Regional and Urban Design Committee

Transrapid test track in Lathen, Germany (now demolished)

To see the future Americans have to travel far. This November it took a junket trip to Japan to hear the whisper of the future in form of a train smoothly gliding along at 315mph. But is the latest incarnation of the idea of importing magnetically levitated trains (Maglev) to North America really the future? Or is it a recycled old hat?

The brave new world of magnetically levitated trains began in 1984 between the two tiny German communities of Dörpen (pop. 4,827) and Lathen (pop. 6,035). For 22 years trains would run with ever increasing speeds along the fully elevated mono rail in circles, for research and for show. Year after year new groups of engineers and politicians would come here to experience the future of high speed "post-rail" transportation as demonstrated by Transrapid. The German manufacturer consortium was the pride of a then divided nation which, divided or united, failed to ever put its own invention into revenue service, even though unification added plenty of room for investments  in rail corridors that hadn't seen improvement in 60 years.