at 314 miles per hour.”
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Feds award $28 million to study ‘maglev’ train system for Maryland

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan sits on board a magnetic-levitation (maglev) train at the Yamanashi Maglev Test Track in Japan in June. (Ko Sasaki/For The Washington Post) The U.S. Transportation Department has awarded nearly $28 million to conduct studies on building a high-speed rail line that would carry passengers between Washington and Baltimore in about 15 minutes, according to Maryland officials. The money will support private-sector efforts to bring magnetic-levitation trains to the region as part of a larger vision for building a maglev system along the Northeast Corridor. “The ability to travel between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., in only 15 minutes will be absolutely transformative, not just for these two cities, but for our entire state,” Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said in a statement. Japan is one of the first countries to develop and adopt maglev trains, which use magnetic forces to accelerate trains smoothly at speeds of up to 375 mph. Hogan and Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn rode Japan’s 27-mile Yamanashi maglev line during a trade mission in Asia this past spring, promising afterward that they would work to bring the technology to the state. Building a 40-mile maglev line between Baltimore and Washington is expected to cost at least $10 billion. According to media reports in Japan, the Japanese government has pledged $5 billion in financial backing for a Maryland line, and a Japanese train operator has said it would not charge licensing fees for the technology. The remaining funds would come from public and private sources. Maryland requested $1.7 billion in federal funding for the maglev project in 2010, but the Federal Railroad Administration rejected the bid, declaring it “not ready.” Japan has been promoting its maglev and other high-speed-train technology as part of a plan to bolster the nation’s economy, which is the world’s third-largest. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pressed California to choose Japanese companies to build a $68 billion high-speed, non-maglev train system between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Additionally, the country has tried to sell Japanese trains to Texas for a link between Dallas and Houston. Kenichiro Sasae, the Japanese ambassador to the United States, applauded the funding announcement in a statement Saturday. “Working with the United States Government, the State of Maryland and Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail, we will prove that this cutting-edge Japanese technology will be a great asset to the busy Northeast Corridor,” he wrote.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan sits on board a magnetic-levitation (maglev) train at the Yamanashi Maglev Test Track in Japan in June. (Ko Sasaki/For The Washington Post)
The U.S. Transportation Department has awarded nearly $28 million to conduct studies on building a high-speed rail line that would carry passengers between Washington and Baltimore in about 15 minutes, according to Maryland officials.
The money will support private-sector efforts to bring magnetic-levitation trains to the region as part of a larger vision for building a maglev system along the Northeast Corridor.
Maryland’s Department of Transportation and the state’s Economic Development Corporation applied for the federal funds in April, with an understanding that the Japanese government and Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail, a private group, would provide significant investments for the project.
“The ability to travel between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., in only 15 minutes will be absolutely transformative, not just for these two cities, but for our entire state,” Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said in a statement.
Japan is one of the first countries to develop and adopt maglev trains, which use magnetic forces to accelerate trains smoothly at speeds of up to 375 mph.
Hogan and Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn rode Japan’s 27-mile Yamanashi maglev line during a trade mission in Asia this past spring, promising afterward that they would work to bring the technology to the state.
Building a 40-mile maglev line between Baltimore and Washington is expected to cost at least $10 billion.
According to media reports in Japan, the Japanese government has pledged $5 billion in financial backing for a Maryland line, and a Japanese train operator has said it would not charge licensing fees for the technology. The remaining funds would come from public and private sources.
Maryland requested $1.7 billion in federal funding for the maglev project in 2010, but the Federal Railroad Administration rejected the bid, declaring it “not ready.”
Japan has been promoting its maglev and other high-speed-train technology as part of a plan to bolster the nation’s economy, which is the world’s third-largest.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pressed California to choose Japanese companies to build a $68 billion high-speed, non-maglev train system between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Additionally, the country has tried to sell Japanese trains to Texas for a link between Dallas and Houston.
Kenichiro Sasae, the Japanese ambassador to the United States, applauded the funding announcement in a statement Saturday.
“Working with the United States Government, the State of Maryland and Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail, we will prove that this cutting-edge Japanese technology will be a great asset to the busy Northeast Corridor,” he wrote.


Central Japan Railway Co.’s magnetic levitation train running at 311 miles per hour. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg) A small privately owned Washington company is lobbying to develop a high-speed rail system that would take passengers from the District to Baltimore in 15 minutes and to New York in an hour. The Northeast Maglev, a downtown D.C. firm with 30 employees, is working with Central Japan Railway Co. — which operates the Shinkansen bullet train in Japan — to develop a maglev network that would connect Washington and New York, with stops in Baltimore, Wilmington and Philadelphia, including BWI Airport, Philadelphia International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport. Eventually, the company wants to extend the line to Boston. Trains that use maglev technology, or magnetic levitation, typically travel faster than traditional rail — Shanghai’s maglev train runs at an average of at least 139 miles per hour, compared to Acela Express that runs at an average 84 miles per hour. The only commercial maglev lines are in Aichi, Japan, and Shanghai. Maglev vehicles are suspended above the track and use magnetic propulsion. It is not the first time there’s been an interest in building a maglev system in the Northeast, but previous attempts were halted by lack of support from lawmakers and funding shortfalls. In 2001, officials with the Maryland Department of Transportation, the District of Columbia, Baltimore, Baltimore County and the Maryland Transit Administration formed the Baltimore-Washington Maglev Project, which competed for Federal Railroad Administration consideration to develop a 39-mile maglev line linking Camden Yard in Baltimore, BWI Airport and Union Station in D.C. But the project, which in 2007 was estimated to cost $5.1 billion, was cost-prohibitive and lacked legislative support, Maryland Transit Administration spokesman Terry Owens said. Owens said Northeast Maglev has not yet met with anyone at MTA. The Northeast Maglev project is still in its infancy, according to an attorney advising the company on regulatory and governmental issues. A spokeswoman for Northeast Maglev said it is “too early to discuss project details” and declined to comment on potential funding sources or a timeline for the project, saying only that company leaders are meeting with officials. “The Northeast Corridor is an economic powerhouse, but gridlock threatens to constrain growth,” the company said in a statement. “It’s time for America to harness technology that is faster, cleaner and safer ... we believe that as the U.S. looks at transportation solutions

Central Japan Railway Co.’s magnetic levitation train running at 311 miles per hour. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg)
A small privately owned Washington company is lobbying to develop a high-speed rail system that would take passengers from the District to Baltimore in 15 minutes and to New York in an hour.
The Northeast Maglev, a downtown D.C. firm with 30 employees, is working with Central Japan Railway Co. — which operates the Shinkansen bullet train in Japan — to develop a maglev network that would connect Washington and New York, with stops in Baltimore, Wilmington and Philadelphia, including BWI Airport, Philadelphia International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport. Eventually, the company wants to extend the line to Boston.
Trains that use maglev technology, or magnetic levitation, typically travel faster than traditional rail — Shanghai’s maglev train runs at an average of at least 139 miles per hour, compared to Acela Express that runs at an average 84 miles per hour. The only commercial maglev lines are in Aichi, Japan, and Shanghai. Maglev vehicles are suspended above the track and use magnetic propulsion.
The project is unrelated to a proposal by Amtrak to build a high-speed rail system in the region by 2040. Amtrak, which runs the Acela Express, last week released a $151 billion proposal to redevelop and build out a high-speed rail network that would enable travel between Philadelphia and New York in 37 minutes, and between Washington and New York in 94 minutes.
It is not the first time there’s been an interest in building a maglev system in the Northeast, but previous attempts were halted by lack of support from lawmakers and funding shortfalls. In 2001, officials with the Maryland Department of Transportation, the District of Columbia, Baltimore, Baltimore County and the Maryland Transit Administration formed the Baltimore-Washington Maglev Project, which competed for Federal Railroad Administration consideration to develop a 39-mile maglev line linking Camden Yard in Baltimore, BWI Airport and Union Station in D.C. But the project, which in 2007 was estimated to cost $5.1 billion, was cost-prohibitive and lacked legislative support, Maryland Transit Administration spokesman Terry Owens said.
Owens said Northeast Maglev has not yet met with anyone at MTA.
The Northeast Maglev project is still in its infancy, according to an attorney advising the company on regulatory and governmental issues.
“It hasn’t launched all the way yet,” said John Merrigan, who co-chairs the lobbying practice at DLA Piper, one of three lobbying firms Northeast Maglev has hired since March to track legislation impacting magnetic levitation transportation, including the transportation bill President Obama signed July 6. The two other lobbying firms are American Defense International and Commonwealth Research Associates, to whom the company has paid $10,000 and $8,400 in lobbying fees, respectively.
A spokeswoman for Northeast Maglev said it is “too early to discuss project details” and declined to comment on potential funding sources or a timeline for the project, saying only that company leaders are meeting with officials.
“The Northeast Corridor is an economic powerhouse, but gridlock threatens to constrain growth,” the company said in a statement. “It’s time for America to harness technology that is faster, cleaner and safer ... we believe that as the U.S. looks at transportation solutions to meet growing demand, it makes sense to invest in the most advanced technology that is proven and available.”
Northeast Maglev is not affiliated with Maglev Inc., the Pennsylvania company that, prior to declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2011, wanted to develop a maglev train from Pittsburgh International Airport to Greensburg, Penn.
An Amtrak spokesman said he has not seen Northeast Maglev’s plans.
One of the lobbyists affiliated with the project, Chris Brady of Commonwealth Research, agreed to pay $300 last month to settle a complaint brought by a Georgia government watchdog group before the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission.
The watchdog group accused Brady of paying $17,000 for House Speaker David Ralston and his family to take a trip to Europe in 2010 without first registering as a lobbyist in Georgia that year. Brady, whose firm has lobbied for a maglev line between Atlanta and Chattanooga, missed the deadline to file disclosure reports required of lobbyists, the commission found. Brady’s attorney said he agreed to pay $300 to settle the matter, but denied wrongdoing.