Overview of the General Atomics Urban Maglev Technology Development Program

General Atomics is developing Urban Maglev technology sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration and funded under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). The system is levitated, propelled, and guided by electromagnetic forces. Levitation is achieved by using simple, passive permanent magnets arranged in a “Halbach” array configuration. Propulsion, and guidance are achieved by a linear synchronous motor mounted on the track. The uniqueness of the approach is its simplicity, ruggedness, and performance, including 10% grade, 18.3 m (60 ft.) turn radius, one-inch levitation gap, and quiet operation. Use of elevated guideways, coupled with the quiet operation of the system, eliminates the need to tunnel underground for noise-abatement, and can result in significantly lower system costs. We have built full-scale hardware to demonstrate the levitation, propulsion, guidance, and location detection systems. We are currently building a 120 m (400 ft.) test track with a full-scale chassis and power system at General Atomics in San Diego, CA. The chassis and power systems have already been built and are under-going initial testing. The track will be completed for dynamic testing in 2004. This paper reports on the overall program progress to date and description of the planned testing.