3 ms·

"I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds." Max persons per trip seems a metric of little re

by hsitz 9y ago

"I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds." Max persons per trip seems a metric of little relevance, if a pod is much faster and can make many more trips within the same time period. In any case, that would point to how the pod could compete: carry just as many people each day, but each person would reach his/her destination much faster than if they used the train. (Wouldn't even need to carry as many people, if each person were motivated to pay more to reach destination in much shorter time.)

jcranmer 9y ago
High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, with similar or higher frequency for local trains on the same line. Even if you ignore the low-speed alternatives, you'd have to dispatch pods in the region of one per minute to achieve the same passenger throughput. Well, there's the real problem with Hyperloop. It's not really feasible to operate switches more frequently than 45-second headways, even on conventional rail. Modern approaches generally have a capacity of 30 trains per hour, which means the same approach can service a dozen different routes. In Hyperloop, you would have to build a different approach for each of those routes, which requires duplicating the most expensive part of the infrastructure.
- com2kid 9y ago
  > High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Which seems in itself to be a huge problem. If Hyperloop can dispatch pods at shorter intervals, then high speed transit becomes a lot more user friendly. For the same reasons buses that run every half an hour are not the solution to mass transit, but put buses out that run every 5 or 10 minutes and the usefulness shoots way up.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  > High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Depends on what you mean by high speed. Currently high speed in the US means the speed that the British HST achieved in the early '70s, about 200kph. The airport train in Norway (Drammen to Gardermoen) can do that where the track and traffic allows and runs every 20 minutes. And you are right about local trains, last time I was in Bonn (about 15 years ago) there was a train leaving the station every two minutes (not to the same destination of course).

by hsitz 9y ago

jcranmer 9y ago

High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, with similar or higher frequency for local trains on the same line. Even if you ignore the low-speed alternatives, you'd have to dispatch pods in the region of one per minute to achieve the same passenger throughput. Well, there's the real problem with Hyperloop. It's not really feasible to operate switches more frequently than 45-second headways, even on conventional rail. Modern approaches generally have a capacity of 30 trains per hour, which means the same approach can service a dozen different routes. In Hyperloop, you would have to build a different approach for each of those routes, which requires duplicating the most expensive part of the infrastructure.

com2kid 9y ago
> High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Which seems in itself to be a huge problem. If Hyperloop can dispatch pods at shorter intervals, then high speed transit becomes a lot more user friendly. For the same reasons buses that run every half an hour are not the solution to mass transit, but put buses out that run every 5 or 10 minutes and the usefulness shoots way up.
kwhitefoot 9y ago
> High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Depends on what you mean by high speed. Currently high speed in the US means the speed that the British HST achieved in the early '70s, about 200kph. The airport train in Norway (Drammen to Gardermoen) can do that where the track and traffic allows and runs every 20 minutes. And you are right about local trains, last time I was in Bonn (about 15 years ago) there was a train leaving the station every two minutes (not to the same destination of course).