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Rethinking Rail Travel: Boarding a Moving Train
PolygamousRanchKid tips this article about an idea for revolutionizing the rail system in the long-term:
"The idea is to have a city-wide network of trams that travel in a loop and connect with a high-speed rail service. But instead of passengers having to get off the tram at a rail station and wait for the next HSR service to arrive, the moving tram would 'dock' with a moving train, allowing passengers to cross between tram and train without either vehicle ever stopping. 'The trams speed up and the high-speed train slows down and they join, so they dock at high speed,' explains Priestman. 'They stay docked for the same amount of time that it would stop at a station,' he adds. While Priestman admits that it will be some time before his vision could be implemented, he says the time has come to rethink how we travel. 'This idea is a far-future thought but wouldn't it be brilliant to just re-evaluate and just re-think the whole process?' he says."
and perhaps to encase cities in caves of steel
rewriting history since 2109
Maybe the time has come to rethink _how much_ we travel...
Subject says it all, really.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Why do we need this? Maybe it is because I am an American, and I am still waiting for high speed rail in the first place, but I am not really seeing the advantage to this system.
Palm trees and 8
Yeah, I saw this on that movie, with the bus. Taking passengers out the door, at 55 MPH. I think it was called, "The bus that couldn't slow down".
I've seen some time ago another concept for the same, apparently in China. Here is the link to a video explaining how it would work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snFmLkOmkjE
So, when we have our city with flying cars, domestic robots and all of the other commensurate sci-fi amenities which will never happen, we will also have a train we board at speed.
I'm sure in some abstract, never-going-to-happen way this is a really cool idea.
But it's so far detached from anything which will ever happen as to basically be a meaningless suggestion. These fantastic cities of the future will never actually happen unless we suddenly have unlimited cheap energy or resources ... the cost of rebuilding any major city would be absolutely ridiculous.
Harumph ... I must be getting old. Time was I'd think this was something cool. Now it's just another pointless futurist thought experiment.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Okay, so the obvious first question is - how do you get on the trams? Do they stop? Unfortunately the article is a hand-waving fluff piece and doesn't explicitly answer that (or, really, any other) question; but it strongly implies "yes, they do stop". So what's the real advantage to the traveler here?
It seems to me the main thing this guy is proposing is actually a transit system with connections on every street, so you don't have to own a car at all. But that's nothing new and exciting, so he had to "jazz it up" to get attention - and that's where the "high-speed trains that never stop" idea comes in. But, really, that's not going to save a traveler any time. Plus, frankly, as soon as I started thinking about the potential details of this system... I quickly came to the conclusion it would seem logistically sub-optimal.
#DeleteChrome
Disney has been doing this for decades. The ride slows, the passenger steps onto a moving belt and from there onto the platform. It requires one or more attendants available to help and occasionally hit the emergency stop when the slow and/or unwary find themselves rushing toward the dark chasm at the end of the platform.
Now if they would just install parachutes and ejection seats in airliners ...
I can imagine a scenario where one of the trains is packed, users try to squeeze in from one train into another. One person (or more..) does not fit in, there is no more track for the trains to be coupled, they HAVE to split even if the doors are held open by the passengers, and people up on the track between the wheels of both trains.
Subject says it all (again) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll
What if you are too slow or someone puts their foot into the gap, or if there is a stone or wobble on the neighbouring track?
Oh you Americans ... always letting liability lawsuits stand in the way of progress!
No sig today...
This is nothing new. Disney has been doing this for decades. In fact, the rest of the world could take a lesson or two from Disney's playbook. Notice that Disney designs its rides such that the line (queue) is constantly in motion. By contrast, Six Flags and other theme parks, you have to wait while the people on the ride are off. We should take this a step further and design aircraft with a removable passenger compartment akin to the 747 air freighter. The nose would open up and the incoming passenger module would slide out to be replaced by another outgoing module. This has the advantage of eliminating the one door bottleneck.
Have you ever been at the station when there was a really slow moving old lady at the front of the line, trying to get into the train, but moving at a snail's pace, holding up the whole line, and then still being in the doorway when it starts trying to close? Remember the loud buzzer that sounds to signal people to get out of the doors, that she's too deaf to hear, and ignores as she slowly continues toddling her way into the car, holding up the train, and still nobody else has managed to even get in?
I've been behind her several times. It's weird, almost every time I go to Toronto (the nearest place I've had to ride the subway), she's there in line in front of me. She's a really nice lady, but oh so very slow moving, and she won't accept help.
This proposed system would ensure that I would only ever be behind her once, because when the high-speed train and moving tram were not able to un-dock because she was still toddling along in the gap between them, they would either end up crashing and killing everyone, or they would separate anyways and either tear her in half, or drop her between the tracks and grind her into paste on the ground.
If I understand this correctly, the 'slow' trains work like a sort of express bus system (or, to be more precise, a streetcar system). They do a slow milk run in the neighbourhood, picking people up. Then, after leaving the slow area, it speeds up to dock with the train, where you transfer over. It's kind of complicated, but I could see it working. So here would be your travel day. Wake up, catch the slow train at the corner, then after a short while, transfer over to the train. Then, when the slow train for your destination docks, transfer to that one. Get off at the stop for work, and walk the rest of the way. The idea here is to cut out the middleman. Instead of having to wait at another bus (train) station for the next high speed train to arrive, you simply transfer directly to the train.
There are, admittedly, a few problems. First off, this would only save time for people who have to regularly make the sort of 'bus-train-bus' connection. Secondly, this doesn't seem very error-proof. If people can't make the transfer fast enough, then you end up being stuck on the slow train until you can make another pass at the next one. Thirdly, you'd need quite a large section to make sure you have enough time to make the transfers.
That being said, this is definitely an interesting idea. I'd like to see someone work all the kinks out, though.
Cynical Idealist
LOL, I am not an American, and I am not in the way of progress, and I don't care about lawsuits. I like the Chinese idea, and it is progressively better than the British idea. I just don't like the idea of walking from one speeding train to another speeding train that is on a DIFFERENT track. The Chinese idea is simpler, safer, more flexible (easy to add many stations) and uses far less real estate.
The advantage of the current systems is its safety. If someone is stuck in the door, the doors will not close, and the train will not take off. If someone is stuck in the doorway in Priestman's idea, the poor sap will be hung out to dry when the tracks diverge. I suppose the tracks could be close enough to dock for a long enough time that if the doors aren't closed at the end of the boarding window, the trains could come to a complete stop. But that sounds like a lot of extra room, and hence, extra cost.
It is the last point that gets me. one would need a couple of miles of track next to each to be moving fast enough to make it worth while, however that eats up space, and the slow train would have to circle back around for the next train in sequence.
Also how do you do multi train platforms?
to me it seems like someone didn't think the idea through all the way.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I agree. It could not work for anything practical. Just imagine someone getting caught between the doors while they were open when the trains HAD to separate due to lack of parallel track. I can think of how many times the DC metro tries to close the doors, but then fails and re-opens them. This happening at speed with an 'enforced time limit' can not work.
lets figure a way to bring the office, the work back home.
Home is home. Workplace is workplace.
The problem we have with all the smart phones and tablets and wifi and the internets is that we CANNOT shut ourselves of from our daily grind.
No thanks. I'm much happier knowing that when I leave my offices I'm done. There is no expectation that I am available to do work.
This is just moving back to 'cubes' where instead of being in a cube in an office space, your 'cube' is your room at home. That on so many levels is horrendous.
Why not instead of bring the work back home, all move in and live at work like.. oh I don't know.. those folks at Foxconn.
Yeah sounds great.
In Rio de Janeiro, when I lived there, if you looked at all agile the bus would not completely stop to let you on. It would slow down to a walking pace so you could grab the handle next to the door and let the momentum of the train swing you aboard. Since you boarded at the rear door and exited at the front door you never go in the way of disembarking passengers; who also often exited while the bus was moving.
It was great sport and probably saved a lot of fuel. Not sure I'd like to do it at my age now (68) but I might just for old times' sake. LOL
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I'm not sure where you got the idea that we have the space for such things. Most of our train stations are in cities. Most railways go through cities as well. You can't just knock over some buildings to add a bunch of rails. It took them years to buy up enough land to double the amount of tracks on a 50km trajectory over here. Not to mention that these trains really don't need that much distance to speed up to 140km/h (or faster). This money would be better invested in energy recuperation systems.
Well, it's not like the high speed train is incapable of stopping.
You just set your "must undock" point far enough back that if for some reason the undock can't happen, the high speed train has enough room to come to a stop with the streetcar still docked. Throws a bit of delay into the trip, but nobody dies.
Many posters have spotted that this post is a rehash, a troll or perhaps a straight faced sendup joke from a design firm.
The graphic art accompanying the original article might have been copied from a 1930's art deco transportation fantasy science fiction book cover.
But here is a really good question: What client paid this design firm to develop this specific presentation? How much do design firms charge per hour? $100 at least?
From the name of the design firm, I guess this is a two person design firm, and the real point of the article is for the designer to promote his design firm.
The modern way to speed up public transit is to publish a distributed database that client applications can combine with client data. See a non-exclusive blog post on this subject by me at:
http://lessco2essay.blogspot.com/2011/04/ride-sharing-can-use-cell-phones-to.html
You'd need a significant length of straight track to accomplish the transfer. In corners, the different corner radii mean that you'd need to increase the distance between the train cars on the outside of the bend to make sure the cars stay lined up.
It'd be much simpler to link up the trains front-to-back. The Dutch ICM shows a practical design to do this. The ICM is only linked at standstill, but a few tweaks to the coupling (and possibly the doors) would allow it to be linked while moving. The mechanical link also makes it easy to ensure the trains keep matching speeds (just drive the rear train at a slightly higher power level than the front).
The drawback of this design is that there's only one connection point so the transfer is much slower.
The inconvenient truth is that mass transit must be sized for peak loads, and therefore runs no where near capacity most of the time. A train, tram, or bus fully loaded is very energy efficient. A train, tram, or bus lightly loaded uses way more energy per passenger-mile than a car. No transit authority remakes trains between rush hour and mid-day, nor do they have two fleets of buses so that they can switch from long articulateds at rush hour to mini-vans during mid day. Mass transit wastes huge amounts of energy, and we can't afford it any more.
The answer is self-driving cars. We already have door-to-door infrastructure for cars. With self-driving cars road capacity increases because the cars can run closer together and at higher or at least more consistent speeds. A self-driving car is a self-valet-parking vehicle, so parking lots and structures can be moved further from office buildings.
People working on any kind of mass transit solution that involves large vehicles like trains are exactly the fools that are wasting our fossil fuels the fastest. Show me solutions that scale up/down with the daily load fluctuation, and you have my interest.
As others have pointed out, this isn't a very good idea for high speed rail. It's not original, either. It was proposed in Taiwan a few years ago, and that design is more workable.
It's been used a few times for very low speed systems in amusement parks. The original, of course, was the moving sidewalk at the 190 Paris Exposition. That had two speeds of moving walkway side by side, to allow getting on and off. The mechanism was not a conveyor belt. It was an endless train of railroad flatcars with turntables between them. Also see the Never Stop Railway, in 1925, which is a cute mechanical solution to slowing down at stations.
Some railroads have used systems where cars were dropped off the rear of a train while the train was in motion. This never worked all that well, and there was no reverse operation to assemble the train on the fly. It's been suggested for transit systems where all cars have power, and it could be made to work.
With every carriage/set having its own drive power (as our V/Locity and I'm sure many others already do) and superseding driver cabins though use of remote (including onboard remote) sensing and control functions, or even fully automatic, you can have stopping services docking at the front and dropping off the back of an always moving train system.
This could even allow a return to the once very comfortable mode of separate cabins opening off the side of a long corridor rather than the current fashion of squeezing longitudinal access between open plan seats so that every passenger is disturbed by anyone walking past.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
I've found that living 10 min walking distance from work eliminates most advantages of telecommuting while granting all the advantages of the office. People should live in smallish but densely packed cities with few cars. And exorbitant gas prices should help keep the cars away.
There are of course people who must commute for personal reasons, mostly couples with serious jobs in different cities. European style high speed rail serves them infinitely better than automobile gridlock. Read on the train vs. stress out in the car.
Just fyi, there is a Bahn Card 100 for 3500 Euros per years which gives you unlimited train usage in Germany without buying any tickets. Ergo, if your commute costs like 130 Euros per week without any Bahn Card, then you might as well buy a Bahn Card 100 and enjoy the freedom of never even needing to buy a ticket! Amtrack won't sell you any ticket without requiring ID by comparison.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
For air travel, the long distance craft never needs to set down at all, so make it an airship. Transport passengers up and down using catapult-launched gliders. No airplanes needed at all. What could possibly go wrong?
The gliders sound superfluous as well. Just use catapults aiming for nets on the airships.
What could possibly go wrong?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I would like to have an office on a train such that I have a workspace and internet connection and a window. I don't care if the train takes a long time to get to the destination, or if there is a destination. I envision trains for devs that are full of compartments for this purpose. Maybe an entire development team on a private railroad car.
As an example consider the proposals for high speed trains, say, between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The most recent Amtrak passenger service on the route was criticized because, due to noncooperation by the freight railroads, the trip would take eight hours. But that was before the internet. Internet access, if available, changes the nature of train trips for people who can telecommute. An eight-hour train trip, or even a ten-hour trip, with a comfortable workspace and internet access is uptime, as opposed to a five-hour drive.