The China domestically developed maglev train can cover the distance between Abuja – Lagos in just an hour, 21st Century Chronicle reports.
The new train, HTS maglev technology, has a designed speed of 620 kph, according to Southwest Jiaotong University, one of the train’s designers.
According to the culturetip.com, an online tour site, the distance between Abuja and Lagos by road is 536 km (333 miles). It said a trip from Lagos to Abuja by road will take approximately 10 hours 30 minutes.
It takes an airplane about one hour six minutes to cover the distance, which is almost the same speed with new technology.
A Chinese media platform, Xinhua reported that at the launch ceremony, the 21-meter-long silver-and-black locomotive was seen floating slowly along the track.
Experts hailed the key development of HTS technology emerging from lab tests in China.
“Although the theory sounds good, everyone saw it (HTS maglev technology) as a lab toy in the past, without tests in a real situation,” said Deng Zigang, deputy director of the university’s research centre for super-high-speed maglev transport in low-pressure tubes.
China has been a world leader in the construction of high-speed railways. By the end of 2020, the country had 37,900 km of high-speed rail lines in service, the longest in the world, according to China’s railway operator.
Maglev trains, levitated from the tracks and propelled by powerful magnets to avoid wheel-rail friction, are designed to break the speed bottlenecks facing high-speed trains. The country’s first commercial maglev system was put into operation in 2003 in Shanghai.
Involving an investment of 60 million yuan ($9.3 million), the HTS maglev project was jointly developed by Southwest Jiaotong University, China Railway Group Limited and CRRC Corporation Limited.
