Maglev - Significant Incidents

Significant Incidents

There have been two incidents involving fires. The Japanese test train in Miyazaki, MLU002, was completely consumed in a fire in 1991. As a result of the fire, political opposition in Japan claimed maglev was a waste of public money.

On 11 August 2006, a fire broke out on the commercial Shanghai Transrapid shortly after arriving at the Longyang terminal. People were quickly evacuated without incident before the vehicle was moved down line about 1 kilometer to avoid smoke filling the station. NAMTI officials toured the SMT maintenance facility in November 2010 and learned that the cause of the battery fire was "thermal runaway" in one of the battery trays. As a result of these findings, SMT secured a new battery vendor, installed new temperature sensors and insulators, and redesigned the battery trays to prevent a re-occurrence of the event.

On 22 September 2006, a Transrapid train collided with a maintenance vehicle on a test/publicity run in Lathen (Lower Saxony / north-western Germany). Twenty-three people were killed and ten were injured; these were the first fatalities resulting from an accident on a maglev system. The accident was caused by human error; charges were brought against three Transrapid employees after a year-long investigation.