The news of a high-speed maglev design with a planned speed of 600 kilometers per hour is attracting widespread attention. With the recent release of Guangzhou's 2035 comprehensive transportation plan, a grand vision for transportation is gradually revealing its mystery. The plan mentions the construction of the Pearl River Delta hub (Guangzhou new) airport and the addition of the Guangzhou-Zhuhai-Macao high-speed rail and the second Guangzhou-Shenzhen high-speed rail, while also reserving two corridors for the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao high-speed maglev and the Shanghai (Shenzhen)-Guangzhou high-speed maglev.

Guangdong, China's largest province, is sparing no effort to promote the construction of airports, high-speed rails, and "inter-city subways," as well as a comprehensive planning layout for the future transportation pattern. The eye-catching high-speed maglev, hailed as the next generation of transportation, is expected to achieve a staggering design speed of 600 kilometers per hour. It is colloquially known as "super high-speed rail" and symbolizes the direction of future transportation development.

What exactly is the appeal of high-speed maglev? In fact, maglev technology is not an entirely new concept; it has been developed over more than 20 years and is well-known from middle and high school textbooks. The current maglev lines in China include the Shanghai Maglev Line, Beijing Subway Line S1, and the Changsha Maglev Express, most of which are of the medium-low speed maglev type, with a maximum speed not exceeding 430 kilometers per hour.

However, the high-speed maglev in the new plan is set to lead the fastest land transport speeds with a design speed exceeding 600 kilometers per hour, a precedent yet to be seen globally. Current high-speed rail design speeds are about 350 kilometers per hour, with travel time from the North to Guangzhou-Shenzhen already under 7 hours, and about 6 hours from Shanghai to Guangzhou-Shenzhen. Once the high-speed maglev is introduced, it will reduce the travel time between Guangzhou and Shenzhen to Beijing and Shanghai to 2-3 hours, meaning China's four first-tier cities could be closely connected by this high-speed mode of transportation.

In the world-class city clusters of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Greater Bay Area, the realization of high-speed maglev could potentially make a 3-hour commute a reality, consequently causing a disruptive impact on existing modes of transportation like high-speed rails and civil aviation. Apart from drastically improving transportation connectivity efficiency, the application of high-speed maglev technology will also promote the leap in the level of new infrastructure and further boost the comprehensive upgrade of the rail transportation industry.

In the future, similar to the era of high-speed rails, the promotion of high-speed maglev is expected to facilitate the rise of a number of strong transport cities, contributing to the formation of industries worth hundreds of billions or even trillions. Butas a brand-new technology, its construction cost is undoubtedly higher than those of the existing high-speed railways. It's estimated that the cost of high-speed rail is about 117 to 144 million per kilometer, while the cost of high-speed maglev will be more than double that of high-speed rail. Such high construction costs will inevitably affect ticket pricing, and the high-speed maglev's ticket prices could be twice that of high-speed rail tickets, meaning it might not be affordable for everyone.

Therefore, high-speed maglev is a long-term project that not only needs to adapt to the pulse of national economic development but also take into account the existing national transportation network layout. Clearly, different from the high-speed rail's popularization strategy of "connecting every city by high-speed rail," due to the high cost of high-speed maglev, its operation will need a larger passenger flow, indicating it's not suitable for all urban areas. There have been national-level suggestions emphasizing the need to "research and promote the layout of high-speed maglev corridors between mega-cities and the construction of experimental lines." Obviously, only those mega-cities with strong economic strength, large populations, and dense passenger flow are suitable for investing in the construction of a high-speed maglev system. Currently, China has 10 mega city clusters including the widely recognized Beijing-Shanghai-Guangzhou-Shenzhen, Chengdu-Chongqing, Hangzhou-Wuhan, Dongguan, etc., while secondary cities have not been included in this development plan for high-speed maglev.

In today's China, which has become the world leader in high-speed rail development, with high-speed rail mileage accounting for over 70% of the global total and 9 provinces having achieved high-speed rail coverage in all cities, one must ask whether there is still a need to build high-speed maglev? On one hand, high-speed maglev plays the role of filling the speed gap between high-speed rail and civil aviation. While high-speed rail standard operating speeds range from 200 to 350 kilometers per hour, civil aviation flight speeds exceed 800 kilometers per hour, and high-speed maglev is designed to operate at around 600 kilometers per hour, sitting between the two. Currently, the domain of high-speed rail encompasses distances of about 800 kilometers, while distances over 1200 kilometers clearly demonstrate the unique advantages of civil aviation. The emergence of high-speed maglev could potentially change the existing transportation operational landscape.

On the other hand, although China's overall population growth has reached its peak, population movement between major urban clusters and megacities has become increasingly frequent, urgently necessitating more effective transportation modes. Take the highly profitable Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail for example; its passenger flow has reached saturation, thus the construction of a second high-speed railway line between Beijing and Shanghai has been scheduled and construction has commenced. A similar situation faces the main Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong corridor, where a predicted annual passenger flow of 260 million people would result in a shortage of transport capacity of approximately 40 million people. Even though the Greater Bay Area is building a widespread cross-city "subway" network, given the strong expected growth in passenger flow, it seems entirely reasonable to invest in constructing a second high-speed rail or even high-speed maglev route.

One can imagine that in the three world-class urban clusters of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Greater Bay Area, the frequency of business and trade activities will continue to rise in the future. The limitations of travel time and the increasingly saturated passenger volumes of the existing high-speed railways further highlight the strategic value of high-speed maglev. If subways, urban rail transit, and high-speed railways have already realized "city unification" within urban clusters, then the introduction of high-speed maglev could enable a similar effect between these clusters, heralding another giant leap in China's transportation system.

As for which urban cluster will be the pioneer in high-speed maglev projects, it's quite clear that the required high investment implies that only the most economically developed, industrially advanced, and densely populated areas are capable of undertaking this. The country's four major urban clusters, which are also four major transportation hubs—the Greater Bay Area, the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and Chengdu-Chongqing—are all actively engaged in this fierce competition. The Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong maglev project in the Greater Bay Area is likely to take the lead. As early as 2021, Guangdong included six super-corridors in its urban spatial plan for 2035, anticipated to connect the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao high-speed maglev with the Shanghai (Shenzhen)-Guangzhou high-speed maglev gateways.