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> You never have to transfer from an east-west train to a north-south train (or vice versa). Literally everything is on your route. You can accomplish that in

> You never have to transfer from an east-west train to a north-south train (or vice versa). Literally everything is on your route. You can accomplish that in 2D by making the train line a ring, like the Yamanote Line of Tokyo. That way you halve the max distance traveled, and can “cut across” on car, foot, bike, other-train, etc where the main train line would still be inefficient.

adrianmonk 4y ago
Yeah, that's an interesting idea. In fact my first thought was, why not make this a circle instead of a line? But they say it's going to have super high speed rail. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line%2C_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line%2C_Saudi_Arabia): > The transportation layer will include a high-speed rail system, which is claimed to allow people to go from one side of the city to the other side in 20 minutes when finished, reaching a speed of 512 km/h, which is faster than existing high-speed rail at the time of announcement. Maybe they think a perfectly straight line makes that easier to build. Or maybe they just think their rail is so fast that distance becomes a minor issue. Future expansion is also interesting to think about. If you make it a line, you can expand by adding, say, 10% onto the end. Once you've built a circle, it's hard to make it 10% bigger. But I guess you could double a circle by adding another circle and turning it into a figure 8. The figure 8 would have similar advantages to a circle since they are both closed loops.
- mc32 4y ago
  Heh, that reminds me of olden Chinese earthen doughnut fort dwellings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_tulou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_tulou except in greater gigantic proportions (pun on the doughnut). Circle expansion: they could add interior and or exterior concentric circles or semi circles --but then that would complicate the simplicity, so maybe not.

adrianmonk 4y ago

Yeah, that's an interesting idea. In fact my first thought was, why not make this a circle instead of a line? But they say it's going to have super high speed rail. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line%2C_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line%2C_Saudi_Arabia): > The transportation layer will include a high-speed rail system, which is claimed to allow people to go from one side of the city to the other side in 20 minutes when finished, reaching a speed of 512 km/h, which is faster than existing high-speed rail at the time of announcement. Maybe they think a perfectly straight line makes that easier to build. Or maybe they just think their rail is so fast that distance becomes a minor issue. Future expansion is also interesting to think about. If you make it a line, you can expand by adding, say, 10% onto the end. Once you've built a circle, it's hard to make it 10% bigger. But I guess you could double a circle by adding another circle and turning it into a figure 8. The figure 8 would have similar advantages to a circle since they are both closed loops.

mc32 4y ago
Heh, that reminds me of olden Chinese earthen doughnut fort dwellings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_tulou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_tulou except in greater gigantic proportions (pun on the doughnut). Circle expansion: they could add interior and or exterior concentric circles or semi circles --but then that would complicate the simplicity, so maybe not.