A 2,300 mph rail link from Britain across the Atlantic to the U.S. could be built by 2030. The undersea link would take just half an hour to get from New York or Boston to Liverpool or Bristol.
Engineers say the technology already exists to build such a supersonic rail link and prototypes are already being built in Japan. Frank Davidson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says it could replace air travel. Davidson was involved in the Channel Tunnel project that connects England and France, known as the ?Chunnel.?
He now says that boring a tunnel underneath the Atlantic Ocean would be too expensive and ?old-fashioned.? Instead, he suggests building be a floating submerged tube anchored to the sea bed with cables. Magnets would levitate the train and friction would be eliminated by maintaining a vacuum inside the tunnel, allowing the train to reach supersonic speeds. He claims the link would be safer than conventional trains because there is no chance of derailment.
?The increase in recent years in the amount of transatlantic air traffic shows how great the market is, and technically it?s feasible,? says Davidson. He is now forming a team of experts to draw up more detailed plans.
In the future, those of us who live in the Northeast could drop over to England for lunch and be home for dinner.
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