It is difficult to compare the running costs of a typical conventional rail system with those of the transrapid mainly because of lacking in-service experience with the latter.

There are some indications that the operation costs (not including the wirte-off of infrastructure and vehicle investment) will be lower:

• The levitation technology reduces material wear and thus reduces maintenance of track and vehicles
• For equal (high) speeds, the energy consumption of the transrapid will be lower than that of conventional high speed systems. For different speeds (e.g. 400 km/h for the Transrapid and 330 km/h for a high-speed rail system), the energy consumption of the transrapid will “only” be about 20% higher.
• The Transrapid is well fitted for an automatic operation which would reduce personnel costs

According to the feasibility study commissioned by the German Federal Government on the “Metrorapid” project for a transrapid from Düsseldorf to Dortmund (79 km), the annual operation costs of the system will amount to about 51 million EUR. This includes costs for energy, personnel, maintenance, insurance, administration etc.