Maglev debate goes off the rails

A maglev route is launched in Shanghai in 2003.

Residents near proposed advanced rail line fear radiation

"Maglev lines are a new thing. People have concerns about the construction of the line and long-term impacts on their health, as we believe it might cause severe radiation. We're against it," an anonymous resident of Luosha Lu in Shenzhen, Guangzhou province said.

This resident is not the only concerned local. On July 8, many citizens in Shenzhen gathered in front of the office building of the Shenzhen Metro Company, protesting against a proposal to construct the city's No.8 railway line, which suggested adopting maglev technology, which uses magnets to levitate a train above a track and can produce a certain level of radiation.

Local residents claimed that the radiation caused by the maglev line could cause blood diseases, such as leukemia, and called for the project to be shut down.

The protest was not unexpected. Since the city announced its plan to construct a maglev train line as part of the urban rail system in 2010, disputes over the pros and cons of the maglev train have constantly occurred among experts as well as the public.

The company and leading experts on maglev trains insisted that the low and medium speed of the maglev trains would mean it posed no hazards to people's health, with control and monitoring of radiation levels. But local residents and experts on tunnel and underground traffic engineering claimed the construction of the maglev line, which has no similar precedent in other countries and no national safety standards on radiation levels, would be unsafe for nearby residents and passengers.

The protest ended after the deputy general manager of the company came out and explained the project to the public, in an effort to ease doubts. However, disputes over the feasibility of maglev trains remain.

Fierce opposition

The construction of Line 8 of the Shenzhen rail network was approved by the central government in 2008. Construction on the maglev line, if approved, is due to start in 2015, though at present Shenzhen has just five lines.

To alleviate the traffic pressure, the project, which starts from the International Trade Center and ends at Xiao Meisha station, runs over 24 kilometers.

However, after the Shenzhen Metro Company approached a Beijing maglev company and asked it to conduct a feasibility study into the use of the maglev technology for this rail line, the public began to focus on the safety of maglev trains.

"It is appropriate for the line to adopt low and medium speed maglev technology," according to the feasibility report released by the company.

The report addressed the reliability of the maglev technology, its impact on the environment, energy consumption, radiation issues, and what happens in the event of a loss of operation.

"We can block the electromagnetic radiation caused by the current technology, and the radiation level of the maglev trains is even lower than the traditional railways," said Jian Lian, deputy general manager of Shenzhen Metro Company.

"The speed of the No. 8 rail line is designed to be around 100 to 200 km/h, and its lowest speed could reach within 100 kilometers per hour, which is no different from the designed speed of the current railway trains, so it is safe," Jian said.

But the public remains uneasy. In a 2014 poll carried out by soho.com, a popular Web portal, over 89 percent of 66,387 Net users disapproved of the construction of maglev trains while a mere 10 percent supported it.

Local residents listed the dangers of the radiation of the magnetic fields to prove that long-time exposure to magnetic fields could result in severe diseases. They claimed that surveys in foreign countries revealed that the radiation of the waves has a direct connection with cancer and can induce brain tumors and teenage leukemia.

"People who live along the No.8 railway project should not be used as little white rats, before the safety of the radiation has been tested by practical use," residents said in a online post.

Radiation fears

For a long time, experts in the rail transport industry have waged a tit-for-tat war against each other regarding the use of maglev technology. In November, 2012, leading experts in the traffic industry gathered in Shenzhen, and hotly debated the safety and radiation issues surrounding maglev trains.

Chang Wensen, a professor from National University of Defense Technology, a leading expert on maglev technology, said that the low-and medium-speed maglev trains have adopted the most advanced magnetic technology. This enables the rail tracks and the bottom of the train to shape a closed magnetic field, which would release no radiation outside the magnetic field.

"The terrain in Shenzhen is suitable for maglev route," Chen said, adding that the cost and maintenance fees of maglev trains are lower than those of traditional railways.

Wang Mengshu, an expert on tunnels and underground engineering, takes the opposite view. Wang said there are no national safety standards on electromagnetic radiation to monitor radiation, which casts doubt on the reliability of the feasibility report.

"The maglev train obviously disturbs the magnetic fields of human beings. It is bearable to board a maglev train for a short distance over 10 minutes, but it would cause discomfort to people if they took the maglev train for over 10 minutes," Wang said.

Wang also insisted that the construction and operation costs would be at least double those of the traditional railways and that ticket prices would have to be much higher.

Halting trains

The use of the maglev technology has been fiercely disputed both inside and outside China.

Germany was the first country to make major breakthroughs using maglev technology, but it has never built up any operational maglev train line. In China, progress on maglev rail has been slow.

Shanghai built a maglev line that covered 30 kilometers from the Longyang Road Station to the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. This was the first commercial maglev train line in China, but its incompatibility with other railway lines, high cost and ongoing economic losses have been criticized by the public.

The Shanghai maglev line lost 300 million yuan per year on average from 2004 to 2006, reports said. The loss has shown no sign of declining.

Shanghai previously planned a maglev train to connect Shanghai and Hangzhou, with an investment of 35 billion yuan($5.6 billion) and covering a distance of 150 kilometers. However, the plan was halted due to the strong objections of the residents living along the route.