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."

Comments

Caves

[JustOK]

and perhaps to encase cities in caves of steel

Is the real problem here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the time has come to rethink _how much_ we travel...

Re:Is the real problem here?

[Bucc5062]

See, this is a thought that should get modded up. We walk around with smartphones and tablets, our laptops carry more power then most mainframes, yet there is still this requirement that we get into a vehicle and travel some distance to sit in a cube or office and do work. Seriously?

Granted, not all jobs are suited for telecommuted, but more and more these days we have tools to start sending people home, with jobs. The energy savings would be huge I feel. It could help local business as more people shop near home and not work. Were I able to work from home, the savings in gas and food would be worth a raise. Companies would not need to spend so much on heating/cooling large buildings. They would also be able to save money by not having to maintain large networks for inter/intra office communication. As far as productivity goes, if an office is preferred, open smaller local offices or shops where people could go to work riding a bike, walking, or other mode other then a vehicle.

Instead of trying to re-invent how to move the drones to and from offices, lets figure a way to bring the office, the work back home.

Re:Is the real problem here?

[aristotle-dude]

Dude, I like "my" smartphone and tablet for "personal" use because that is why "I" bought them with "my" money. I like having my work and home separate and I don't want to be available 24/7 because I have no interest in being a "drone".

You might find this hard to believe but, as a software developer, I feel that I'm much more productive now that I work in the main development office than even when I worked from a satellite office. Modern software development is a very social pursuit with standup meetings, white boarding sessions and meetings with stakeholders.

Software is no longer written using the waterfall approach where some analyst talks to the user to get requirements, writes up a large requirements document and then the developer works off that and later hands it off to QA for testing.

Re:Is the real problem here?

[jellomizer]

There are still a lot of real hurtles until we can get to a telecommuting environment.

1. Face time with your boss. The difference between the Office Drone and the guy who gets a raise and promoted, is the person who gets more face time with the boss. This isn't a bad thing, I don't mean sucking up to the boss, but being there where he can see what you are doing and you can show him your good job that you are doing. Bad news travels up naturally to the boss. If you have good news you need to push it there.

2. Interaction with other workers, across your department. Normal office chat helps build up teamwork, you learn the strengths and weaknesses of different people and you have a better idea on how to make the best solution with them.

3. Anticipate problems. If you hear something is going on you can have a solution almost done before it gets to your place to be done tomorrow.

4. You are not slacking off as much. We all need a break to clear our mind. But when you are working from home, the comforts from home are quite compelling, especially if you are doing something you don't want to do. In the Office knowing your boss can come over and see you playing WoW or what ever game that is now hip and cool or browsing youtube for hours on end. You will make sure you temper your habits. At home it is much harder. Sure the argument is if I get my work done on time it really doesn't matter. Well it won't get you fired, but the slack off time is a period where you could really prove that you excel.

By agreeing to be a telecommuter you have basically agreed for most companies to stay in your positions for the duration of your employment unless you are much better then most people.

Re:Is the real problem here?

[rickb928]

My work doesn't require 'just' interaction with systems and data. It also requires interaction with co-workers both in the physical office and in newrly every time zone on the planet. My 'customers' are no longer just in North American, but on every continent except Antarctica and Africa, and the latter is coming on board soon. I already telecommute, but I need to do so from a location where my most important collaborators are physically available, and that is the 'office'. I project my services from there.

To be at home would deny me both ready and rich access to my team. Physical presence permits ad hoc meetings, adding in team members, quick face-to-face covnersations for minutes that avoid IMs and email chains that take much of an hour, and avoid misunderstandings. No teleconferencing works like that yet. For one thing, cameras are banned - data loss policy. We have a teleconferencing space to use, but it's for extended international or cross-continent needs.

And I very much prefer to be part of a team, not alone. I did that for the better part of 14 years, and it's not very attractive.

Telecommuting is so attractive in principle.

And to answer the unasked question of telecommuting offering the equivalence of a raise, well there are things to consider. Including your employer's reasonable and justifiable perception that saving money on commuting translates into a lower pay rate, since your expenses are decreased. This will probably be expressed as either lower raises or slower raises. Compensation is often based on market forces, and if a telecommuting job is attractive to others who would take less pay for the convenience of being home (mothers seem to fit this model very well), then you are competing with people who otherwise would not be in the market. Child raisers in particular may use the calculus of a tlecommuting job permitting them to avoid expensive day care. This lets them see a discounted job as actually incremental income where an office job is income offset by expenses. Work that out and tell me you can compete. Maybe.

Telecommuting will, one day, be seen as another advantage to Corporations, and a detriment to the worker. Watch.

Let's not get too far into the collision of telecommuting data access (ISPs) and bandwidth. If we start streaming our favorite videos during the day to avoid the nighttime crush and gamers, watch when telecommuters start using that bandwidth all day long. And watch when ISPs filter VPNs and ask you to pay more for unfettered corporate access. I would expect them to offer corporations that deploy their workes to home a 'deal' on dedicated access. Wait, I bet they do already... SOHO accounts and such. For more money.

Re:Is the real problem here?

[billcopc]

Funny, I get at least the same amount of work done, but I waste less time on the company dime.

At home, I don't have to deal with

- office gossip
- stressed out coworkers yammering all day about their psychological issues
- walking over to a boss/manager/secretary/idiot's desk to stare at an error message they could have pasted in an email
- petty one-upmanship
- bathrooms halfway around the building
- staff managers timing my shit breaks
- pointless unit meetings that exist solely to justify having so many goddamned staff managers
- playing bejeweled for hours because the office environment depresses me
- noisy coworkers threatening to call the union and/or burn down the building if I deprive them of their precious Kanyé

If I want to waste time playing video games or watching TV, it's my problem and my boss/clients don't pay for that idle time. The corollary is that I am motivated to work more efficiently and waste less time, because that time is now MY money and not my employer's. In that sense, I get a heck of a lot more done since I started telecommuting, and cutting out that hour or two of bus/traffic every day makes a huge difference in my energy level and mood. I have no trouble pulling a 10 or 12 hour work day at home, when inspiration strikes, but in an office those 7.5 hours seem like eternity.

Re:Is the real problem here?

[Capt. Skinny]

Software is no longer written using the waterfall approach...

Speak for yourself.

You agile folk like to claim that "requirements will always change, so let's plan for it and embrace it." Bullshit. Requirements only change when (1) people don't plan properly, and (2) developer and project managers cater to the whims of clients without charging what they should for change orders. If I hire an engineering firm to build a commercial building, I can't expect to keep changing the requirements after I sign off on the spec, the way people seem to think they can when they hire a software developer. The change order charges would be exorbitant, because with every change a traditional engineer will properly re-evaluate the plan from the ground up and adjust the infrastructure as necessary.

There's a joke out there about what would happen if structural engineers built structures the way software developers build software. I don't remember the exact punch line, but it doesn't take much imagination to realize that it's along the lines of "no one would dare use bridges or enter commercial buildings out of fear that they would fail." It's funny because it's true. We've set such low standards for software reliability that there is now an entire development methodology that advocates (and attempts to justify) a lack of planning and QC only of completed work, rather than QC'ing design plans BEFORE we waste time building something that may or may not pass QC.

Apologies for the rant, but the whole agile mindset just pisses me off.

Why?

[betterunixthanunix]

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.

Re:Why?

[Bacon Bits]

The most annoying thing about taking the train (or a public bus or subway, for that matter) is when it stops to let other people on or off. To a passenger, that's just a huge waste of time that could be spent actually moving towards his or her destination.

The reason continental rail travel in the US is so slow compared to auto travel is because it has to stop all the time to let people on and off. When your train weighs 50+ tons per rail car, it takes a long time to speed up and slow down. I've heard it said that the trains themselves almost never reach full speed because they have to begin decelerating before they ever reach full speed.

Re:Why?

[betterunixthanunix]

That may be true of urban mass transit systems and commuter rail, but intercity rail in the United States is slow because it is still largely pulled by diesel engines and low-speed electric engines. We do not have a high speed rail infrastructure, and even the stretches of rail that can support high speed operations are bogged down by grade-level crossings, regulations, other rail traffic, and the condition of some of the rails and overhead wires.

Re:Why?

[monkeythug]

In the UK back in the late 1800s/early 1900s I believe that trains often used to drop off carriages as they passed stations so the people going to that station would roll into it and stop while the rest of the train carried on

This.

Why have trams catch up to HSTs, engage in a complex procedure of transferring passengers, then needing to circle back round (potentially taking ages to get back to their 'route')

Much better to have the trams double as carriages. When you want to get off at a destination you simply go and sit in one of the last few carriages and when the train passes the station they automatically detach and roll up to the platform. At the same time trams with new passengers leave the platform, catch up with the train and attach as replacement carriages to the end.

Re:Why?

[dwye]

The problem is not the engines but the tracks. They are owned by firms which ship bulk cargo, and so do not need speeds greater than about 45 MPH, as compared to 120 MPH, the top speed of the pre-WWII rail network, or the even higher speeds of 1970s era high speed rail links like the Hokkaido Express. Not needing such perfect rail links, they do not maintain them to handle 100+ MPH speeds (or even 60 MPH, for that matter). Not needing the high speeds, GE, etc., build the engines to work best at the speeds actually used. If the lines needed faster engines, they would order them, and the companies which build the engines would build them to go faster efficiently (as long as there were enough engines to make money building them, or the lines were willing to pay for individually designed engines).

Oh, and BTW, diesel train engines are actually electric trains with a co-located generator powered by a diesel engine, AKA hybrids. They aren't the poorly built and designed things that you apparently think that they are.

Is Sandra Bullock Driving?

[A10Mechanic]

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".

Already foreseen?

[greichert]

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

Re:Already foreseen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I think the Russians published this stop-less train station concept. Instead of a stretch of linear tracks they used concentric tracks. The HSR arrives at the station on the outer rail and docks with the slower moving inner rail. The HSR transfers the passengers and the inner rail then transfers passengers to the second inner rail slowing down slightly and then speeds up again to wait for the next HSR.

Well too bad most of the world including Russians never read Russian "Propaganda" from books like science can be fun or physics can be fun et al. If they had we could trace the ideas further back. I read this a looooong time back in the 80's in one of the MIR publication books.

Well here is a thought. Maybe it goes back further than the Russians and was an idea thought of by others.

Ummm ...

[gstoddart]

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.

Had to read the article

[93 Escort Wagon]

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.

Exit the train

[jamesl]

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 ...

Re:Asimov. Strips.

[Farmer Tim]

If you mean Rule 34...no thanks.

Heinlein - The Roads Must Roll

[bityz]

Subject says it all (again) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll

Re:China has been thining about this for a while

[Joce640k]

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!

WEDWay People Mover

[RogueWarrior65]

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.

Re:WEDWay People Mover

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Just use the standard pallets that they use in air freighters. You could probably stack 15 -20 people in a container. Just lock'em in. No worries about feeding them, dealing with the bathroom or various security issues.

Have you thought about a career at RyanAir?

And the problem with this plan:

[HappyHead]

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.

Re:How do you get on?

[peragrin]

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.

Re:How do you get on?

[beltsbear]

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.

God no!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:God no!

[AlecC]

There are already solutions to this where you go to work at a generic office within waling distance of your home. You have co-workers, coffee machine or water cooler, a work-style environment with no family interruptions. There is a reception for deliveries if needed. You have the "commute" of a ten minute walk, which allows you to switch between home and work modes.

The buses in Brasil already do this....

[SwedishChef]

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

Side-by-side is impractical

[hackertourist]

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.

Mass transit is an energy hog

[dbc]

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.

You sound like an America

[Weezul]

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.