Evaluation of Urban Magnetically Levitated Vehicles in Japan

In order to solve some various problems of urban transportation such as traffic congestion, pollution and accidents, various kinds of people mover systems have been developed, and parts of some are in practical use in Japan. Though most people mover systems in existence use rubber tires and wheel guide rollers, there are several problems such as high operating and maintenance costs in comparison with conventional railways. In order to settle these problems, several new transportation systems driven by linear motors are being developed in Japan and are partly in practical use. Generally speaking, linear motor driven systems have magnetic suspensions because of many merits of contactless systems. However, in Japan, many new linear driven systems with contact are being developed. This paper describes some technical characteristics of new urban transportation systems driven by linear motors in Japan with not only magnetically levitated suspensions but also other suspensions such as air or mechanical. Moreover, we denote several evaluation items for urban transportation systems and show the comparison results according to these evaluation indices. Receiving these results, we propose technical evaluation method for new urban transportation systems and show an example to introduce magnetically levitated transportation systems of HSST in new region by using this method.