Travel Agent

I first learned about the MagLev train in Shanghai from my house mate Liu Lin. According to him, it travels at 400km/h from Longyang to Pudong Airport in 7 minutes. My wife confirmed through an article she read from Smile Online – Cebu Pacific’s online magazine, though I can’t find the article now.

I took the MagLev train this afternoon because I will have to pick up my wife in Pudong Airport at 11:45PM today (the flight is too late because it’s a Cebu Pacific flight) and apparently, the 400km/h speed is but a rumor, a press release or any other form of falsities you could think of (and yes, I’m exaggerating). But I was watching the speed meter display inside the train and the fastest constant speed it attained is only 301kp/h. But yeah, the travel only lasted approximately seven minutes.

I noticed a print on the front of the MagLev train ticket which says “30 km 8min.” Assuming the train travels at a constant velocity, the speed is only 225km/h. Though we can’t conclude based from that computation since the train did not travel in constant speed but for approximately 4minutes, the train was at constant speed of 301km/h.

Now let’s talk about the price.

A single trip ticket costs 50 RMB. Round trip tickets are discounted at 80 RMB. That’s only for the ordinary trip. Single VIP ticket costs 100 RMB and 160 RMB for the round trip pass. I took the ordinary and now I don’t know if the VIP trips are of different MagLev trains and may travel in faster speed or they are just the same train but on different cars or areas. Perhaps the VIP have karaoke lounges inside.

If you’re from Shanghai and you want to go to Pudong Airport via the MagLev train, take a subway train line to any subway interchange station line 2 (the green line). Then from subway line 2, go to Longyang station. It’s the second to the last station to the right. Okay, I’m off to see my wife from the airport. I’ll continue this post later…

Update 2008.04.22 0847H: I was updating this entry to say that the MagLev train really can attain the 400+ km/h max speed. In fact, when my wife and I took it from Pudong Airport to LongYang Station, the max speed was 431km/h but only lasted for less than a minute.

All in all, I would say this MagLev thing is nothing but some tourist spot, a tourist attraction, or one of the must sees for foreigners should they be in Shanghai. Why, because the MagLev train only plies between two station – Pudong and LongYang Stations. And that was just 30km distance. Sure, the MagLev technology was only able to have its success it China (Shanghai in particular) but that wasn’t really much useful. It would have been a genuine success if that technology can be translated into a “real” means of mass transportation. A for a MagLev train whose single trip could not even fill a hundred seats, I’m not sure if it’s really a means of mass transportation.

As my Chinese house mate and I agreed upon, the MagLev is nothing but a “SHOW OFF.”