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I recognize this scheme because it's already implemented in Switzerland. Trains are not high-speed but rail links have been optimized to multiples of 30 minutes
by lolc 7y ago
I recognize this scheme because it's already implemented in Switzerland. Trains are not high-speed but rail links have been optimized to multiples of 30 minutes. At hubs, trains arrive just before minute 0 or 30 and leave after the clock has ticked over. At major centres, trains depart on a 30 minute cycle in all directions.
Arriving at a hub you know you'll catch your connection to the next hub without even consulting a schedule. Feeder trains are also synced up so you get little layover in general. If you're sitting at a hub station, it's easy to tell time by the ebb and flow of passengers.
Now what they should do is just run everything 50 percent faster at high speed to get the cycles down to 20 minutes. Have everybody walk 50% faster at hubs too. What could go wrong?
- ceejayoz 7y agoKnown as "clock-face scheduling". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling
- juliushuijnk 7y agoMy former boss is quite the train/energy expert, and he expained that this schedule is costly; you have high peak energy demands, as many trains accelerate roughly at the same time. Infrastructure needs to be able to cope with that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- taejo 7y agoAIUI from that article, clock-face scheduling is just scheduling with consistent intervals of a unit fraction of one hour (or possibly a multiple of one hour) so that trains always arrive and depart at the same number of minutes past the hour. This is what that article calls integrated scheduling.
- ant6n 7y agoClockface scheduling is for one line, integrated schedule is for multiple lines.
- _nalply 7y agoThe clock-face scheduling system is really neat and convenient for many people, but sometimes really tight. A bus in Papiermühle (near Bern) leaves 1 (one) minute after arrival of the train. This works because the bus is waiting at the train platform. But sometimes you would like to buy something at the railway station or there are older people or families with small children or you need to find out where to walk to first. Then you are out of luck. Mostly you just wait 30 minutes for the next train, but there are lines with one hour cadence and very rarely with two-hour cadence.
- cjslep 7y agoI haven't found it tight in my Gemeinde, which also has a bus home that departs 1 minute after the train arrives. I view it as liberating: instead of trying to rush in a grocery store I get an excuse to fill the time and shop slower, text the wife if I need to pick anything else up, socialize with locals in the store, etc.
- lolc 7y agoYep, the schedule is optimized for the common case.
- bobthepanda 7y agoIn general, the tighter your headways get, the less likely you can maintain such a strict operation. In fact, past a certain point it becomes pointless; if trains come every, say, ten minutes, then average wait time is five minutes and no one waits more than ten minutes, and holding a train will mostly just cause cascading delays.
- enriquto 7y ago> Now what they should do is just run everything 50 percent faster at high speed to get the cycles down to 20 minutes. I'm not sure the math works out that way.
- vidarh 7y agoLet's say your starting point is 60km/h. 50% increase in speed is 90km/h. You now travel the original 30km that before took half an hour in 20 minutes.
- bobthepanda 7y agoWhat’s important is that you need to do this to average speed, not top speed, and increasing average speed especially on old, curvy lines is not nontrivial.
- lolc 7y agoIndeed it's not even not impossible.