5 ms·

> High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour. How is that remotely true? There is one Eurostar approximately every 30 minutes (l

by S4M 10y ago

> High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour. How is that remotely true? There is one Eurostar approximately every 30 minutes (looking at the departures from London [0], it seems that there are 32 Eurostar leaving London every day), and I seriously doubt one train can carry 5000 passengers (I would say about 500 passengers), so your approximation is completely off (even taking into account the fact that Eurostar can go from London, Paris and Brussels) and 1500 passengers/hour is comparable to the number of passengers the Eurostar carries in an hour. [0] http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-information/service-information/rtti#/dep/7015400/7015400 http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-information/service-inf...

kuschku 10y ago
Simply, because you don’t have to run them every 30 minutes. In Germany and Japan on select few HSR lines trains are operating with a frequency of 2 minutes, and 800 passengers per train. That’s 24'000 per hour.
- Animats 10y ago
  The record is probably the Yamanote Line in Tokyo, with about 165,000 passengers per hour at peak. That's effectively a conveyor belt made out of trains; there's a loop in each direction with trains every 2 minutes in each direction during peak periods. Each train carries up to 1600 people, and there are 50 trains on the loops during peak periods.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
notahacker 10y ago
Eurostar capacity is driven by demand though. There's no practical limit that forces trains to be 30 minutes apart.
hengheng 10y ago
Europe's busiest express train line seems to be LGV Paris-Lyon, with a peak scheduled capacity of 13 TGV trains per hour. Given that a TGV duplex fits 545 passengers, we are above 7000 per hour. Now couple two TGVs together, and you'll be well above. Weirdly enough, the only source I found was German wikipedia on the train track (LGV Sud-Est[1]). Neither English nor French wikipedia have capacity information, and neither of the respective articles on the train itself have capacity information, even though the TGV duplex was introduced for this very reason. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Sud-Est https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Sud-Est
- kuschku 10y ago
  In Germany there are some tracks with higher usages, but those are not the same line – they just share part of the line (imagine on the track A -- B -- C -- D, a train going from A to C, and from B to D, both every half hour – between B and C now you have 15min frequencies). But the point is the same, regardless of if we use Japan, Germany, France, Spain, etc: 10k people per hour, or more, is easily possible. Hyperloop transports less people than a single lane of highway. And with the cost you could maintain teslas for rental on a dedicated highway for many decades.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    >Hyperloop transports less people than a single lane of highway So what? Airplanes also transport fewer people than a highway. How many people travel by air between LA and SF right now per hour? Probably no more than the capacity of Hyperloop. >But the point is the same, regardless of if we use Japan, Germany, France, Spain, etc: 10k people per hour, or more, is easily possible. What makes you think 10k people per hour actually want slow train service between LA and SF, when they can just use their car, get there in about the same time, and then not have to rent a car at their destination? >And with the cost you could maintain teslas for rental on a dedicated highway for many decades. You're placing passenger capacity above speed. The whole point of Hyperloop is speed: it's faster than an airplane, without all the downsides of the airplane (terrorism, TSA, crashing, etc.) HSR is not, it's slow (esp. the way they'll build it in this country). Of course, Hyperloop doesn't have the advantage of not having to rent a car like driving yourself does, but it makes up for it with very high speed.
ycitm 10y ago
Perhaps Tōkaidō Shinkansen would be a better example? 331 trains / day, 391 thousand passengers / day according to: http://english.jr-central.co.jp/company/ir/annualreport/_pdf/annualreport2012-02.pdf http://english.jr-central.co.jp/company/ir/annualreport/_pdf... (pdf)
- azurezyq 10y ago
  And Beijing-Shanghai highspeed railway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_High-Speed_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_High-... 100M rides/year in 2014, similar to the number of Shinkansen, far larger than eurostar.
adamt 10y ago
From: http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/about-eurostar/press-office/press-releases/2015/record-passenger-numbers-q2 http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/about-eurostar/press-office/pr... "Eurostar, the high-speed passenger rail service between the UK and mainland Europe, today reported the highest ever number of passengers transported on Eurostar in one quarter with over 2.8m customers travelling between the UK and the continent in Q2 2015. This represents a year-on-year increase of 3% in passengers compared with the same period last year (2.8m 2015: 2.7m 2014)." 2.8m in a quarter = 31,000 a day. Given the trains only run for just over 14 hours a day (London departure board for tomorrow) - then that's a mean passengers per hour over the quarter during operating hours over all days in the quarter of 2,214. Note this actual passengers not capacity. If you assumed say an average load ration of perhaps 70% (over all times of day all over the quarter) then the mean capacity per hour would be 3,100. Then at some times there are more trains than others, so the peak capacity per hour is probably at least 4,000.
chockablock 10y ago
Gp is referring to 'max capacity'. As others have noted 10k/hr is conservative.
martinald 10y ago
Yes, but you also have loads of Eurotunnel (car and truck carrying trains) and Southeastern High Speed (non-international) trains on those tracks. Add the capacity of those in. Say 3x Eurostar, 5x southeastern hsr and 4x eurotunnel. The new e320 trains have 900 passenger capacity (could be more with less first class, so let's call it 1000). With 12x departures per hour that's 12,000, and there would be more spare capacity left over because there wouldn't be local and express trains mixed together which kills capacity. I think you could easily do 15k p/h on Eurostar + related infrastructure. Maybe more if you used TGV Duplex double decker trains.

by S4M 10y ago

kuschku 10y ago

Simply, because you don’t have to run them every 30 minutes. In Germany and Japan on select few HSR lines trains are operating with a frequency of 2 minutes, and 800 passengers per train. That’s 24'000 per hour.

Animats 10y ago
The record is probably the Yamanote Line in Tokyo, with about 165,000 passengers per hour at peak. That's effectively a conveyor belt made out of trains; there's a loop in each direction with trains every 2 minutes in each direction during peak periods. Each train carries up to 1600 people, and there are 50 trains on the loops during peak periods.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

notahacker 10y ago

Eurostar capacity is driven by demand though. There's no practical limit that forces trains to be 30 minutes apart.

hengheng 10y ago

Europe's busiest express train line seems to be LGV Paris-Lyon, with a peak scheduled capacity of 13 TGV trains per hour. Given that a TGV duplex fits 545 passengers, we are above 7000 per hour. Now couple two TGVs together, and you'll be well above. Weirdly enough, the only source I found was German wikipedia on the train track (LGV Sud-Est[1]). Neither English nor French wikipedia have capacity information, and neither of the respective articles on the train itself have capacity information, even though the TGV duplex was introduced for this very reason. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Sud-Est https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Sud-Est

kuschku 10y ago
In Germany there are some tracks with higher usages, but those are not the same line – they just share part of the line (imagine on the track A -- B -- C -- D, a train going from A to C, and from B to D, both every half hour – between B and C now you have 15min frequencies). But the point is the same, regardless of if we use Japan, Germany, France, Spain, etc: 10k people per hour, or more, is easily possible. Hyperloop transports less people than a single lane of highway. And with the cost you could maintain teslas for rental on a dedicated highway for many decades.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >Hyperloop transports less people than a single lane of highway So what? Airplanes also transport fewer people than a highway. How many people travel by air between LA and SF right now per hour? Probably no more than the capacity of Hyperloop. >But the point is the same, regardless of if we use Japan, Germany, France, Spain, etc: 10k people per hour, or more, is easily possible. What makes you think 10k people per hour actually want slow train service between LA and SF, when they can just use their car, get there in about the same time, and then not have to rent a car at their destination? >And with the cost you could maintain teslas for rental on a dedicated highway for many decades. You're placing passenger capacity above speed. The whole point of Hyperloop is speed: it's faster than an airplane, without all the downsides of the airplane (terrorism, TSA, crashing, etc.) HSR is not, it's slow (esp. the way they'll build it in this country). Of course, Hyperloop doesn't have the advantage of not having to rent a car like driving yourself does, but it makes up for it with very high speed.

ycitm 10y ago

Perhaps Tōkaidō Shinkansen would be a better example? 331 trains / day, 391 thousand passengers / day according to: http://english.jr-central.co.jp/company/ir/annualreport/_pdf/annualreport2012-02.pdf http://english.jr-central.co.jp/company/ir/annualreport/_pdf... (pdf)

azurezyq 10y ago
And Beijing-Shanghai highspeed railway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_High-Speed_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_High-... 100M rides/year in 2014, similar to the number of Shinkansen, far larger than eurostar.

adamt 10y ago

From: http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/about-eurostar/press-office/press-releases/2015/record-passenger-numbers-q2 http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/about-eurostar/press-office/pr... "Eurostar, the high-speed passenger rail service between the UK and mainland Europe, today reported the highest ever number of passengers transported on Eurostar in one quarter with over 2.8m customers travelling between the UK and the continent in Q2 2015. This represents a year-on-year increase of 3% in passengers compared with the same period last year (2.8m 2015: 2.7m 2014)." 2.8m in a quarter = 31,000 a day. Given the trains only run for just over 14 hours a day (London departure board for tomorrow) - then that's a mean passengers per hour over the quarter during operating hours over all days in the quarter of 2,214. Note this actual passengers not capacity. If you assumed say an average load ration of perhaps 70% (over all times of day all over the quarter) then the mean capacity per hour would be 3,100. Then at some times there are more trains than others, so the peak capacity per hour is probably at least 4,000.

chockablock 10y ago

Gp is referring to 'max capacity'. As others have noted 10k/hr is conservative.

martinald 10y ago

Yes, but you also have loads of Eurotunnel (car and truck carrying trains) and Southeastern High Speed (non-international) trains on those tracks. Add the capacity of those in. Say 3x Eurostar, 5x southeastern hsr and 4x eurotunnel. The new e320 trains have 900 passenger capacity (could be more with less first class, so let's call it 1000). With 12x departures per hour that's 12,000, and there would be more spare capacity left over because there wouldn't be local and express trains mixed together which kills capacity. I think you could easily do 15k p/h on Eurostar + related infrastructure. Maybe more if you used TGV Duplex double decker trains.