Slashdot Mirror
By Road and Rail?
CygnusXII writes "Now this is a novel approach to Dual Mode Transportation. This is an interesting and refreshing approach, that could revolutionize the transportation industry. BladeRunner Dual Mode Transport, or see the main web page. The innovative vehicle will run on road as well as rail. It is as applicable to freight as to passenger transport. Branch-line infrastructure costs could be at least halved because signalling and points could be largely, if not totally, made redundant."
Did Alienware have something to do with its design? Where's the LCD's and cold cathode tubes?
I am sure you in America are all, as Linus Torvalds says, litigious bastards. There is movie by name of Blade Runner as well. Good try, but development required yet to do is.
Read journal when you are not understand
It had better do either form quickly, or it will be by the wayside.
~S
...looking through their website, everything is cartoons and toy models. The colour scheme doesn't help make this look anything more than playtime-fantasy-imagination-happy-fun-hour either.
Get on a train, and then switch to a bus. Its simpler, cheaper, and the system is already in place. The practical applications of this idea seem rather flimsy.
Its already been done.
Without rails.
I can't exactly see the railroad companies being eager to let these on their rails. And who pays for the cleanup when one of these bails - the operator, the company that owns the rails or some insurance company that is supported by a federal government?
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
Really I don't see any advantages to this idea. From a consumer standpoint it's not much different from a normal bus unless you happen to also be going on a long train ride. I'm not sure how well devoloped the British rail system is but hardly anyone in the US uses them. Specialized markets like bus (short range travel) or train (long range) will most likey be cheaper than anything like this which tries to move in on two areas at once. The duel logistical costs will almost certainly drive up the prices to uncompedative levels.
how about inventing some thing called a BUS. maybe add some of those fancy rail wheels too!
"Hello, my name is Rick Deckard and I'll be your steward this afternoon..."
Honestly, if Darryl Hannah is on board, I'll take this bladerunner thing anywhere.
Well, I guess now we know what would happen if Optimus Prime and Astrotrain had a baby together...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
I know a little about the railroads and they'll never let this thing on their tracks. They are absolutlely paranoid about safety and the idea of semi's moving onto and off of their mainline tracks would be totally unacceptable.
Here's an example. Another parallel-running railroad has a damaged track and they need to run on another railroad's track for a distance. What does the other railroad require? That at least one of it's employees ride along as a "pilot". In addition, steep fees are assessed the other railroad to use it's tracks.
Cute models and a hopeful business plan are nice, but it's just not going to happen in the US.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Does it come with Harrison Ford?
webpage
It's far too ugly. Nobody'll ride it. Neat idea, let down by overenthusiastic designers wanting something futuristic.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
How many Bladerunner jokes do you think there will be in this article's discussion? I'll be taking all bets. Also, what percentage do you suppose will break off into discussions about the differences between Bladerunner and Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"?
The Norfolk Southern railroad has used a variation of this idea for years in their Triple Crown Service.
Jonathan B.
Color me unimpressed. Specially modified "dual mode" pickups and construction equipment roll up and down the train tracks outside my work all the time. The supposed breakthrough of providing propulsion through contact between the road wheels and the rail isn't even new. That's how they work. The only thing special about this is that they're proposing to move people and freight using dual-mode vehicles. Something tells me this has been considered and rejected before.
Innovation is A Good Thing, but this project has all the complexities and drawbacks of both systems. The more components something has, the more likely it is to break.
Plus the main benefit of rail is that you know exactly where everything is supposed to be. The signalmen are not going to want this thing wrecking their entire schedule because it's stuck on a minor road doing 15mph behind Granny Betty.
--
By being able to change from rail to road transit, the dualmode vehicle can go off rail and steer past another vehicle or obstruction on a tramway.
Wwwaaait a second... You can't be serious! You're telling me this bus-train will leave the tracks, get past another train, and the get back on the railroad?
I don't know how railroads are built over there, but where I come from you don't have roads going immediatly on the side of tracks. I mean, most times the tracks were built in the countryside, and have grass and trees all around them..
They've had vehicles equipped with this for decades on all the local train tracks. Typically it's a pickup truck used for railway maintenance. The only potential new thing is the use of this on non-maintenance vehicles as a means of long-distance consumer/commercial transportation.
A quick google search returned this page which looks about the same as what these dual-mode vehicles look like.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
They can use it for my new upcoming show Super Train/Bus....
William Shatner will be the conductor/bus driver
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
I would love to see how this flies in Canada with the railroad system here. They don't like to share their railroads with anyone (ask the shortlines if you doubt this) and one little secret they rather not let be known is they hate transporting two things: Grain and People. Of course their PR department begs to differ.
But this would be an absolutely brilliant thing in Western Canada in places like Saskatchewan where horrible roads have made travelling by vehicles dangerous. Send these things by rail a large chunk of the distance to a location like Eastend for example, and they can get off and drive the rest of the distance to wherever they need be.
A track motor car is an automobile that has an additional set of wheels to allow it to drive on train tracks. This technology was commonly known in the rail industry in 1957, so there's nothing new about it.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
already exist, albeit with a less classy look than a tupperware tub-shaped bus.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They've been promising us those for years, and we are still closer to the Flintstones than the Jetsons.
you have a dual purpose buss rolling along a rail route at, ummm, what, 80kmph? It weighs, what? 10 tons? 20 tons? Then right behind it is a kilometer long train full of, oh, I dunno - NAPTHA - that's roaring along at what?140kmph? ANd it weighs how many hundreds of tons? And takes how long to stop?
And then Brer Rabbit pulls the STOP AT NEXT CORNER pull tab in the dual purpose bus, and while he's getting his geriatric bones off the bus, everyone is sighing and wondering WHEN THE HELL HE'S GOING TO GET THE HELL OFF THE BUS. And as he ever so slowly mosies off the bus BLAMMO! Hit from behind by a train full of naptha.
The thing goes up like a tactical nuke.
This idea of a dual purpose bus is dumb dumb dee dumb, dumb dee dumb dee dumb dee dumb.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Yes, you might be right...
And if one adds bufferring at the entrance to the rail he will definitely lose the public transportation side.
Paul B.
Not hard since Jessy and the boys/gals did this on Monster Garage a few week back. As stated the power comes from the tires runing on the railes while the Train wheels guide it.
Think they did is in Lethal Weapon 3.
If this thing was automated you might run into some problems, but then again it could be worse or just annoying.
I also seen several ideas on regular busses being fitted with guide systems so that could be driven without steering in between concrete guiderails. The advantage? It would require only track not a full road. The "hole" in the middle would make watering a lot lot easier while also leaving the area greener (and stop passenger cars from driving accross buslanes). At the same time the busdriver has less to concentrate on.
This idea seems more aimed at existing tracks. Plenty of places in the world where the old local railroad never been pulled up after the line was cancelled that could use the "faster" route for rural lines. I personally travelled by bus along a previous railroad route. Or rather the bus detoured a lot to zigzag accross highways while passing villages that if it had been following the railroad it could have served. I know because the railroad is used as a museum and the historical steam train journey is shorter then the bus journey.
So I do think the idea got some merrit, just not for freight. No big operator of a railroad is going to allow a vehicle like this. The biggest problem on the highspeed networks (where you need the signalling to be able to drive insanely fast in the worst of weather, old dutch commericial had a race driver boasting he could beat the speed limit in thick fog. He was sitting in a train :p ) is the number of vehicles that can be fitted. Better to run a few big trains then try to fit countless tiny busses on your major lines.
Since old rural lines tend to run from city center to village center a truck would have little point going there.
So a nice idea to breathe some life back into old rural lines without all the problems of busses (busses often don't really "fit" onto rural roads wich are often not designed for fast local traffic).
But as I said I seen this kinda thing before. About the closest I seen in practice is de "noord-zuid-as" bus "road" that operates in Amsterdam around the airport. Wich is a normal bus but a bit longer and drives on its own concrete road bypassing other traffic.
In Arnhem there is a trolley bus that can more easily leave the electric grid it is usually connected to by carrying its own generator. Allowing clean silent transport in the city but even more room to manouver then a normal trolley bus (they got tiny generators making off grid travel slow and noisy).
One thing I got a problem with however is their boasting about braking distances. Trains brake a lot slower and this is a good thing. People walk in a train, last thing you want is to stop so sudden all the people end up in the first carriage. Busses have a slight advantage that if they have an accident then it tends to be with passenger cars meaning they sorta just keep going. Fast braking with all your passengers loose is not a good thing. There been a few accidents with busses and lorries and the results are people dying at slow speeds. Unless this thing enforces the use of seatbelts they better make sure that emergency stop is not used.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I might be wrong (didn't RTFA), but does this really seem viable?
I mean you take a train sized vehicle off tracks and put it on the road, and there's all sorts of trouble. Most roads are rated to handle a specific weight vehicle. I mean you wouldn't even be able to navigate train sized vehicles on any street except the widest straightest ones.
Then you look on the other side, what if the train-car thing is smaller? Then there's no point! The whole attraction of trains is the amount of stuff they can carry compared to trucks. If people want a "smaller than train" vehicle, they'll hire a big truck!
I hope I'm wrong, but I see this going down the same path as that tourbus car that can also act as a boat.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
The only reason why rail travel is failing in the US is because it is publicly funded--meaning, it recieves little public funds.
Airlines, which are not publicly funded, recieve *more* public funds. (bailouts)
Wake up.
They would NEVER let anyone other than a locomotive engineer, making that sort of obscene salary, drive one of these things without implementing a union strike, and making it significantly unprofitable for railroads to use.
It's a nice idea, certainly, but thanks to the choke-hold that the BLE and UTU have on railroads, it'll never (profitably) happen.
Apparently, this author has never seen a "container". They've been around for what... 30 years? 40 years? The go on tractor trailers, ships, and rail. They're self-contained, cheap, and the infrastructure for quick switching of them from one mode of transport to another is already there. Freight is already past these little cartoons. Whether there's any need for passenger transport that's dual mode is another question entirely.
If used for cargo, it's going to be far less efficient than to just use a locomotive, because of the savings in doing things in quantity.
If used for passengers...wait, why WOULD you want to use it for passengers? It's a bus, that can go on railroad tracks. If you're going long-distance, you could just go on the highway instead, and go faster! For short distances, why would you not use a normal bus (at a fraction of the cost) or a car?
Completely, and totally, pointless. Like those plans for strapping wings onto small cars.
The cars could have smallish batteries that allow for short range driving under human control off of the tracks to/from your final destination (they would recharge from the grid and would run under fully automatic control while on the tracks). In urban settings, you might always be less than 1 mile from the nearest track on-ramp, so range wouldn't be a issue. For long drives in the boondocks, a small trailer or module with a gasoline or diesel engine could be attached to create a hybrid vehicle.
People would punch in their destination at the start of the trip, and the central control system would schedule the entire trip ahead of time, thus avoiding all traffic jams (barring software bugs). If the system lacks the capacity to instantly add the trip, it could make a reservation and tell the rider to chill out and get something done before starting; this would be much better than sitting in traffic.
What if you need to haul cargo? You might check out a virtual trailer at the lumber yard that's programmed to follow a few feet behind your vehicle. Unload it, guide it back to the on-ramp, and then it automatically returns to the store. Or, if you move a lot of stuff, you could buy your own trailer(s); you could make a whole train if you want.
The vast majority of standard truck and train cargo is comprised of packages small enough to fit in these smallish vehicles. Large numbers of them could automatically move most cargo around the country when traffic is otherwise low. This could save a lot of money on labor, but current truckers would not be pleased.
Of course, the Denver airport baggage handling system fiasco demonstrates just how hard something like this would be to implement. However, I think that it's still worth thinking about ways to improve over our current choices of wasteful overpowered, oversized automobiles and inconvenient slow public transportation (which is also wasteful because of its low average load factor).
What if you really just like to drive? I think that the freed-up Interstates could be reallocated as amusement parks. Remove all speed limits and rent out Ferraris and Porches for high-speed joy riding.
Read Friday's Wall Street Journal. There's a major article on serious problems plaguing Union Pacific. The short of it:
Pro: This dual-purpose truck would eliminate many of the problems rail carriers face, eg. crippling inefficiency in forming long trains together at various rail yards, and "last 100 miles" solution to get to the loading dock.
Cons: -> ALL of Union Pacific's tracks converge into one track for much of the midwest. They have serious logistical problems because of it. The WSJ article pointed out that frequently trains have to pull onto a siding somewhere in the middle and idle for an hour to let three westbound trains pass them before they can get back on track to continue eastward. They can lay more track, but it would require astronomical expenditure in an era of fierce trucking competition. Said WSJ article also pointed out that Union Pacific's average coast to coast speed dropped to 21 MPH, down 3 MPH from a year ago.
Man. People always forget that technology is the tail. Economics is the dog.
By the way - the few remaining competitors to Union Pacific are in relatively the same poor shape. One gets the feeling that rail in the US is maintained solely to service manufacturing that requires massive tonnage of raw materials moved about and strategic military materiel movement in event of another WW II level conflict.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Just take your car on the train.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
A good rule of thumb for stopping distance is roughly 1 meter per kph in daytime, about 1 1/4 at night; I've heard that at 80kph (which is exactly 50mph for those of us in the States) the distance is about 81 meters (about 245 feet) and at night it's about 95m (about 300 feet).
Not a chance. You don't know anything about railroads, do you? They already thought of this.
Every railroad operates on a "block" system. This is an interlock designed so that only one rail vehicle may enter an area of track at a time. At the start of each block is a red / green signal and either a speed limit sign or an automated transponder to tell the operator the maximum speed limit for the block they are about to enter. The area of a signal block is something large enough for a train to come to a complete stop, or if necessary, when a train enters a track the signal for the block it is in and the block before it (to allow for any train following it) become red. The faster trains run in an area the larger the block is (or the more preceding blocks are also interlocked). Once a train enters a block, the signal behind it at the entrance to that block turns red and stays red until they enter a new block or change to a different track. It may also cause the transponder in the block behind it to order approaching trains to reduce speed in case they get to their block before they are clear so that they won't have trouble slowing down if necessary. Only once it is completely clear of a block will the signal for that block turn green again. A train operator who sees a red signal will stop their train and not enter the block until it turns green, same as you will stop at a red light when operating a motor vehicle on a street.
An automated train will warn the operator that the next block is occupied and if he fails to bring the train to a stop and crosses the red signal anyway, it will trip the emergency brakes and the train slams to a stop. This is why it's said when a rail engineer runs a red signal he "tripped a signal." If the engineer enters a block at a speed faster than the transponder it will either apply braking or give a warning then trip. The rail system is designed to prevent this sort of thing from happening. This system is also in place in the event of rail fissures, there is a small electrical current running along the rail, if any rail comes loose, it breaks the connection and turns the block red so a train can't enter it, or possibly opens an earlier switch so trains can be routed around the block, I'm not exactly sure.
I do know that rail systems are specifically designed to prevent this sort of thing in the absence of negligence or intentional misconduct. If a train operator ignores signals in some cases they may be able to run red lights (on non-automated trains) but the scenario you describe can't happen except by intentional misconduct or flagrant negligence. Besides that
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
There are places that this would be a hit.
I'm in Georgia and there are a huge number of rail lines in use for moving agricultural products around. Most people don't notice or mention the trains at all anymore (except maybe at a murmur). But there are many lines still around that are in use and many that have only been out of use since the train companies started downsizing in the eighties due to better roads and cheaper truck shipping costs undercut their monopolies.
Rails stretch to the more remote parts of Georgia which are barely touched by commercial air. Though in replacement and downsizing theres still a large rail infrastructure that goes to Atlanta suburbs and so forth. The problem is that the roads have become the dominant and unasailable mode of transport here. There are many places that air, river, and rail will not get you even if they are less expensive and with less impact on the environment.
Imagine a shuttle service on these dual mode transports that can take people from Augusta to Marietta (probably for some religious or S&M convention). Rail could get you most of the way there (and at one fifth of the fuel cost of bus traffic) while the final legs would have to be taken on road.
Athens has a van shuttle service that goes to the Hartsfield airport in Atlanta on a regular basis. Many people take it because it will get them to Atlanta without a car and they can ride the MARTA train system around Atlanta. The dual mode vehicle, variable destinations of certain passengers, and fairly regular schedule would be a purpose for these vehicles.
Heck, even Atlanta's Metro transit system (MARTA) could strongly benefit from these vehicles. Right now they have a limited fleet of busses and an electric heavy rail system with a very limited set of destinations. While it would take major restructuring and expense, a hybrid rail/bus system would be very beneficial. Being able to offer. It might be a scheduling nightmare, but having recently gone to San Francisco and seen what a well run mass transit system can do I fully believe they need to start over on MARTA anyway.
Roads are the only growing, funded, maintained transportation system in Georgia. A hybrid vehicle that allowed use of the extensive rail infrastructure in this state could be a major boost for mass transit.
Don't use a comma to separate a subordinate clause from a main clause, except in cases of extreme contrast.
BladeRunner Dual Mode Transport, or see the main web page.
The first clause needs a verb badly. Adding "It's called" to the beginning of the sentence might be a good start.
After riding the Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited, I would like to say one thing...
Union Pacific blows.
I hope they go bankrupt.
Same goes to CSX for screwing up the Lake Shore Limited when I was coming home for Thanksgiving.
The tractor/trailer concept is new, as far as I know, but there are already cars with both regular and railroad compatible wheels. Just drive over the railroad, drop the train wheels, and go.
From the atricle it seem that the car will drive on the rail tracks using its own wheels. Well fine, what will then prevent it from driving off the rail track if driver fails to execute the turn correctly, or blinks, or drifts off a bit, or one of the tires blows up? At least those specially modified pickups that run along railways for maintenance purposes have rail stablelizers; BladeRunner have none.
How would a magnetic rail be better/worse to do this with?
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
Holy locomotion, Robin, look in the review mirror! If it wasn't bad enough having a sixteen wheeler up your tailpipe, now we've got to endure freight trains up our ass! I sure hope I don't have to hit the brakes!
When I studied transportation managemant at university 35 years ago a professor talked about these wild ideas. The "socialists" in class got excited. At the end he said "the car is the best form of transportation yet invented." "Left-wing" students looked glum, while the rest of us left class with a smile on our faces.
All this will do is combine the worst of both worlds. Traffic from the road way and being on A FUCKING track.
honestly, i'm being kind when i declare this particular invention a complete POS - piece of sh1t.
why?
this vehicle tries to mix the best of inter-urban mass transportation (which will accept as being rail) with the best of intra-urban transportation - the car. but the failure is that you have a stack of passengers all seeking particular - rather than common - destinations.
good effort, but not really the solution, which is a system of inter-urban (rail) transportation with intra-urban individualized personal transportation (something electrically run annd commonly owned, like Amsterdam's public and freely interchangeable system of bicycle sharing, but with high-tech golfcarts.)
This is certainly not new news. Similar vehicles were in use in the 1960s in Germany. The whole concept of putting a bus on rails, i.e. building a light-weight DMU with bus components, isn't exactly new either..
I'm not a litigious bastard yet am an American. Please, let us refrain from blanket stereotypes.
I want to see car trains along major long-distance highways. They'd ferry parked cars along heavily trafficked arteries. That would reduce the tremendous waste of commuter traffic on local streets.
For example, the shortest road across Brooklyn, from Manhattan to Long Island, is about 10 miles on Atlantic Avenue. It runs from a major confluence of 10 subway lines, a commuter rail, the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, a dozen bus lines and a water taxi, out to two major highways and JFK international airport. But it's a local street, with cross traffic, stoplights and turns - so it takes about 45 minutes for each of the literally hundreds of thousands of commuters to drive each way, each day. Under it, and a block over, run 4 subway lines and a pair of commuter rail lines.
I'd like to drive up a ramp, filling up a railcar, and parking, as the railcar drove away from the downtown terminal headed to the airport. And the same coming the other way. Railcars would leave continuously, as they filled, with a parking lot to accumulate extra arriving cars as railcars departures are occasionally delayed. Another lot at the end would accomodate extra cars accumulating when the exit highways are backed up. That start and end capacity would also allow railcars to be staggered on the existing rail lines, allowing existing rail traffic to share the lanes in the loop.
A cartrain trip would take 15 minutes. Drivers could stay in their parked cars, but would be required to reenter their cars for departure by at latest 5 minutes before arrival. A fare of 2 dollars each way might even get people to carpool more, especially if carpool lanes were available leaving the exits. The drive time would be predictable, allowing less time alloted to the entire trip. The stressful drive across Brooklyn would be removed, benefitting the drivers and the Brooklynites along the way. Local congestion would be relieved as much as the commuters would be accelerated. Accidents, pollution, road and car wear, and fuel consumption would plunge. And an underutilized transit resource would be used properly, rather than laying idle under a 10-mile traffic jam. All aboard!
--
make install -not war
I assuming this is being presented a new idea, since it is called "novel". Unfortunatley vehicles for trail and road have existed for years. Although only for specially licensed people who had a reason for doing it. --tarballedtux
I've seen a lot of people panning this idea as completely unfeasible, but I think they're overlooking some potential here. For instance, in Atlanta they are looking to create an beltline of railway circling the city. They would use existing tracks that originally served as a trolley system. The problem is there are portions of the proposed route that seem problematic. In some places, there are slight gaps between the existing railines. Other rails are used by commercial rail periodically. This transport vehicle would help solve those problems. I would imagine there are other locales that would benefit from a machine like this. In fact, it kind of reminds me of the bus system they have in Curitiba--but with rail capability!
harmonious design
... and I floored it.
piss me off. You're just like the longshoremen of Los Angeles harbor. The whole country is racing to the bottom income wise and will come back up from there after things settle out globally. Your unions WILL break. It happened with the grocery unions in california and it will happen with the others. It's not like trains could not be remote controlled and automated with computers. It would be trivial. It's really ridiculous how much you guys are making. It makes me sick.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
The stopping distances quoted above are for automobiles on dry pavement. Trains take quote a bit more distance
150-car freight train stopping distance
30 mph =3,500 feet or 2/3 of a mile
50 mph =8,000 feet or 1 1/2 miles
8-car passenger train stopping distance
60 mph =3,500 feet or 2/3 of a mile
79 mph =6,000 feet or 1 1/8 miles
(Data from various Operation Lifesaver websites...)
The Adelaide O-Bahn has been around for years, going on the road in the inner city but gliding around on tracks at over 100km/h on tracks to destinations.
It's supposedly (according to their advertising) the fastest bus service in the world, as well as extremely cost-efficient. I think that it's fun as well and a great tourist attraction!
how do i get a job driving a locomotive? what training do you need? i take it they rarely get hired?
good political satire
I can see Mad Max Rockatansky commandeering one of these on the Australia's National Highway.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
Micromaning trains is easy, but when the AI starts taking shortcuts off the rail onto side streets and beating my production times, I think I'm going to retire stock in T3H TR41N TR4X0RZ (my virtual rail company).
I thought this is what containerization was for, so you could transport freight using generic trucks and trailers on road and rail.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Who'll drive it? Two separate workforces of rail drivers and road driers? Not likely.
Well, I wouldn't ride it if the driver is NOT an experienced truck driver.
And I wouldn't ride it if the driver IS a typical cowboy-aggressive U.S. trucker.
They say their system reduces rail wear, because of the way in which it corners. Rail maintainence should be reduced to once every 25 years - incredible!
Why wouldn't regular trains be able to use the same system to reduce rail wear.
AC
Interesting that both products originate in the UK where - because of short distances - rail is not generally economical for anything other than long-distance freight and commuter passenger traffic.
Another consideration on this new design, where it appears that it is expected that the same driver will operate it both on rail and road, is will it be economical to train (and pay!) drivers to be qualified both as Class 1 HGV (to use on road) and as train drivers?
maybe couple this with the adaptive scheduling algorithm to allow all sides of an intersection to travel through it at once, for ultra efficient, highly versatile light rail through cities?
You know, where all the cars go on a special highway that is automated, allowing the drivers to kick back and relax as they move at much higher speeds because of the computer control.
I mean, I'd still require that I be able to take manual control of my vehicle off that track, but it would be great if I could take a car that I owned, and just set it on cruise control to work every morning while I got in a little bit more sleep, or brushed and shaved (without driving, unlike some people these days) or talked on my cell phone, or ate breakfast and read the paper.
Wasn't there something being tested on the West Coast that was similar to that? By Toyota or Honda or something?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
A variation of this concept could be used to extend (unlimited) the range of electric vehicles. If the rails were electrified, electric only powered freight movers would use that power to move long distances. Then at their destination could use battery power to move locally. The batteries would be recharged to their optimum capacity using the rail power during the long haul rail portion of the trip.No need to plug in overnight anywhere, or exchange batteries ever.
Fuck the people trying to fight it!
It seems like a lot of the rebuttals are based upon the logistic or bureaucratic blocks to running this on current railways. I think that this, and new passenger-only railways along the interstate highways, is just what the USA needs. It has a lot more potential than just adding another regular lane.
Unless you could couple a load of the trailers together it is of no use for freight. The main benefit of Railfreight is the fact that you can move a lot at once; thousands of tonnes of train at a time. You can already split trains up and send them down branch lines. What limits the usefulness is the fact that sub-container sized freight has not been a popular commodity for Rail for morethan 25 years and the facilities for dealing with pallet freight on rail have all but gone. The irony being, of course thatthe infrastructure is pretty minimal. The problem of course is the fact that unimode (road) is often quicker especially for that final distribution leg where it would often make the most difference in rural areas.
For Longer distance trains there are already piggy back trains right across europe (See the HUPAC services that keep lorries off the swiss roads).
Passenger wise, multi-mode vehicles are an expensive geegaw. Combinign the worst of both worlds. Anyone who has ridden on a 'Pacer' rail bus (merely a train built by a bus company) will know the meaning of that statement. What works better is tight integration of public transport (guaranteed connections, through ticketing, etc.) and the reoping of old lines where appropriate; see the Wensleydale Rly., CAST.Iron and many others
Here (Adelaide, South Australia) we have a system like this called the O-Bahn, it's a German technology and I think that this is the only place in the world outside of Germany to have one.
Click here to read about it.
It's said that it's cheaper to run than trains, but I prefer to travel by train. There's just something about the motion of a train that's so more reassuring and comfortable than a bus.
Here is the problem. You think that by passing traffic jams around the city and landing there in the center will solve your problem. NOT. These jams happen because too much cars around, and if you implement such railway you will simply shift traffic jams from roads to railway station, either to the source station or to the destination one. Either you keep railway traffic low enough to keep city's small streets able to cope with traffic and your source station will have a long-long-long queue (not better than regular traffic jam) or you will have all city streets around your destination station jammed forever (and railway stopped as you could not unload cars).
I remember when they were something new... that was a good 15-20 years ago.
Amtrak's Auto Train from the D.C. suburbs to near Orlando does something kinda like your idea, but it goes for a longer distance, overnight, and you have your choice of nice comfy seats or sleeping cars, plus dining cars, lounges, movies and stuff like that, instead of sitting in your car the whole time. They've been running it for oh, twenty plus years now.
A major reason to transport stuff by rail is simply weight. Trains can transport 100 tons and more PER WAGON, and well over 4000tons per train. A project like this will never be able to do that, let alone at the speeds current trains do this (100 or even 120 km/h)
Also, for long distances and high speeds electrical traction is more efficient than any fossile fuel engine, so that's another disadvantage.
All in all a pathetic idea, money that could much better be used to improve current rail services.
For those interested in dual mode transportation, I'll recommend University of Washington's Dualmode Debate Page. The page mentions all the projects and has a lot of papers describing the systems and discussing the benefits and problems with them.
Also MIT Alumni brought an article proposing the US should invest $1000 billion in dual mode over the next 10 years. According to the author the investment would pay back in only 2 years! What are we waiting for?
The problem is exacerbated because the main use of such vehicles is likely to be in short haul urban areas where zoning density pushes things closer to railroads. The presence of buildings can act as wind traps tending to keep fallen leaves closer to the line.
My guess? Designers trying to get funding for a "feasibility study".
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
http://www.konkanrailway.com/website/ehtm/sky_bus. htm
AFAIK your trains, and buses, are driven in the main by sensible people (leaving out the idiot who stopped the bus across the railway crossing, there is always one....), and new employees would be recruited and trained for something new anyway. I think with suitable people employed, your objections would be completely unfounded, anyway in the UK we do it differently. There has been very little problem recruiting tram drivers for the several recent schemes, AFAIK many of them were bus drivers, and are fully conversant with on and off street driving. I imagine the locomotive drivers union ASLEF would be trying to negotiate fancy salaries for doing two jobs, as they are entitled to try, but that is about as far as staffing problems would go.
And as regards safety, you are 20 times safer on rail than on road, based on UK figures. With your terrible carnage on the roads in the US, caused in the main by inadequate driver education (part of the problem you no doubt correctly identify with truckers), you may even be 100 times safer on rail, or it may only be 5 times, if your railways are not up to scratch, but there is no way that you could be less safe on rail than on road, that sitiuation has never been achieved anywhere in the world.
Build more highways, they're more advanced than train technology.
I heard a great idea on the road newsgroups about a super-superhighway. It's a highers which has entrance/exit ramps only near major cities, so it bypasses all the exits and onramps that cause quite a bit of the congestion of most highways.
I've been fascinated by the RUF dual mode system for a long time (also linked from the UW site). It has yet to be imple anywhere, however it looks extremely attractive to me.
It combines the advantages of cars and public transport with it's roll-on/roll-off railway system. It's part of the EU cybercars project, which has some nice videos.
Anyway, the well-developed art of the signaller is to keep it all on the move, and try to keep it all running to schedule, and that is done by making sensible real-time decisions about what will be held and what can proceed. Except in a dire emergency, such as a derailment, a train will never have to make an emergency stop because of something ahead, when the signal is cleared, that means exactly that, the route is cleared to the next signal (not at all like traffic lights, which will change to red as you approach). There are different speed limits for different classes of train to allow for stopping distances, the drivers are highly competent and know where the signals are, so they know when they may have to stop, and if for example they have a yellow signal, they know that the next one may be red, and can reduce speed accordingly.
The instances of stopped passenger trains being wiped out by following heavy goods trains are extremely rare, in fact I can't find records of one at all, the nearest was a sideswipe at the end of a loop when one train over-ran, largely due to frozen mechanical signalling equipment IIRC, and that was about 50 years ago. Oh, and maybe there was the braking problem at Shrewsbury, when a train of oil tanks ran out of control into the bay platform where an empty passenger train was standing, and wiped it out. It is surprising, but that is in no way one of the common types of accident, on a dense and overcrowded network like the UK.
One night on my way home, I was duly annoyed when a long, slow freight train was let out of the yard ahead of us, we were stopped maybe 3 minutes. But it was going non-stop (if possible) on a long journey, our train had about 15 stops so the freight would have been well on its way, at 60mph, before our second or third stop, rather than running behind and having to stop at every signal. On thinking about it, it was clear that the signaller did make the right decision.
So, in that instance, they did not run the freight immediately behind the passenger train, the expert made a real-time decision not to, but he would have been within his rights, and would not have been criticised by anyone if he had done the opposite. But, the freight would still have braked to a stop at every preceding signal, or the driver would deliberately set his speed so the signals were just changing from red to yellow as he approached, so he could keep it rolling. Either way, he would get nowhere near the passenger train. The signallers actions achiebed overall efficiency, they had no bearing whatsoever on safety, he could have run all the trains that night in any order he wished.... (but some possible sequences would have attracted complaints from the train operating companies, who might have had to pay compensation to passengers for being too late!)
The art of making it all run well in real time, despite various snags, is quite impressive, but without that expertise, the signalling systems will still enforce safe separation, and it generally takes a double human error, or maybe a rare equipment failure and a human error, to defeat that.
BTW they would have enforced double-block working for a nuclear train for example, or a Royal Train, or lots of other t
One huge advantage I can see for the B.R. concept is that vehicles could be lined up into "convoys" (like trains, only with no physical links) and only the lead vehicle would need active supervision. A sufficiently trustworthy cruise control would let most drivers sleep while their vehicles were under way on rails. This would allow the trucks to earn money overnight, and the drivers to earn partial pay while in bed.
And don't underestimate the benefits of reduced traffic. Removing trucks from the roads until just before their ultimate destinations would reduce both congestion and wear, saving billions in maintenance while making more money for carriers using both modes.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Sustainability and energy independence essay
With 5 players!
The final benefit is that you could possibly get rid of diesel fuel by adding overhead power lines and running the trucks on electricity; the availability of rails as ground conductors and the positive alignment provided by the flanged wheels makes feasible a change that would be far more expensive for vehicles on roads.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
I don't think you will see the wellington to taranaki line getting any sort of decent speed compared to the newly straightened highway 3 (north of paraparaumu) anyway. The track would require a lot of work to get better, and I haven't heard narrow gauge being described as ideal for fast trains anyway.
is that it's not a train. The whole advantage of rail transport is that one can make trains of dozens of cars all at once. The biggest operational expense for both trucks and railroads is paying the employees, and if you have to hire 20 drivers rather than make a 20 car train. And signalling for such a system would be painfully hard. Consider a passenger vehicle that pulls of the line to a stop, but not quite completely, and the heavy freight behind it hits its rear at 40 mph. With rail you only need to locate the train in one dimension (along the track), here you have to deal with much more. Finally, I don't think this vehicle will work in practice for one simple reason. When metal gets wet, it becomes VERY slippery, so the rubber tires will simply not grip the rail when there's snow. See the Moscow monorail for a demonstration.
Buffing strength.
That's the ability to withstand collision with something else moving on the rails.
Amtrak's sleek spanish-built Talgo train is operating on a FRA waiver that allows it to operate without the prerequisite buffing strength, much to Bombardier's chagrin (who keeps pestering the FRA with cease and desist orders).
European trains can be less sturdy than US trains, not because they're smaller, but simply because in the USA, there is no positive signal enforcement; that is, there is nothing to stop a train from sailing through a red signal.
For this reason, rolling stock will have to be built so sturdily that operating it on the roads would be a much uneconomical and foolish proposition...
No, the high-capacity lots at the start and end of the trains are much more efficient for flowing the surges of cars through the system than are the small local streets. The car trains reduce the turbulence of the system, have higher throughput, and add capacity. The lots themselves are in less congested areas than the local streets, so the bottlenecks are all removed.
--
make install -not war
Sorry, wrong. At 100% capacity, current Diesel engined cars are more efficient per passenger mile than the current generation of electric trains also at 100% capacity. The trains are also less efficient per passenger mile than a jet airliner. The best thing we could do with the rail system is rip it up and replace it with roads.
With Diesel hybrids coming along and pure electric vehicles now feasable due to improved battery technologies the case for passenger trains (as opposed to freight trains) is becoming poorer and poorer.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
"and fuel consumption would plunge."
/ ne ws/2004/06/21/ncar21.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/06/21/i xnewstop.html
You're making the assumption that trains are more efficient than cars. It's an invalid assumption, especially if the train also has to lug two tonnes of car per passenger.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It will be owned by someone else. I have a car, it does well and is cheaper than rail.
Trains are dying for a reason but maybe Greyhound can get access to the rail system and perhaps avoid the dead cow palaces and stop at better restaurants.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The old Ford Bronco was popular for this application, because its wheel track is compatible with railroad tracks.
There's a long, long history of Wierd Intermodal Ideas.
"Every railroad operates on a "block" system. This is an interlock designed so that only one rail vehicle may enter an area of track at a time. At the start of each block is a red / green signal and either a speed limit sign or an automated transponder to tell the operator the maximum speed limit for the block they are about to enter. Not true. Many railroads in the US still have manual block systems. There may be no signal at the beginning of the block. It is used where normally there is only one train at a time on a branchline.
Also a previous poster said there was a red/green signal. Most signals in the US are lights with green, yellow, and red with additional lights for speed restriction/ permissive running of red block signals, etc...
The use of yellow is to warn the engineer that the block ahead of the one he is about to enter has a red signal and for the engineer to reduce speed and prepare to stop.
Every place one of these thing could enter or leave a track would need a signal. Maintenance cost would be rediculous.
I've heard that at 80kph (which is exactly 50mph for those of us in the States)
Well, actually, 80 km/hr is 49.71 mi/hr.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
RUF is a better dual-mode system. It uses a triangular guideway and works with specially-designed cars, busses, and small goods deliveries.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
In NYC, "rush hour" is M-F 7-10AM inbound, 4-7PM outbound, with smaller peaks from 11AM-2PM (lunch) and 12-2AM (trucks). That's when the maximum capacity, and continuous service, would generate revenue and savings to subsidize the other 13h (54%) of the day, which would cost less by allowing railcars to wait until filled. During offpeak times, the terminal parking would still increase ridership of extra passenger subways along the cartrain route. And car rental agencies at the outer terminals could leverage the infrastructure to reduce total car use even further, especially as their centralized management is more readily organized by government transportation agencies to encourage carpooling.
--
make install -not war
One of the issues with rail based systems (and public transit in general) is preemption - where different types of traffic cross paths, which has priority?
At railroad grade crossings, the rail line has preemption enforced with flashing lights and gates. Tram lines are less so due to their slower operating speeds and less hazardous cargo, but in many places the tram system does control and override the signal lights at intersections. Some bus systems also have this ability.
If you have a rail line with grade crossings, do you really want the gates going up and down and stopping traffic for 5 mintues to let a single truck go by? Is that good public policy?
Also, branch lines typically are not double tracked and have very few passing sidings, so bidirectional traffic is unworkable.
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
I think this one clearly is for freight, but I can't imagine that in any civilised country teh authorities would allow it to be driven without the proper experience.
Death to American infidels! Soon you will all die!