Transport System Bögl: a new magnetic rail system

Another day, another gadgetbahn. It's hard to tell from their website exactly what problems they're trying to solve. They seem to have taken all of the worst aspects of monorail style operations, the relative complexity of maglev, and the vendor lock-in of a gadgetbahn and have just run with it.

Off the top of my head:

From their rolling (gliding?) stock concepts it looks like they're targeting the automated metro system market, think London DLR or Vancouver Skytrain. With these system top speed isn't really the issue as you'll be constrained by acceleration and stop spacing. Better gains can be had in this space by building better signalling systems, allowing the trains to run at higher frequencies.

All of their marketing materials show the trains going in perfect straight lines. A lot of other monorail systems are constrained by this, because building switches for monorails is hard. Throw maglev into the mix and I can't imagine the problem gets any easier.

They focus a bit on ease of construction with the elevated rail segments being made of pre-cast concrete sections. I'm faily certain any modern elevated train guideway is also made of pre-made sections on a production line. They're trying to sell normal as some kind of innovation.

All the usual gadgetbahn things seem to apply as well. TSB goes bust? Good luck getting new rolling stock. Want to integrate this service with existing stations and track? Nope, it's all bespoke. Want to get rolling stock from a different supplier that can meet your local needs better? Good luck with that one. Nobody else buys this system, so it remains expensive forever? Sucks to be you.

The question in my mind is just: if not for higher speeds, why should you build a maglev line instead of a conventional (high speed / regular) train line? IMHO the other purported advantages are not really convincing - it may be a little bit quieter, but the "flexible track routing" sounds very unconvincing: at ground level you would have to fence off the track, so in an urban setting it would probably end up on stilts most of the time. And if you consider that, phrases like "Visually appealing track route for urban use without overhead lines" sound a bit ridiculous - is a concrete guideway on concrete stilts really more visually appealing than tram (or train) rails with overhead line? (In case anyone is wondering: Germany has the luxury problem of having all other cables - power, telecom, etc. - 99% underground, so they can debate the aesthetic impact of overhead lines of trams. Not an issue in most other countries.)

Maglev has some advantages for high speed operation: less rolling resistance at speed (but worse in slow sections - while not rolling resistance, at low speed they are not as efficient), and less track maintenance. Problem is until you get to high speed those advantages are not worth it, and when you do air resistance is very expensive and so you need a lot more riders or a high ticket price.

In the end maglev isn't worth it. It is only marginally faster than regular rail, and a lot slower than flying. You can bring a few cities just outside of regular rail range into train range, but if you just let those people fly you overall have a cheaper system.

Sticking to standard rail means that you can share track with other service. While this isn't easy (you need a lot of people in the office ensuring the schedule works) the options make it well worth it. Even if you only share rail overnight when you are running less service, 24 hour service is something all cities should have on all lines.

I wish they would sell standard systems. If it is just concrete we need more competition bringing costs down.

Standard not only means you won't get an orphan system, but it also means you as a city can order from anyone. If the company you normally order from is busy with other orders you can buy from someone else when you have need.

Standard means as a manufacture you can afford to invest in more jigs. Jigs are very expensive to make, but they decrease the cost of each whatever built with them. As such the more customers of the same thing the more jigs are worth investing in. Every change the jigs cannot handle is additional cost. (some jigs are adjustable, so within limits you could do things like non-standard wheel gauges - you still shouldn't but you could)

Not something to get excited about because maglev doesn't solve any of the real problems trains have in the real world.