Automated People Mover: a comparison between conventional and maglev systems

An Automated People Mover (APM) is a system used in urban/suburban areas to transport passengers point to point with a high frequency and a reliable service. Although conventional wheel-on-rail/route systems are commonly used in APMs, the application of the magnetic levitation (maglev) technology in this field allows increasing their performance. The maglev vehicle replaces wheels by electro-magnetic systems and levitates on the guideway. The main advantages of the maglev systems are: elimination of wheel and track wear to reduce maintenance, distributed load to reduce guideway complexity and costs, absence of the wheels to reduce noise, to achieve higher grades and curves in a smaller radius, to allow higher acceleration/deceleration and speed, and finally to reduce operating costs. The main features of such subsystems have been described. Then, a preliminary comparison between conventional and maglev APM in terms of power and energy requirements as well as of estimated costs of each major subsystem will be performed. To do that, different simulation models have been realised and considered in this work.