As one of last official actions, former Minister of Transport Manfred Stolpe brought onto track the Transrapid Advancement Program for system technics on August. 19th, 2005. This yield for Siemens AG, ThyssenKrupp AG and Transrapid International contracts with a value total amount of 113 million Euros. Additional, 31 million Euros of subsidies had been provided for the development of a new vehicle type, which will be optimized for den short-haul transport. the domain of system technics contains the development of lower-cost guideway carriers, from which two prototypes will be tested on the Transrapid Test Facility Emsland (TVE) from the end of June. The contrucion of the succeeding vehicle of the Transrapid 08 has saved sustainable jobs at ThyssenKrupp Transrapid GmbH for a total of 204 employees at Kassel and Munich for the next time.
Meanwhile, the Transrapid 09 could "celebrate wedding". This reported the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine on June, 8th, 2006. At this in so-called event during vehicle construction, the 70 feet long wagon-body of first vehicle section was touched down onto the portal frame for levitation with the prensence of employees and invited guests. The Transrapid 09 wil be tested from the beginning of april 2007 at the TVE.
The new properties of Transrapid 09 were presented by Luitpold Miller (Thyssen Krupp Transrapid GmbH) during the Transrapid specialists conference 2004 at Dresden. It will have wider access doorways and an aisle with a wide of 3.3 feet with four seats for each lane. For residents nearby the track the vehicle will be more quiet by 2 to 3 decibels. The reason is, that the vehicle will have no longer ways for pantographs because of a contact-free power supply for speeds below 62 mph. The operating company of a maglev line will gain a better profitability by an increase of transport capacity, higher reliability and lower mainenance cost.
The new vehicle type will also have characteristics from construction to make it more compliant with collisions. A new structure of bow will be intergrated, which can reduce the kinetic energy downto an uncrtitical value in the scenario of impact by a fallen tree or a 100 pound heavy stone onto the guideway. In the case of small stones onto the guideway a solution for the vehicle will be prepared together with the Technical University of Dresden, which will prevent from vehicle damages in the underfloor area.