Korea's first magnetic levitation train runs a 6.1 km stretch at an hourly speed of 110 km
Korea’s first magnetic levitation train is now in service on the 6.1 km-long route between Incheon Airport and its neighboring Yongyu island resort town.
The service started on Feb 3, 2016 in what the country said is the world’s second of its kind ever, following Japan’s maiden launch of its own urban-style magnetic levitation train system in 2005.
The train cruises at an hourly speed of 110km, accommodating about 200 passengers on the compartment cars.
It took 9 years and four months and 414.9 billion won in investments to complete the construction of the train line.
As China will soon launch its own magnetic levitation train system, the race will get fiercer for preempting the commercial market.
Korea’s push into the magnetic levitation train system dated back in 1993 when the country had developed the prototype for the magnetic levitation train system to showcase it on the 1993 Daejeon Expo.
The prototype was in the operation at the Expo running at an hourly speed of 30km.
It was in 2006 that the country had rolled out the first commercial model that can run 11 km per hour securing its own indigenous technology on the system
Since then, more of research efforts were put to the feasibility study of the test lane for the train system. In 2012, the test lane was laid out at the Incheon Airport to do the test-run of the train to monitor safety and reliability.
The service is in the operation from 9 am to 6 pm everyday with an interval of 15 minutes.
