27 ms·

Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

334 points by metters 2y ago

surfingdino 2y ago
Or you could follow the way of thinking practiced by planners in London: Analyst: "We could really use a bridge here..." Decision Maker: "I hear you, let's dig a tunnel!"
rangestransform 2y ago
germany gets this while NYC still has to grit our teeth and plug our ears for the rickety 100+ year old metal elevated structures with lead paint
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esafak 2y ago
The quality of my life would be better improved through public transportation and these sound absorbers than almost any app I use. Hooray for basic infrastructure.
- danpalmer 2y ago
  I would go further, and say that public transport improves quality of life far more than sound absorbers for public transport do. It's nice that these things exist, but we should be spending money on more public transport, not necessarily on making public transport more palatable to people. I realise that's an unfortunate necessity, but it's clear that people pushing back on public transport just haven't seen its benefits enough.
  - Maxion 2y ago
    I think you're missing the point. Many public transport projects are dependant on the community around allowing them to be built, mitigating the impact of said projects allows more public transport to be built. E.g. a tram doesn't go very fast and is also pretty quiet. A train usually runs a lot faster, and causes more noise pollution. If you can mitigate the noise, then you'll probably be able to build the railway instead of the tram. Allowing more capacity, higher speeds, and a better public transport solution.
    - danhor 2y ago
      I don't think that is really true. In principle, a slower train is quieter, but a tram usually has very tight curves in lots of places, resulting in screeching, as opposed to a (modern) mainline railway which has much wider curves. A tram also needs to run closer to the homes, to still be attractive despite the lower speeds, increasing noise levels at the homes and also requiring more road space near people. Meanwhile a mainline train is much faster, thus can run farther away from home as the access penalty is offset by higher speeds. Low-floor trams also often feature more screeching due to the inability to use conventional bogies. Anecdotally, in germany, projects to (re-)build trams in cities often fail over local protests, while rail reactivations don't usually succumb to that. HSR does get a lot of local protests, but (IMHO) not really because of the noise and fails less often compared to trams.
  - callalex 2y ago
    There is a balance to be struck though. For example where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are millions of people whose commutes are objectively faster and cheaper on the BART train, but the vast majority of commuters still choose to drive a personal vehicle over a congested and expensive toll bridge. The primary reason for this is that the train is just so damn unpleasant for a multitude of reasons (including noise) that most people find the extra wasted hour worth it to them to have a more pleasant commute. Whenever the agency that runs the train proposes spending more money on things like human excrement abatement, noise abatement, etc. people complain and protest about mismanagement and money wasting, so nothing ever gets better and the infrastructure continues to be underutilized.
lqet 2y ago
> a transparent noise barrier Most rail noise barriers in Germany are completely covered in graffiti [0], so I wouldn't expect them to remain transparent for more than a few weeks. [0] https://ga.de/imgs/93/8/5/9/3/0/9/1/9/tok_8596521c60eeaa53eea42eea57c8b7dc/w1200_h630_x662_y525_GA_85197421_2005565667_RGB_190_1_1_2d14a73e871971ed95a819ea6b69b342_1593349745_2005565667_77b22cacaf-f8bed87dc312e74a.jpg https://ga.de/imgs/93/8/5/9/3/0/9/1/9/tok_8596521c60eeaa53ee...
- andersa 2y ago
  That's because the current ones are all ugly metal walls. Painting stuff on them makes it at least slightly less depressing.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    It makes it more depressing to see them though. Who likes to be reminded that people will just deface public property for fun?
  - muspimerol 2y ago
    Do you think this "MetaWindow" is much more attractive? Here's a similar looking transparent sound barrier in a new building area that is already starting to be covered in graffiti: https://youtu.be/e7-Fd1HOw_g?si=OTNn_NyV_W7iJStz&t=265 https://youtu.be/e7-Fd1HOw_g?si=OTNn_NyV_W7iJStz&t=265 At least some light will still get through in the gaps between graffiti, but I don't think they will end up looking much different than non-transparent barriers.
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    No, it doesn't. Before it was a plain metal wall, now it's ugly metal wall with idiotic tags on it.
- umpalumpaaa 2y ago
  If you dive into the graffiti scene a bit you will start to appreciate all those graffitis. The story behind some of them is super interesting. There is a lot of "competition", "collaboration", and group dynamics involved. It is truly fascinating. I was living in Cologne (Ehrenfeld) for a while in a place with awesome graffiti and every weekend there were people taking pictures "collecting" and documenting the graffiti. Edit: Not "all of those" but "many of those"
thih9 2y ago
> MetaWindow, a transparent noise barrier boasting unparalleled sound-absorbing capabilities This is about a physical product. Not a software window; and unrelated to Meta, of Facebook and Instagram fame.
- yau8edq12i 2y ago
  Nobody outside of tech circles actually cares about how facebook's parent company is called this month. It's still facebook, it's still google, it's still twitter. Not meta, alphabet or x.
  - thih9 2y ago
    This is a tech website though. It’s not unusual to see Facebook’s parent company mentioned in a hn submission’s title.
lionkor 2y ago
Now the trains have to actually arrive and depart within, say, 5 minutes of the planned time, and we will be in the 21st century finally.
ivan_gammel 2y ago
A startup with wrong product focus would be insolvent in a few months. Deutsche Bahn can rot for decades spending money on technology that would not make any difference when a quarter of its trains is delayed or cancelled.
- thewarpaint 2y ago
  Care to explain how trains being delayed or canceled is related to a new technology reducing sound pollution?
  - tschwimmer 2y ago
    The article posits it could make approvals to build new rail lines near noise sensitive areas easier.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    The prospects of building something new with this tech are very distant. Just to get an approval for construction in Germany it can take years and then there will be traditional delays along the way. We won’t see it in any meaningful quantities before 2030-2040 - whether this project will survive until then is an open question. The acute service problem on the other side could be addressed by simpler means like investment in IT and better internal processes. My last trip was cancelled one hour in advance, despite that they knew it couldn’t happen days before. I had to visit their travel center, because the app couldn’t apply my seat reservation to alternative route, and that experience was awful. It is very hard to understand why some tech that may never see the light due to bureaucratic hurdles deserves investment at the time where service doesn’t show any signs of improvement.
- microtherion 2y ago
  My understanding is that some of the mitigation for delayed or cancelled trains will involve new construction, and that might be facilitated by reducing the noise impact.
- usr1106 2y ago
  Deutsche Bahn is not a startup, but provides public service. Are the Autobahns profitable? That they have problems with service quality does not mean other problems should not be addressed. Noise pollution has massive health consequences for those living in affected areas.
donw 2y ago
I cannot be the only person that read this as “MetalWindow”, a.k.a. “walls”.
Lorin 2y ago
Ok, now they have an excuse to employ a crew to keep them clean like any other window-like product... instead of it just being a wall? I don't get it.
- fcsp 2y ago
  There's maintenance management fees to be earned! I don't know about how this stuff works, but as a matter of fact there's management bonuses for new development for DB execs, whereas nothing is gained from plain bleak maintenance. So guess why many major train stations in Germany have been undergoing major, multi-billion relocations and redesigns (often with worse throughput metrics).
  - iggldiggl 2y ago
    Complaining about train noise is a national hobby, so the legal rules for noise protection have been significantly tightened up in the last decades and now multi-metre high noise barriers (up to four, five or even six metres) are a legal requirement. The end result being that people still complain about fear of more noise when infrastructure upgrades are proposed, but new they complain about visual blight, too. Even where local property owners would be okay with somewhat more elevated noise levels (or having sound-insulating windows installed) in return for lower noise barriers, the infrastructure operator is legally required to build the full-height wall even against the wishes of the adjacent property owners/local municipalities. In the absence of national sensibilities on noise returning to e.g. Swiss levels (where AFAIK balancing noise protection vs. its visual impacts actually is an official planning goal), less ugly noise protection barriers are a worthwhile development. (They've also managed to make freight train noticeably quieter by requiring composite-materials brake shoes, which don't roughen up the wheel treads so much, but beyond that there aren't many more easy gains in noise reduction to be had…)
- eternauta3k 2y ago
  Best way to make a city look crappier is replace a dirty wall with a dirty window
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ggm 2y ago
I can't find it any more but I read a paper decades ago on the sound modulation effects of different plants, at scale and how designed planting around motorways can help reduce local resident impact.
ghostly_s 2y ago
Okay it's clear-ish...but where's the noise level sample vs. the alternatives? edit: I did find this cool demo of a similar product of theirs, but seems to be nothing more online about the noise barrier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUee93HcPVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUee93HcPVQ
vezuchyy 2y ago
Cool, one day CP will install those along their tracks and my high-rise will shake silently every time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_F59PH#F59PHI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_F59PH#F59PHI departs from the station.
mbforbes 2y ago
A semi-related surprising fact I only learned recently is that the ultra-long nose of Japanese bullet trains is not for aerodynamics, but to reduce noise. Specifically, "tunnel boom." Random source: https://www.jrpass.com/blog/why-shinkansen-bullet-trains-no-longer-look-like-a-bullet https://www.jrpass.com/blog/why-shinkansen-bullet-trains-no-...
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  this is only a problem in japan because the shinkansen is the oldest high speed network in existence. new train tunnels built in Europe are wider and flare out at the end so that there isn't a tunnel boom.
  - mbforbes 2y ago
    Fascinating, and now I learned another new thing! Thank you for sharing.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      yup. for a more detailed explanation, there's this segment of the article: > Basically what happens is when a train enters a tunnel at high speed, the air in front of it is compressed and does not have enough time to flow past the trains body. When all released at once, the pressure causes a shockwave that goes boom! This is basically a very rudimentary version of the piston effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piston_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piston_effect
danielfoster 2y ago
Now they just need to be on time.
croemer 2y ago
Terrible press release. The first picture shows an _intransparent_ barrier. Is that a before after picture? And what is "meta technology"?
- addandsubtract 2y ago
  Seems to be a before picture. There's an "after" picture further down the page. Meta technology maybe because it's not actual train related tech, but meta tech related to trains.
- metters 2y ago
  This [1] is the official press release by Deutsche Bahn. I wanted to post this instead, but it is in German. [1] https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/presse/pressestart_zentrales_uebersicht/Mehr-Durchblick-weniger-Laerm-DB-entwickelt-innovative-transparente-Schallschutzwaende-12861336 https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/presse/pressestart_zentrales...
  - croemer 2y ago
    Thanks that one is better! At least it says: "m Bild: Herkömmliche Lärmschutzwand und MetaWindow im Vergleich (Visualisierung)" They should just use the new picture and not make the previous way of doing things so central. If one just looks at the picture it could appear as if the wall changes translucency dynamically.
- wiml 2y ago
  My guess is it's related to "metamaterials", which are materials engineered to have interesting properties by including structures smaller than the wavelength of whatever is going through them (sound, microwaves, even visible light if the structures are fine enough). There is quite a lot of research into sound-absorbing yet porous acoustic metamaterials. (Related, but maybe not technically a metamaterial, previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678415 )
  - croemer 2y ago
mindwok 2y ago
Lots of negative comments on this. I, for one, am glad to see work that supports better transport infrastructure while not being insanely ugly like a lot of transport infrastructure is (like the giant concrete birds nests of highways in US cities). I want to live in cities that are visually appealing.
mikeiz404 2y ago
This article goes into a little more detail: https://www.heise.de/en/news/MetaWindow-Laermschutz-an-Gleisen-wird-durchsichtig-9719706.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/MetaWindow-Laermschutz-an-Gleis... And the PhotonicVibes site is here: https://phononic-vibes.com/metawindow-for-railway/ https://phononic-vibes.com/metawindow-for-railway/ Here is a demo video for a meta material made by them: https://youtu.be/NElK8qKRrBU?si=CfBjUESlu_XUvnn_ https://youtu.be/NElK8qKRrBU?si=CfBjUESlu_XUvnn_
- riffraff 2y ago
  That's a really cool demo!
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    Honestly, that demo alone would be enough to get funding at any demo day, really cool stuff.
  - kierenj 2y ago
    Weirdly it says "up to 10dB" attenuation.. which isn't actually that much at all. 10dB would be a halving/doubling. I'm not sure how the apparent loudness / change in waveform amplitude display is so great, considering that actual hard stat...
    - axytol 2y ago
      3 dB would be halving/doubling. With 10 dB, you would get a ratio of 10x.
harha 2y ago
I mean it's cool, but how about getting some basics like punctuality and cleanliness right first.
throwaway4good 2y ago
This is an international site and I think people don’t understand just how big Deutsche Bahn’s problems with delays are and how incredible dissatisfied its customers are. The situation with DB is really unique compared to its neighbors in any direction. While the tech described probably has merits, anyone who has been near DB lately would instinctively go: why are you doing this when you cannot get the basics right?
- lukan 2y ago
  Or basic information about when and where a train comes late or not at all. Sometimes the information is there and correct - sometimes not at all or is wrong and 100+ people waiting for a train that is never coming. Experienced that way too often. But hey, the Bahn management achieved all their self proclaimed targets (non of them related to reliable trains) so they surely deserved their fat bonus.
- marsRoverDev 2y ago
  I fly to germany when I can, or take any other operator's train. I am way, way more familiar with Karlsruhe than I would like to be.
- jamil7 2y ago
  It’s also gotten so expensive and unreliable that some people I’ve spoken to are just driving again instead whereas years ago they would have always gone by train. I can’t help but feel that the weird ownership model contributes to this and the whole company should just be properly nationalised.
  - tetris11 2y ago
    Hell I used to bike 20km to work to avoid it
- panick21_ 2y ago
  DB is a gigantic organization. Do you think it is reasonable for them not not make progress or advancement in anything as long as the ICE delays are not fixed? They can never change a train interior, improve the food menu, or 1000s of other things? This is a totally unreasonable suggestion. The reason for DB reliability problem is 50+ years of infrastructure neglect, fixing it will not be improved by shutting down every other group at DB. Personally having traveled threw Germany many times, its a mostly amazing. Yes sometimes trains are late sometimes, but the trains themselves are great and travel in them is a joy. I think what Germans don't understand is how good they have it compared to many places in the world.
felsokning 2y ago
They don't give any numbers on the amount of resistances to the expansion of the infrastructure, based on noise alone. This reads like a "we did a cool thing" but without qualitatively demonstrating the merits for the need.
- iggldiggl 2y ago
  Qualitatively speaking it definitely is a problem in Germany. DB planning rules used to include a guidance note that noise barriers higher than the typical lower edge of a train window should only be considered in exceptional cases. Two or three decades of constant complaints about train noise have led to legal rules and planning regulations having been significantly tightened up and now mean that four, five or even six metre high noise barriers are nothing out of the ordinary for new-built infrastructure. The result being that people still complain about fear of more noise when new infrastructure is proposed (despite freight trains having gotten quieter, too, due to the introduction of new brake shoes), but now they're also complaining about the visual blight, too. (And nobody cares about the views of the train passengers.) Meanwhile in Switzerland for example the current state is that balancing noise reduction needs vs. the visual impact of noise barriers still is an official planning goal because apparently people haven't been screaming so loudly about noise and nothing else, so the Swiss tend to build fewer and lower noise barriers even today. (Also purely empirically from my visits there, the UK also doesn't seem to build as many and as high noise barriers, even on infrastructure that has been newly built or rebuilt within the last two decades.)
smokel 2y ago
My hart jumped when I initially thought that they had implemented an idea that I had once. Turns out MetaWindow is not an augmented reality display in the train's window, where one can read information on the scenery that one passes through while traveling. What is that city in the distance? When was that church built? How many cows are in that meadow? Stuff one has to know.
- tetris11 2y ago
  A public institution doing this, fine fire away. A private train company? This will be an obnoxious video ad space.
  - culturestate 2y ago
    DB is still a 100% state-owned enterprise; it’s “private” in name only. Sort of like Singapore Airlines, which is listed but majority-owned by one of Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds.
  - crote 2y ago
    A large fraction of trains and buses in Europe are already equipped with large full-color monitors. They are primarily used to show trip progress, potential transfers, and basic informative messages. Ads are rare, and are usually static images advertising the transport company's own products.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Some aircraft designers have proposed doing this, because a screen can be lighter than a pressure resistant window.
- reportgunner 2y ago
  Just sit at home and stare at a video of the scenery at that point.
  - smokel 2y ago
    The (highly recommended) Belgian television series "In de gloria" [1] had a teleshopping sketch in which one could order VHS tapes of their favorite tracks. The target audience was pensioners who had traveled the same boring track for years. The irony is that some years later a television channel started broadcasting railway videos all day long. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_de_gloria https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_de_gloria
codemusings 2y ago
Now could Deutsche Bahn please also invest in some actual infrastructure, trains and make them go on time? That‘d be great! Thanks.
- locallost 2y ago
  Deutsche Bahn pays for the usage of the infrastructure just like any other company using it (e.g. Flix or any of the regional carriers). The infrastructure is the responsibility of DV InfraGO (formerly DB Netz).
  - codemusings 2y ago
    What are you talking about? DB Infrago is a subsidiary of DB and is as such governed by the board. The fact that they are separate entities has purely corporate legal reasons.
    - locallost 2y ago
      Deutsche Bahn still pays for the usage of the infrastructure and has nothing to do with maintaining it. They are separate entities because it's mandated by the EU, the idea being it should promote competition in rail transport.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  > Now could Deutsche Bahn please also invest in some actual infrastructure The main "problem" currently is not that they modernise too little, but too much. For the last 5 years or so, during the summer months I need to add one or two hours to nearly all my connections because of construction work that slowly seems to move from cities into the rural regions (I'm not complaining though, no matter what the Bahn does, travellers will be affected one way or another, and I bet most of the delays you are seeing are caused by construction work somewhere at the 'leaf nodes' of the network). Of course a couple of decades of the "kaputtsparen" mentality didn't help, it would obviously have been better to spread out the required maintenance work and modernization over those decades of infrastructure negligence.
earthnail 2y ago
I love this. I read so much criticism here, but noise pollution is a main issue when it comes to railroads in residential zones. Yes, punctuality is an issue with Deutsche Bahn. No, this doesn’t fix that instantly. But as an organisation you can work on two things at the same time. This invention is spectacular. I wish more people would work on noise pollution. It makes a huge difference.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  > I wish more people would work on noise pollution Absolutely agree. It's one of the most insidious kinds of pollution that has big effects on mental and cardio-vascular health, and is accumulative. Everything from aircraft, to emergency vehicle sirens, to construction and poor housing, is slowly killing people. In Europe we've actually made big leaps forward with regulation, building standards for isolation, and abatement laws. But these often go unenforced or even flippantly dismissed and mocked because people don't recognise the harm pathways and effects. Whenever this topic comes up I am reminded of this (very funny) curmudgeon's screed "On Noise". Although Arthur Schopenhauer was "serious" about this, his acerbic style only gets more funny with time [0]. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10732/10732-h/10732-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10732/10732-h/10732-h.htm
  - throwy348734 2y ago
    Some progress in Europe yes but the harms are still far from getting enough attention and policy responses. One problem is that there's so little organized effort against noise pollution, there's need for a movement with grass root organizations that puts sustained pressure on this issue.
    - tichiian 2y ago
      Also, the noise pollution regulations that are in place exempt trains.
  - pmayrgundter 2y ago
    It's all about whip cracking! Who knew that was such a thing. Like the mindless honking horn of the past. Thanks for sharing :)
eru 2y ago
They specifically mention railway noise. I wonder whether there's something special about railways, or whether it would work for other noise as well? Especially roads with cars on them?
- metters 2y ago
  I think there are noises specific to railways. And from what I believe this "MetaWindow" targets relevant frequencies. However, I am sure this also works for the frequencies generated by car traffic. At least the linked youtube video in this comment [1] does not mention anything about frequencies. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40384778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40384778 EDIT: I was wrong about the video. There is _no mention_ about frequencies.
- crote 2y ago
  Railways are unique because they go right through the densest part of towns and cities. For them to be most effective, they should be within biking or ideally even walking distance of a significant number of homes and offices. If you place a railway on the outskirts of a city, nobody is going to use it. This means you're going to have to use very significant noise reduction to keep the area livable. Highways care a lot less about location. Place them a one-minute car ride outside the city, and its noise becomes basically irrelevant. The city grows and swallows the highway? Just place an industrial area or mall between the highway and any homes. When homes aren't an arms-length away you can get away with far more primitive noise reduction.
FearOfTheDuck 2y ago
A train does not make noise if it's cancelled
tichiian 2y ago
I think the reason DB introduces this kind of measures over the obviously superior first steps like "building a quieter train" is this: Walls are paid for by the state or community annoyed by the train noise. New or improved trains would be paid for by DB (a nominally private company). Which is why stuff like "putting quieter brakes on freight trains that don't sound like fingernails on a chalk board" will take at least 20 more years if it will happen at all.
jasonvorhe 2y ago
Ask the typical DB customer if they want their trains to be on time or more silent and I promise you, the answer will not be surprising.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
  This project was probably very cheap compared to the cost of fixing the Deutsche Bahn's horrendous problems with delays and cancelations. The Deutsche Bahn has literally decades of maintenance to catch up on. Even if the Deutsche Bahn does everything right from now on, the next decade is going to be very painful for German train commuters.
- dgellow 2y ago
  Both problems are unrelated
Bluestein 2y ago
The startup behind the tech: - https://phononic-vibes.com/about-us/ https://phononic-vibes.com/about-us/
noja 2y ago
_This new system integrates meta technology_ What is meta technology?
- mateus1 2y ago
  I assume it refers to metamaterials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial
bradley13 2y ago
How about replacing antiques with modern trains? Repairing tracks? Electrifying all tracks? Those steps would not only reduce noise, but actually make their service usable.
garfieldnate 2y ago
>Its design minimizes visual disruptions, It's kind of laughable to see this giant, pristine pane of glass in the middle of a city on a train track. The photographer must have come the first day, because by the next this will be covered in graffiti. Which, presumably, won't at all affect its function as a sound barrier, but it think graffiti on a solid background is less grating than graffiti on a clear background will be.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
We need this for cars

334 points by metters 2y ago

Or you could follow the way of thinking practiced by planners in London: Analyst: "We could really use a bridge here..." Decision Maker: "I hear you, let's dig a tunnel!"

rangestransform 2y ago

germany gets this while NYC still has to grit our teeth and plug our ears for the rickety 100+ year old metal elevated structures with lead paint

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esafak 2y ago

The quality of my life would be better improved through public transportation and these sound absorbers than almost any app I use. Hooray for basic infrastructure.

danpalmer 2y ago
I would go further, and say that public transport improves quality of life far more than sound absorbers for public transport do. It's nice that these things exist, but we should be spending money on more public transport, not necessarily on making public transport more palatable to people. I realise that's an unfortunate necessity, but it's clear that people pushing back on public transport just haven't seen its benefits enough.
- Maxion 2y ago
  I think you're missing the point. Many public transport projects are dependant on the community around allowing them to be built, mitigating the impact of said projects allows more public transport to be built. E.g. a tram doesn't go very fast and is also pretty quiet. A train usually runs a lot faster, and causes more noise pollution. If you can mitigate the noise, then you'll probably be able to build the railway instead of the tram. Allowing more capacity, higher speeds, and a better public transport solution.
  - danhor 2y ago
    I don't think that is really true. In principle, a slower train is quieter, but a tram usually has very tight curves in lots of places, resulting in screeching, as opposed to a (modern) mainline railway which has much wider curves. A tram also needs to run closer to the homes, to still be attractive despite the lower speeds, increasing noise levels at the homes and also requiring more road space near people. Meanwhile a mainline train is much faster, thus can run farther away from home as the access penalty is offset by higher speeds. Low-floor trams also often feature more screeching due to the inability to use conventional bogies. Anecdotally, in germany, projects to (re-)build trams in cities often fail over local protests, while rail reactivations don't usually succumb to that. HSR does get a lot of local protests, but (IMHO) not really because of the noise and fails less often compared to trams.
- callalex 2y ago
  There is a balance to be struck though. For example where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are millions of people whose commutes are objectively faster and cheaper on the BART train, but the vast majority of commuters still choose to drive a personal vehicle over a congested and expensive toll bridge. The primary reason for this is that the train is just so damn unpleasant for a multitude of reasons (including noise) that most people find the extra wasted hour worth it to them to have a more pleasant commute. Whenever the agency that runs the train proposes spending more money on things like human excrement abatement, noise abatement, etc. people complain and protest about mismanagement and money wasting, so nothing ever gets better and the infrastructure continues to be underutilized.

lqet 2y ago

> a transparent noise barrier Most rail noise barriers in Germany are completely covered in graffiti [0], so I wouldn't expect them to remain transparent for more than a few weeks. [0] https://ga.de/imgs/93/8/5/9/3/0/9/1/9/tok_8596521c60eeaa53eea42eea57c8b7dc/w1200_h630_x662_y525_GA_85197421_2005565667_RGB_190_1_1_2d14a73e871971ed95a819ea6b69b342_1593349745_2005565667_77b22cacaf-f8bed87dc312e74a.jpg https://ga.de/imgs/93/8/5/9/3/0/9/1/9/tok_8596521c60eeaa53ee...

andersa 2y ago
That's because the current ones are all ugly metal walls. Painting stuff on them makes it at least slightly less depressing.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  It makes it more depressing to see them though. Who likes to be reminded that people will just deface public property for fun?
- muspimerol 2y ago
  Do you think this "MetaWindow" is much more attractive? Here's a similar looking transparent sound barrier in a new building area that is already starting to be covered in graffiti: https://youtu.be/e7-Fd1HOw_g?si=OTNn_NyV_W7iJStz&t=265 https://youtu.be/e7-Fd1HOw_g?si=OTNn_NyV_W7iJStz&t=265 At least some light will still get through in the gaps between graffiti, but I don't think they will end up looking much different than non-transparent barriers.
- wiseowise 2y ago
  No, it doesn't. Before it was a plain metal wall, now it's ugly metal wall with idiotic tags on it.
umpalumpaaa 2y ago
If you dive into the graffiti scene a bit you will start to appreciate all those graffitis. The story behind some of them is super interesting. There is a lot of "competition", "collaboration", and group dynamics involved. It is truly fascinating. I was living in Cologne (Ehrenfeld) for a while in a place with awesome graffiti and every weekend there were people taking pictures "collecting" and documenting the graffiti. Edit: Not "all of those" but "many of those"

thih9 2y ago

> MetaWindow, a transparent noise barrier boasting unparalleled sound-absorbing capabilities This is about a physical product. Not a software window; and unrelated to Meta, of Facebook and Instagram fame.

yau8edq12i 2y ago
Nobody outside of tech circles actually cares about how facebook's parent company is called this month. It's still facebook, it's still google, it's still twitter. Not meta, alphabet or x.
- thih9 2y ago
  This is a tech website though. It’s not unusual to see Facebook’s parent company mentioned in a hn submission’s title.

lionkor 2y ago

Now the trains have to actually arrive and depart within, say, 5 minutes of the planned time, and we will be in the 21st century finally.

ivan_gammel 2y ago

A startup with wrong product focus would be insolvent in a few months. Deutsche Bahn can rot for decades spending money on technology that would not make any difference when a quarter of its trains is delayed or cancelled.

thewarpaint 2y ago
Care to explain how trains being delayed or canceled is related to a new technology reducing sound pollution?
- tschwimmer 2y ago
  The article posits it could make approvals to build new rail lines near noise sensitive areas easier.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  The prospects of building something new with this tech are very distant. Just to get an approval for construction in Germany it can take years and then there will be traditional delays along the way. We won’t see it in any meaningful quantities before 2030-2040 - whether this project will survive until then is an open question. The acute service problem on the other side could be addressed by simpler means like investment in IT and better internal processes. My last trip was cancelled one hour in advance, despite that they knew it couldn’t happen days before. I had to visit their travel center, because the app couldn’t apply my seat reservation to alternative route, and that experience was awful. It is very hard to understand why some tech that may never see the light due to bureaucratic hurdles deserves investment at the time where service doesn’t show any signs of improvement.
microtherion 2y ago
My understanding is that some of the mitigation for delayed or cancelled trains will involve new construction, and that might be facilitated by reducing the noise impact.
usr1106 2y ago
Deutsche Bahn is not a startup, but provides public service. Are the Autobahns profitable? That they have problems with service quality does not mean other problems should not be addressed. Noise pollution has massive health consequences for those living in affected areas.

donw 2y ago

I cannot be the only person that read this as “MetalWindow”, a.k.a. “walls”.

Lorin 2y ago

Ok, now they have an excuse to employ a crew to keep them clean like any other window-like product... instead of it just being a wall? I don't get it.

fcsp 2y ago
There's maintenance management fees to be earned! I don't know about how this stuff works, but as a matter of fact there's management bonuses for new development for DB execs, whereas nothing is gained from plain bleak maintenance. So guess why many major train stations in Germany have been undergoing major, multi-billion relocations and redesigns (often with worse throughput metrics).
- iggldiggl 2y ago
  Complaining about train noise is a national hobby, so the legal rules for noise protection have been significantly tightened up in the last decades and now multi-metre high noise barriers (up to four, five or even six metres) are a legal requirement. The end result being that people still complain about fear of more noise when infrastructure upgrades are proposed, but new they complain about visual blight, too. Even where local property owners would be okay with somewhat more elevated noise levels (or having sound-insulating windows installed) in return for lower noise barriers, the infrastructure operator is legally required to build the full-height wall even against the wishes of the adjacent property owners/local municipalities. In the absence of national sensibilities on noise returning to e.g. Swiss levels (where AFAIK balancing noise protection vs. its visual impacts actually is an official planning goal), less ugly noise protection barriers are a worthwhile development. (They've also managed to make freight train noticeably quieter by requiring composite-materials brake shoes, which don't roughen up the wheel treads so much, but beyond that there aren't many more easy gains in noise reduction to be had…)
eternauta3k 2y ago
Best way to make a city look crappier is replace a dirty wall with a dirty window

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ggm 2y ago

I can't find it any more but I read a paper decades ago on the sound modulation effects of different plants, at scale and how designed planting around motorways can help reduce local resident impact.

ghostly_s 2y ago

Okay it's clear-ish...but where's the noise level sample vs. the alternatives? edit: I did find this cool demo of a similar product of theirs, but seems to be nothing more online about the noise barrier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUee93HcPVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUee93HcPVQ

vezuchyy 2y ago

Cool, one day CP will install those along their tracks and my high-rise will shake silently every time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_F59PH#F59PHI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_F59PH#F59PHI departs from the station.

mbforbes 2y ago

A semi-related surprising fact I only learned recently is that the ultra-long nose of Japanese bullet trains is not for aerodynamics, but to reduce noise. Specifically, "tunnel boom." Random source: https://www.jrpass.com/blog/why-shinkansen-bullet-trains-no-longer-look-like-a-bullet https://www.jrpass.com/blog/why-shinkansen-bullet-trains-no-...

bobthepanda 2y ago
this is only a problem in japan because the shinkansen is the oldest high speed network in existence. new train tunnels built in Europe are wider and flare out at the end so that there isn't a tunnel boom.
- mbforbes 2y ago
  Fascinating, and now I learned another new thing! Thank you for sharing.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    yup. for a more detailed explanation, there's this segment of the article: > Basically what happens is when a train enters a tunnel at high speed, the air in front of it is compressed and does not have enough time to flow past the trains body. When all released at once, the pressure causes a shockwave that goes boom! This is basically a very rudimentary version of the piston effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piston_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piston_effect

danielfoster 2y ago

Now they just need to be on time.

croemer 2y ago

Terrible press release. The first picture shows an _intransparent_ barrier. Is that a before after picture? And what is "meta technology"?

addandsubtract 2y ago
Seems to be a before picture. There's an "after" picture further down the page. Meta technology maybe because it's not actual train related tech, but meta tech related to trains.
metters 2y ago
This [1] is the official press release by Deutsche Bahn. I wanted to post this instead, but it is in German. [1] https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/presse/pressestart_zentrales_uebersicht/Mehr-Durchblick-weniger-Laerm-DB-entwickelt-innovative-transparente-Schallschutzwaende-12861336 https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/presse/pressestart_zentrales...
- croemer 2y ago
  Thanks that one is better! At least it says: "m Bild: Herkömmliche Lärmschutzwand und MetaWindow im Vergleich (Visualisierung)" They should just use the new picture and not make the previous way of doing things so central. If one just looks at the picture it could appear as if the wall changes translucency dynamically.
wiml 2y ago
My guess is it's related to "metamaterials", which are materials engineered to have interesting properties by including structures smaller than the wavelength of whatever is going through them (sound, microwaves, even visible light if the structures are fine enough). There is quite a lot of research into sound-absorbing yet porous acoustic metamaterials. (Related, but maybe not technically a metamaterial, previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678415 )
- croemer 2y ago

mindwok 2y ago

Lots of negative comments on this. I, for one, am glad to see work that supports better transport infrastructure while not being insanely ugly like a lot of transport infrastructure is (like the giant concrete birds nests of highways in US cities). I want to live in cities that are visually appealing.

mikeiz404 2y ago

This article goes into a little more detail: https://www.heise.de/en/news/MetaWindow-Laermschutz-an-Gleisen-wird-durchsichtig-9719706.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/MetaWindow-Laermschutz-an-Gleis... And the PhotonicVibes site is here: https://phononic-vibes.com/metawindow-for-railway/ https://phononic-vibes.com/metawindow-for-railway/ Here is a demo video for a meta material made by them: https://youtu.be/NElK8qKRrBU?si=CfBjUESlu_XUvnn_ https://youtu.be/NElK8qKRrBU?si=CfBjUESlu_XUvnn_

riffraff 2y ago
That's a really cool demo!
- Etheryte 2y ago
  Honestly, that demo alone would be enough to get funding at any demo day, really cool stuff.
- kierenj 2y ago
  Weirdly it says "up to 10dB" attenuation.. which isn't actually that much at all. 10dB would be a halving/doubling. I'm not sure how the apparent loudness / change in waveform amplitude display is so great, considering that actual hard stat...
  - axytol 2y ago
    3 dB would be halving/doubling. With 10 dB, you would get a ratio of 10x.

harha 2y ago

I mean it's cool, but how about getting some basics like punctuality and cleanliness right first.

throwaway4good 2y ago

This is an international site and I think people don’t understand just how big Deutsche Bahn’s problems with delays are and how incredible dissatisfied its customers are. The situation with DB is really unique compared to its neighbors in any direction. While the tech described probably has merits, anyone who has been near DB lately would instinctively go: why are you doing this when you cannot get the basics right?

lukan 2y ago
Or basic information about when and where a train comes late or not at all. Sometimes the information is there and correct - sometimes not at all or is wrong and 100+ people waiting for a train that is never coming. Experienced that way too often. But hey, the Bahn management achieved all their self proclaimed targets (non of them related to reliable trains) so they surely deserved their fat bonus.
marsRoverDev 2y ago
I fly to germany when I can, or take any other operator's train. I am way, way more familiar with Karlsruhe than I would like to be.
jamil7 2y ago
It’s also gotten so expensive and unreliable that some people I’ve spoken to are just driving again instead whereas years ago they would have always gone by train. I can’t help but feel that the weird ownership model contributes to this and the whole company should just be properly nationalised.
- tetris11 2y ago
  Hell I used to bike 20km to work to avoid it
panick21_ 2y ago
DB is a gigantic organization. Do you think it is reasonable for them not not make progress or advancement in anything as long as the ICE delays are not fixed? They can never change a train interior, improve the food menu, or 1000s of other things? This is a totally unreasonable suggestion. The reason for DB reliability problem is 50+ years of infrastructure neglect, fixing it will not be improved by shutting down every other group at DB. Personally having traveled threw Germany many times, its a mostly amazing. Yes sometimes trains are late sometimes, but the trains themselves are great and travel in them is a joy. I think what Germans don't understand is how good they have it compared to many places in the world.

felsokning 2y ago

They don't give any numbers on the amount of resistances to the expansion of the infrastructure, based on noise alone. This reads like a "we did a cool thing" but without qualitatively demonstrating the merits for the need.

iggldiggl 2y ago
Qualitatively speaking it definitely is a problem in Germany. DB planning rules used to include a guidance note that noise barriers higher than the typical lower edge of a train window should only be considered in exceptional cases. Two or three decades of constant complaints about train noise have led to legal rules and planning regulations having been significantly tightened up and now mean that four, five or even six metre high noise barriers are nothing out of the ordinary for new-built infrastructure. The result being that people still complain about fear of more noise when new infrastructure is proposed (despite freight trains having gotten quieter, too, due to the introduction of new brake shoes), but now they're also complaining about the visual blight, too. (And nobody cares about the views of the train passengers.) Meanwhile in Switzerland for example the current state is that balancing noise reduction needs vs. the visual impact of noise barriers still is an official planning goal because apparently people haven't been screaming so loudly about noise and nothing else, so the Swiss tend to build fewer and lower noise barriers even today. (Also purely empirically from my visits there, the UK also doesn't seem to build as many and as high noise barriers, even on infrastructure that has been newly built or rebuilt within the last two decades.)

smokel 2y ago

My hart jumped when I initially thought that they had implemented an idea that I had once. Turns out MetaWindow is not an augmented reality display in the train's window, where one can read information on the scenery that one passes through while traveling. What is that city in the distance? When was that church built? How many cows are in that meadow? Stuff one has to know.

tetris11 2y ago
A public institution doing this, fine fire away. A private train company? This will be an obnoxious video ad space.
- culturestate 2y ago
  DB is still a 100% state-owned enterprise; it’s “private” in name only. Sort of like Singapore Airlines, which is listed but majority-owned by one of Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds.
- crote 2y ago
  A large fraction of trains and buses in Europe are already equipped with large full-color monitors. They are primarily used to show trip progress, potential transfers, and basic informative messages. Ads are rare, and are usually static images advertising the transport company's own products.
pjc50 2y ago
Some aircraft designers have proposed doing this, because a screen can be lighter than a pressure resistant window.
reportgunner 2y ago
Just sit at home and stare at a video of the scenery at that point.
- smokel 2y ago
  The (highly recommended) Belgian television series "In de gloria" [1] had a teleshopping sketch in which one could order VHS tapes of their favorite tracks. The target audience was pensioners who had traveled the same boring track for years. The irony is that some years later a television channel started broadcasting railway videos all day long. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_de_gloria https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_de_gloria

codemusings 2y ago

Now could Deutsche Bahn please also invest in some actual infrastructure, trains and make them go on time? That‘d be great! Thanks.

locallost 2y ago
Deutsche Bahn pays for the usage of the infrastructure just like any other company using it (e.g. Flix or any of the regional carriers). The infrastructure is the responsibility of DV InfraGO (formerly DB Netz).
- codemusings 2y ago
  What are you talking about? DB Infrago is a subsidiary of DB and is as such governed by the board. The fact that they are separate entities has purely corporate legal reasons.
  - locallost 2y ago
    Deutsche Bahn still pays for the usage of the infrastructure and has nothing to do with maintaining it. They are separate entities because it's mandated by the EU, the idea being it should promote competition in rail transport.
flohofwoe 2y ago
> Now could Deutsche Bahn please also invest in some actual infrastructure The main "problem" currently is not that they modernise too little, but too much. For the last 5 years or so, during the summer months I need to add one or two hours to nearly all my connections because of construction work that slowly seems to move from cities into the rural regions (I'm not complaining though, no matter what the Bahn does, travellers will be affected one way or another, and I bet most of the delays you are seeing are caused by construction work somewhere at the 'leaf nodes' of the network). Of course a couple of decades of the "kaputtsparen" mentality didn't help, it would obviously have been better to spread out the required maintenance work and modernization over those decades of infrastructure negligence.

earthnail 2y ago

I love this. I read so much criticism here, but noise pollution is a main issue when it comes to railroads in residential zones. Yes, punctuality is an issue with Deutsche Bahn. No, this doesn’t fix that instantly. But as an organisation you can work on two things at the same time. This invention is spectacular. I wish more people would work on noise pollution. It makes a huge difference.

nonrandomstring 2y ago
> I wish more people would work on noise pollution Absolutely agree. It's one of the most insidious kinds of pollution that has big effects on mental and cardio-vascular health, and is accumulative. Everything from aircraft, to emergency vehicle sirens, to construction and poor housing, is slowly killing people. In Europe we've actually made big leaps forward with regulation, building standards for isolation, and abatement laws. But these often go unenforced or even flippantly dismissed and mocked because people don't recognise the harm pathways and effects. Whenever this topic comes up I am reminded of this (very funny) curmudgeon's screed "On Noise". Although Arthur Schopenhauer was "serious" about this, his acerbic style only gets more funny with time [0]. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10732/10732-h/10732-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10732/10732-h/10732-h.htm
- throwy348734 2y ago
  Some progress in Europe yes but the harms are still far from getting enough attention and policy responses. One problem is that there's so little organized effort against noise pollution, there's need for a movement with grass root organizations that puts sustained pressure on this issue.
  - tichiian 2y ago
    Also, the noise pollution regulations that are in place exempt trains.
- pmayrgundter 2y ago
  It's all about whip cracking! Who knew that was such a thing. Like the mindless honking horn of the past. Thanks for sharing :)

eru 2y ago

They specifically mention railway noise. I wonder whether there's something special about railways, or whether it would work for other noise as well? Especially roads with cars on them?

metters 2y ago
I think there are noises specific to railways. And from what I believe this "MetaWindow" targets relevant frequencies. However, I am sure this also works for the frequencies generated by car traffic. At least the linked youtube video in this comment [1] does not mention anything about frequencies. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40384778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40384778 EDIT: I was wrong about the video. There is _no mention_ about frequencies.
crote 2y ago
Railways are unique because they go right through the densest part of towns and cities. For them to be most effective, they should be within biking or ideally even walking distance of a significant number of homes and offices. If you place a railway on the outskirts of a city, nobody is going to use it. This means you're going to have to use very significant noise reduction to keep the area livable. Highways care a lot less about location. Place them a one-minute car ride outside the city, and its noise becomes basically irrelevant. The city grows and swallows the highway? Just place an industrial area or mall between the highway and any homes. When homes aren't an arms-length away you can get away with far more primitive noise reduction.

FearOfTheDuck 2y ago

A train does not make noise if it's cancelled

tichiian 2y ago

I think the reason DB introduces this kind of measures over the obviously superior first steps like "building a quieter train" is this: Walls are paid for by the state or community annoyed by the train noise. New or improved trains would be paid for by DB (a nominally private company). Which is why stuff like "putting quieter brakes on freight trains that don't sound like fingernails on a chalk board" will take at least 20 more years if it will happen at all.

jasonvorhe 2y ago

Ask the typical DB customer if they want their trains to be on time or more silent and I promise you, the answer will not be surprising.

DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
This project was probably very cheap compared to the cost of fixing the Deutsche Bahn's horrendous problems with delays and cancelations. The Deutsche Bahn has literally decades of maintenance to catch up on. Even if the Deutsche Bahn does everything right from now on, the next decade is going to be very painful for German train commuters.
dgellow 2y ago
Both problems are unrelated

Bluestein 2y ago

The startup behind the tech: - https://phononic-vibes.com/about-us/ https://phononic-vibes.com/about-us/

noja 2y ago

_This new system integrates meta technology_ What is meta technology?

mateus1 2y ago
I assume it refers to metamaterials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial

bradley13 2y ago

How about replacing antiques with modern trains? Repairing tracks? Electrifying all tracks? Those steps would not only reduce noise, but actually make their service usable.

garfieldnate 2y ago

>Its design minimizes visual disruptions, It's kind of laughable to see this giant, pristine pane of glass in the middle of a city on a train track. The photographer must have come the first day, because by the next this will be covered in graffiti. Which, presumably, won't at all affect its function as a sound barrier, but it think graffiti on a solid background is less grating than graffiti on a clear background will be.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

We need this for cars