The municipal government of Shanghai is considering plans to build a low-speed magnetic levitation rail line linking an under-construction deepwater port in Nanhui District with the site of the 2010 World Expo, an official with Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Company said yesterday.
The company will begin by building a 1.5-kilometer-long pilot line in the southwest of Coastal New Town, which is a part of Shanghai's Yangshan Deepwater Port.
The pilot project is expected to cost 150 million yuan (US$18.52 million) and the train can run to a top speed of 100 kilometers per hour. Traditional light rail lines have a top speed of 80 kilometer an hour.
"The new line will facilitate residents in the new coastal township who travel to downtown," an official surnamed Chen with the company's business operation department told Shanghai Daily yesterday.
He said the low-speed maglev will cost far less to build per kilometer than the rapid maglev line that serves the Pudong International Airport.
He said the low-speed line will cost about 100 million yuan for each kilometer, about one-third the price of the current maglev. He couldn't say how much a kilometer of traditional light rail line costs to construct.
Chen said a test line is needed as the low-speed maglev uses different technology than the existing line. He refused to say if the new line will be completely Chinese built, or if engineers from Germany will work on the project as they did on the existing maglev.
"The low-speed maglev is an ideal choice to solve the city's inner-township traffic problems," said Cai Yifeng, a city planner with the Shanghai Transportation Planning Institute.
"It's possible that the city will plan more low-speed maglev lines in the city's suburban districts," he said.
An area of 5.28 square kilometers has been rounded up for construction of Expo pavilions between the Nanpu and Lupu bridges, mostly in Pudong. The low-speed maglev technology is also being developed by the United States and Japan.
(Shanghai Daily October 25, 2005)
