The rise and fall of new technologies: Maglev as technological substitution?

Since the late 1970s, rail transport has made a comeback with the introduction of highspeed trains. Before then, trains had a speed of only 100–130 km/h. Today trains can achieve regularly three times those speeds and national railway organisations feel the pressure for reorganisation to improve the quality of services. Japan and Europe are the places where the high‐speed rail revolution is taking place. But we also see a tendency to base these high speed line systems on national rail standards. At the same time we observe new developments, which are likely to lead to a technological breakthrough, comparable with the development of the steamship, conventional train or automobile. This new system, called Maglev, is based on the principle of magnetic levitation. More than ever before, the chances of success for this new technology depend on the outcome of competition with improved conventional rail technologies. In this paper the present development of high speed rail systems in Europe, Japan and the United...

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