UK Ultraspeed

UK Ultraspeed was a proposed high-speed magnetic-levitation train line between London and Glasgow, linking 16 stations including Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and six airports.

The savings in time were possible due to rapid acceleration, new station locations, and greatly simplified loading and unloading procedures.

[6] Alan James, director of UK Ultraspeed, took the opportunity to claim that it was the fastest and safest system in the world.

Shadow transport secretary Chris Grayling returned "positively bouncing with enthusiasm", noting that even at full speed the train was quieter than a Virgin Voyager.

[7] Blair's support led to an official study into the Ultraspeed concept, as well as competing long-distance lines using TGV-like equipment.

[5] This was all taking place just after the well-reported opening of the Shanghai system, and the announcement that the Chinese government was examining a 170 km extension of that line.

[8] Shortly after James' comments on safety, the Transrapid test facility in Emsland suffered the fatal Lathen train collision in late 2006.

[10] When Ultraspeed was being proposed, only two Transrapid tracks existed; the original Emsland test facility, and the 30.5 km (19.0 mi) Shanghai Maglev Train.

Transrapid was also part of a number of other active proposals at the time, notably a 37 km (23 mi) airport link in Munich similar to the Shanghai installation.

The Ultraspeed promoters claimed the cost would be £20M–24.75M per kilometre, about the same as Shanghai's £28M/km, and dramatically lower than High Speed 1's known £46M–48M/km price.

[14][15] As part of the preparation for a major white paper on the topic, in early 2007 the government commissioned Roderick Smith and Roger Kemp to study the Ultraspeed proposal in depth.

In addition to the issues with technical risk and cost estimates, they noted that once other factors were considered a number of the secondary advantages of the system either did not exist or were actually the opposite of those claimed.

However, the reviewers said that the total CO2 emissions of the system, largely due to the coal-based electricity that would provide the majority of the power, were higher than conventional high-speed rail.