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."

Comments

Never, ever going to happen...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

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.

Nobody tell the Norfolk Southern railroad...

[hobbsbutcher]

The Norfolk Southern railroad has used a variation of this idea for years in their Triple Crown Service.

The Canadian Railroad and these Rail-Road Busses

[Recovery1]

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.

Nothing to new here

[SmallFurryCreature]

The idea of a road vehicle driving on rail part of the time, even the way of doing it (guidance by retractable wheel while power is supplied through the road wheels) is in daily use. Just check track maintenance vehicles.

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.

Re:interesting idea but I doubt it will succede

[CaptainCheese]

I'm not sure how well devoloped the British rail system is

Currently it's approximately 21,000 miles of track, 1,000 signal boxes 9,000 level crossings, and 2,500 stations. There's about 10,000 mainline passenger train movements each day in and out of central London alone. In infrastructure terms britain has the best railway in the world, and that's after more than 2/3 of the original network was decomissioned in the sixties.

For a country about the same area as Oregon or Colarado that's a lot of rails. Of course in many ways the trains are not very good, but as long as America keeps her railroads running, we know we're not the worst! ^_^

Re:Well

[RicktheBrick]

This will never work for several reasons. One who will drive the vehicle on the last leg? It would be too expensive to have a driver waiting to meet the train to drive that last leg and way too expensive to have alot of drivers riding along the way to make the last leg. There would be a great need to mix the passengers to get them to their destination vehicle and there is no way they can change while under way so at every stop they would have to allow passenger to get off and back on in other vehicles thus increasing the length of travel to unacceptable lengths. What is needed is for a way for people to quickly drive their own cars onto a train than reach the closest point of their destination and than quickly drive off it again thus eliminating that last driver and giving people their own transportation at their destination.

Re:Youwant dual mode transportation?

[SerialHistorian]

Actually, this *has* already been done for freight. I can't find links at the moment, but Swift has trailers that they tie together with rail "dollys" ... you can recognize these trailers because they've got smaller wheels mounted on them than the standard trailers and they have locking points on the rear deck.

Unfortunately, BNSF is the only rail line that'll run them right now because there's a significant risk of derailing. There's a lot of side-to-side flex put on any rail car, and most rail cars are stiff enough to take it -- but making a road/rail car stiff enough would end up making the trailer too heavy for the tractor to pull it. The road/rail cars that Swift uses have a tendency to twist while in motion, and things can break or snap and cause a derailment.

Neat idea, but knowing what I know about those swift trucks, I wouldn't ride in a rail/road passenger vehicle ... no way, no how.