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Maglev helps when crossing large distances. I don't see how it would help local travel within NYC.

by untog 11y ago

melling 11y ago
Hmmm... I wonder if that's why I got down voted. No one gets it. Anyway, a low-speed maglev doesn't travel that fast; only around 60-70mph. It'll also be quiet and smooth, as I already mentioned. The length of Manhattan is only about 14 miles so at that speed it's a 15 minute trip. Commuting from far into Brooklyn or Queens can take over an hour to get into Manhattan. You could also build the bus station 10 miles outside of the city, near the stadium, for example, and quickly get everyone into Manhattan. 230,000 people take a bus into Manhattan daily. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/03/could_the_new_port_authority_bus_terminal_be_built_in_nj.html http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/03/could_the_new_port_... Btw, Beijing's low-speed maglev is only 11 miles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR
- untog 11y ago
  But Maglev would require overhead rails, no? Or underground tunnels. The latter would be too expensive, and the former would be met with neighborhood objections. Street cars can co-exist on the street level in the way a 60-70mph train can't.
  - melling 11y ago
    Sure, something has to change. However, if you want people to use mass transit, it has to be convenient and quick. It also works if there is no better option. Taking a subway then transferring to a bus, followed by a streetcar is going to be a long trip. Everything is NYC is expensive. Even the new bus station is going to cost over $10 billion.
    - untog 11y ago
      Taking a subway then transferring to a bus, followed by a streetcar is going to be a long trip. Well, sure. Taking a Maglev, then a bus, then a street car would also be a longer trip. And let's face it, it would be a lot easier to set up multiple bus routes than multiple Maglev routes.
      - melling 11y ago
        Sorry, I'm only cutting 20 minutes of your commute each way. If you can't be happy with that, move closer to work. Actually, it's not really closer that wins, it convenient to mass transportation that wins. My suggestion simply increases the commutable distance from your job, thus offering more affordable places to live.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  The NYC subway isn't a commuter rail system, it's a metro, which means stops are spaced closely together - the standard interval is every 0.5 mi. A maglev train is of pretty marginal benefit here - it'd be a smoother ride, but there is simply no way with the station spacing you can get up to the kinds of speeds where maglev shines. Not to mention having to account for standing passengers means stricter bounds on permissible acceleration, which further knocks down your speed gains. So sure, hypothetically a maglev train line from Inwood to the Financial District would get you there in 15 minutes... without stopping, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that's not a particularly useful mass transit system ;) > "You could also build the bus station 10 miles outside of the city, near the stadium, for example, and quickly get everyone into Manhattan." Right, and this is also why maglev, while being an interesting thought exercise, ignores practically all other constraints. The bottleneck getting people from NJ into Manhattan isn't the speed of the trains, it's the fact that all rail traffic must pass through Amtrak's aging tunnels that suffer from poor signaling and deteriorating conditions - both of which cause frequent delays. The fact that you're squeezing all this traffic into two tubes itself puts a pretty hard cap on the amount of capacity you have. NJ-Manhattan rail links are constrained not by speed but by overall capacity. Faster moving trains present an extremely marginal gain on overall capacity, especially when they have to share space/schedules/speeds with non-maglev (is that even possible?) traffic. There have frequently been thoughts of moving the PABT out to Secaucus where commuters can catch a frequent, fast train to transfer to Penn (or in the future, GCT), but the reality is that the Amtrak tunnels are already operating at capacity so adding a frequent shuttle service is really just a pipe dream at this point. If NYC/NJ suddenly got a big truckload of cash to invest in infrastructure, "maglev trains" are very, very, very far down the list. Much higher on the list (if not the very top item) would be "build the damn Gateway tunnel", which will double rail capacity under the Hudson and into NJ, and make adding new NJ-Manhattan train service even a possibility.
  - melling 11y ago
    People that take a bus don't use the Amtrak tunnels. If you are going to build a maglev then you'd probably have express trains. That does without saying, right? The A train covers 31 miles. That's a long ride. http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffsubway.htm#stations http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffsubway.htm#stations I'm sure there are plenty of places where we'd benefit by greatly reducing commute times. As for the Gateway tunnel, yeah, that should have been done.

Maglev helps when crossing large distances. I don't see how it would help local travel within NYC.

by untog 11y ago

Maglev helps when crossing large distances. I don't see how it would help local travel within NYC.

Hmmm... I wonder if that's why I got down voted. No one gets it. Anyway, a low-speed maglev doesn't travel that fast; only around 60-70mph. It'll also be quiet and smooth, as I already mentioned. The length of Manhattan is only about 14 miles so at that speed it's a 15 minute trip. Commuting from far into Brooklyn or Queens can take over an hour to get into Manhattan. You could also build the bus station 10 miles outside of the city, near the stadium, for example, and quickly get everyone into Manhattan. 230,000 people take a bus into Manhattan daily. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/03/could_the_new_port_authority_bus_terminal_be_built_in_nj.html http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/03/could_the_new_port_... Btw, Beijing's low-speed maglev is only 11 miles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR

untog 11y ago
But Maglev would require overhead rails, no? Or underground tunnels. The latter would be too expensive, and the former would be met with neighborhood objections. Street cars can co-exist on the street level in the way a 60-70mph train can't.
- melling 11y ago
  Sure, something has to change. However, if you want people to use mass transit, it has to be convenient and quick. It also works if there is no better option. Taking a subway then transferring to a bus, followed by a streetcar is going to be a long trip. Everything is NYC is expensive. Even the new bus station is going to cost over $10 billion.
  - untog 11y ago
    Taking a subway then transferring to a bus, followed by a streetcar is going to be a long trip. Well, sure. Taking a Maglev, then a bus, then a street car would also be a longer trip. And let's face it, it would be a lot easier to set up multiple bus routes than multiple Maglev routes.
    - melling 11y ago
      Sorry, I'm only cutting 20 minutes of your commute each way. If you can't be happy with that, move closer to work. Actually, it's not really closer that wins, it convenient to mass transportation that wins. My suggestion simply increases the commutable distance from your job, thus offering more affordable places to live.
potatolicious 11y ago
The NYC subway isn't a commuter rail system, it's a metro, which means stops are spaced closely together - the standard interval is every 0.5 mi. A maglev train is of pretty marginal benefit here - it'd be a smoother ride, but there is simply no way with the station spacing you can get up to the kinds of speeds where maglev shines. Not to mention having to account for standing passengers means stricter bounds on permissible acceleration, which further knocks down your speed gains. So sure, hypothetically a maglev train line from Inwood to the Financial District would get you there in 15 minutes... without stopping, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that's not a particularly useful mass transit system ;) > "You could also build the bus station 10 miles outside of the city, near the stadium, for example, and quickly get everyone into Manhattan." Right, and this is also why maglev, while being an interesting thought exercise, ignores practically all other constraints. The bottleneck getting people from NJ into Manhattan isn't the speed of the trains, it's the fact that all rail traffic must pass through Amtrak's aging tunnels that suffer from poor signaling and deteriorating conditions - both of which cause frequent delays. The fact that you're squeezing all this traffic into two tubes itself puts a pretty hard cap on the amount of capacity you have. NJ-Manhattan rail links are constrained not by speed but by overall capacity. Faster moving trains present an extremely marginal gain on overall capacity, especially when they have to share space/schedules/speeds with non-maglev (is that even possible?) traffic. There have frequently been thoughts of moving the PABT out to Secaucus where commuters can catch a frequent, fast train to transfer to Penn (or in the future, GCT), but the reality is that the Amtrak tunnels are already operating at capacity so adding a frequent shuttle service is really just a pipe dream at this point. If NYC/NJ suddenly got a big truckload of cash to invest in infrastructure, "maglev trains" are very, very, very far down the list. Much higher on the list (if not the very top item) would be "build the damn Gateway tunnel", which will double rail capacity under the Hudson and into NJ, and make adding new NJ-Manhattan train service even a possibility.
- melling 11y ago
  People that take a bus don't use the Amtrak tunnels. If you are going to build a maglev then you'd probably have express trains. That does without saying, right? The A train covers 31 miles. That's a long ride. http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffsubway.htm#stations http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffsubway.htm#stations I'm sure there are plenty of places where we'd benefit by greatly reducing commute times. As for the Gateway tunnel, yeah, that should have been done.