The Government was tackled over the rejection of proposals for an underground "hover train" network linking northern cities, like that in Shanghai. Stock pic by PA
Source: Yorkshire Post https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/po ... um=twitter Accessed: 2021-06-29
By Rob Parsons
Tuesday, 29th June 2021
Source: Yorkshire Post https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/po ... um=twitter Accessed: 2021-06-29Lady Vere said the Government had "thoroughly investigated" the concept for the North, but added: "We concluded that rail remains the best option for a number of reasons, the most important being that new conventional rail infrastructure can better be integrated into the existing network."
Pressing the minister, Tory peer Lord Moylan, who served as a transport adviser to Mr Johnson when he was London mayor, said: "Maglev is a great British invention increasingly deployed in Asia for high-speed travel. As our world-beating British tunnelling engineers have shown, constructing railways in-tunnel can be cheaper than constructing them on the surface, provided that it stays in-tunnel.
"However, it seems that every proposal for maglev that comes from the Department for Transport is rebuffed.
"Can the minister explain why her department is so wedded to a 200 year-old technology that, when constructed on the surface, can both cost more and be very annoying for local voters?"
Lady Vere said: "We must look at all technologies, and that is precisely what we do. He makes an important point in saying that systems around the world use this, but just one operational high-speed system does so at the moment - the Shanghai City maglev.