Germany has decided to suspend the building of a Transrapid rail line linking the southern city of Munich and its airport because of soaring costs, Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said Thursday.
"We had to conclude that plans to construct the Transrapid in Bavaria have failed," Tiefensee told reporters.
The total cost for the construction of the project would have been 3.4 billion euros (5.37 billion U.S. dollars), far surpassing the previously earmarked 1.85 billion euros (2.92 billion dollars),Tiefensee said.
The federal government had pledged up to 925 million euros, the state of Bavaria around 475 million, and rail operator Deutsche Bahn some 185 million, he said.
The Transrapid was developed over the last three decades by Germany's Siemens and ThyssenKrupp. So far, the technology has been used commercially only in China.
Travelling at three times the speed of normal steel-wheel trains, the Transrapid floats on a magnetic field just one centimeter above the track. It has no fuel source on board.
Relevant parties had decided in September last year to launch the building of the 37-km Maglev line in the summer of this year and it had been scheduled to be complete before the opening of the Octoberfest in 2012.
"Today is a bad day" for Germany, a world center for scientific research, Bavaria's premier Guenther Beckstein told reporters.
He had asked the federal government to earmark 1 billion euros (1.58 billion dollars) more for the project, but to no avail.
The train is not only expensive but the fact that it runs on a special line makes it difficult to integrate into traditional rail networks.
Source: Xinhua
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