MagneMotion Urban Maglev - FTA Final Report

The MagneMotion Urban Maglev System, called M3, is designed as an alternative to all conventional guided transportation systems. Advantages include major reductions in travel time, operating cost, capital cost, noise, and energy consumption. Small vehicles operating automatically with headways of only a few seconds can be safely operated in clusters to achieve capacities of more than 12,000 passengers per hour per direction. Small vehicles lead to lighter guideways, shorter wait time for passengers, lower power requirements for wayside inverters, more effective regenerative braking and reduced station size. The result of the design is a system that can be built for about $25 million per mile, excluding vehicles, stations and land acquisition. The vehicles have arrays of permanent magnets to provide suspension and guidance forces and also provide the field for the Linear Synchronous Motor (LSM) propulsion system. Feedback-controlled currents in control coils wound around the magnets stabilize the suspension and provide active lateral damping. The LSM windings are integrated with the suspension rails and excited by inverters located along the guideway. The vehicle size and maximum speed can be varied over a wide range to accommodate virtually all applications served today by other guided transportation systems.