6 ms·

Amen. If you want a fast train in 2017, hire the people who have been winning in that department since 1964.

nihonde 9y ago
Also, the リニア will cut travel time between Tokyo and Nagoya from about 100 minutes to 40 minutes, which is a big difference for people who do business between those two regions.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  That's insane. If you didn't have to switch trains for Philly (30th St) to NYC, an avg ride could take a bit than 100 min if there are only around 7 stops the entire way (normal stops would make the ride like 2 hours). Reducing those numbers by more than half would be incredible. Even if this is just a pipe dream and there isn't a direct train between the two cities right now anyway.
  - nihonde 9y ago
    I think straight line distance of NYC -> DC is a little further than Tokyo -> Nagoya, but even the current Nozomi Express Shinkansen would be a huge improvement over Amtrak.
    - skinnymuch 9y ago
      Oh wow didn't realize the distance.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Stops and waiting are by far the biggest slowdown in train travel. In a moderately dense area, if you could magically put enough trains on the tracks to offer all important connections as high frequency point to point connections, you would get enormous improvements in travel time even at moderate cruise speed. Tracks are empty almost all the time because trains cannot evade and have very low deceleration, they have to reliably coordinate far beyond visual range. And by reliably I mean more than aviation grade reliability, because there would be no redundancy and no Hudson River to splash into when you mess up that part. The good news is that it's "just" an information problem (well, so is landing a rocket, in a way), the bad news is that the number of possible endpoint pairs in a network is bloody high. In the end you get back to the old vision of on demand "pods". I suppose that those could still be made "rail-efficient" if you make them robotically jack into a paceline behind a tender that provides drafting and power grabbed from an overhead line (you would not want this per pod), but run on battery power only to get to/from the tender at endpoints (which the tender and its followers passes non-stop) and when the paceline gets broken by someone exiting. If you can start over on a new right of way, this is what you should do (in a pinch, you could also take over the leftmost lane of existing roads, but that's not a good place for doing construction and maintenance).
    - aninhumer 9y ago
      I think you can get most of the benefits just from a well designed timetable. I get the impression that's mostly how they make it work so well in Japan. There tend to be at least local and express services on almost all routes, and often multiple tiers of express. Another common pattern I've seen is having several commuter services which each run stopping for a different section of the route, and then run express to the central stations. This gives passengers the benefits of swapping between local and express services, without them loosing time changing trains. Of course, all of this is a lot easier when you already have the passenger numbers to support it.
      - skinnymuch 9y ago
        NJ transit does do the minimum of express for the farther out places from NYC. Nothing as in-depth as you're explaining. But as you said. The numbers wouldn't support making things too much more complex. That's why my original post mentioned a limit or 7 stops between philly and NYC as an example of a semi-express train. Though a hypothetical express train would probably actually be 5 stops max.
- taurath 9y ago
  Its absolutely nuts. With all the housing pricing problems we have in the US its crazy to me that we don't have HSR popping up everywhere to ease restrictions on commute.
  - dundercoder 9y ago
    Highways are paid for w/taxes. Rail gets no subsidy. Sad really.

Also, the リニア will cut travel time between Tokyo and Nagoya from about 100 minutes to 40 minutes, which is a big difference for people who do business between those two regions.

skinnymuch 9y ago
That's insane. If you didn't have to switch trains for Philly (30th St) to NYC, an avg ride could take a bit than 100 min if there are only around 7 stops the entire way (normal stops would make the ride like 2 hours). Reducing those numbers by more than half would be incredible. Even if this is just a pipe dream and there isn't a direct train between the two cities right now anyway.
- nihonde 9y ago
  I think straight line distance of NYC -> DC is a little further than Tokyo -> Nagoya, but even the current Nozomi Express Shinkansen would be a huge improvement over Amtrak.
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    Oh wow didn't realize the distance.
- usrusr 9y ago
  Stops and waiting are by far the biggest slowdown in train travel. In a moderately dense area, if you could magically put enough trains on the tracks to offer all important connections as high frequency point to point connections, you would get enormous improvements in travel time even at moderate cruise speed. Tracks are empty almost all the time because trains cannot evade and have very low deceleration, they have to reliably coordinate far beyond visual range. And by reliably I mean more than aviation grade reliability, because there would be no redundancy and no Hudson River to splash into when you mess up that part. The good news is that it's "just" an information problem (well, so is landing a rocket, in a way), the bad news is that the number of possible endpoint pairs in a network is bloody high. In the end you get back to the old vision of on demand "pods". I suppose that those could still be made "rail-efficient" if you make them robotically jack into a paceline behind a tender that provides drafting and power grabbed from an overhead line (you would not want this per pod), but run on battery power only to get to/from the tender at endpoints (which the tender and its followers passes non-stop) and when the paceline gets broken by someone exiting. If you can start over on a new right of way, this is what you should do (in a pinch, you could also take over the leftmost lane of existing roads, but that's not a good place for doing construction and maintenance).
  - aninhumer 9y ago
    I think you can get most of the benefits just from a well designed timetable. I get the impression that's mostly how they make it work so well in Japan. There tend to be at least local and express services on almost all routes, and often multiple tiers of express. Another common pattern I've seen is having several commuter services which each run stopping for a different section of the route, and then run express to the central stations. This gives passengers the benefits of swapping between local and express services, without them loosing time changing trains. Of course, all of this is a lot easier when you already have the passenger numbers to support it.
    - skinnymuch 9y ago
      NJ transit does do the minimum of express for the farther out places from NYC. Nothing as in-depth as you're explaining. But as you said. The numbers wouldn't support making things too much more complex. That's why my original post mentioned a limit or 7 stops between philly and NYC as an example of a semi-express train. Though a hypothetical express train would probably actually be 5 stops max.
taurath 9y ago
Its absolutely nuts. With all the housing pricing problems we have in the US its crazy to me that we don't have HSR popping up everywhere to ease restrictions on commute.
- dundercoder 9y ago
  Highways are paid for w/taxes. Rail gets no subsidy. Sad really.