Greening grounds Maglev

Glad tidings from the Captain of the Netball Team...

Steven Baker (Wycombe, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment she has made of the potential of magnetic levitation technology for use in the next generation of high-speed trains.

Justine Greening (Economic Secretary, HM Treasury; Putney, Conservative)
Work by the Department for the 2007 White Paper, “Delivering a Sustainable Railway”, found that magnetic levitation technology would be significantly more expensive than high speed rail and would not enable trains to run seamlessly onto existing inter-city routes, serving a wider range of destinations.

The few instances of magnetic levitation systems in use around the world operate on a relatively short point-to-point basis and scaling the technology up to a national network is unproven.

There are no plans to further consider magnetic levitation as an alternative to a high speed rail network.

Good effort.