Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department has assessed the potential merits of developing magnetic levitation trains as part of the Government's industrial strategy.

The Department for Transport continually monitors the development of rail technology. The high costs of conventional magnetic levitation trains and their incompatibility with existing rail networks are likely to limit the market opportunities for this technology. We are however also assessing the potential for the development of hyperloop technologies in the UK which may also use magnetic levitation. The Department’s Science Advisory Council intends to publish a paper on hyperloop in early 2017 setting out its position on the technical credibility of the concept and the opportunities it offers to UK industry given our technology and engineering expertise.