Engineering company Ricardo will be involved in the development of the final phase of Beijing’s new maglev line. The S1 line will be first in the Chinese capital to operate with magnetic levitation, serving a 10 km route through the western districts of Shijingshan and Mentougou.
This year, the company was appointed as the Independent Safety Assessor of the line’s signalling technology.
Ricardo’s Beijing team will evaluate the design, installation, testing and documentation of the system critical safety components such as the automatic train supervision and protection, automatic train operation, and the computer interlocking subsystem.
“Projects like this show that maglev technology is becoming an increasingly viable option for major international cities like Beijing looking to reduce their reliance on car usage. Alongside conventional steel wheel/steel rail tram and metro systems, this is an area in which Ricardo is ideally placed to assist,” Ricardo CEO Dave Shemmans said.
Initial service trials of the S1 line commenced in the early autumn of 2017. Once launched, services will operate with an initial fleet of ten locally manufactured 6-car maglev trains, each with the capacity for around 1,000 passengers and capable of operating at speeds of up to 80 km/h. At the end of 2016, CRRC has delivered the first maglev train to Beijing. The train, named “Linglong” and developed by CRRC Tangshan Co will run on Line S1.
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