Chinese concept train: it never stops

Video is in Chinese. The explanation is below.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Oh5W_-_WFvc?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

No time is wasted. The bullet train is moving all the time. If there are 30 stations between Beijing and Guangzhou, just stopping and accelerating again at each station will waste both energy and time.

A mere 5 min stop per station (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!

The Chinese are innovative enough to come up with a non-stopping train concept. When the train arrives at a station, it will not stop at all.

The passengers at a station embarked onto to a connector cabin way before the train even arrives at the station. When the train arrives, it will not stop at all. It just slows down to pick up the connector cabin which will move with the train on the roof of the train.

While the train is still travelling away from the station, those passengers will board the train from the connector cabin mounted on the train's roof. After fully unloading all its passengers, the cabin connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof.

When the train arrives at the next station, it will simply drop the whole connector cabin at the station itself and leave it behind at the station. The outgoing passengers can take their own time to disembark at the station while the train had already left.

At the same time, the train will pick up the incoming embarking passengers on another connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof. So the train will always drop one connector cabin at the rear of its roof and pick up a new connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof at each station.

In this country we argue about light rail, reducing public transportation, at least in WI they do. Meanwhile the Chinese are thinking about concepts like this.

 

Thats a pretty cool idea. Here in the UK we don't even have double decker trains!

 

very innovative. California keeps talking about a bullet train - it will never happen. too much politics, too costly, arguments over cost and funding = DOA

 

Which would cost more.

1- Stopping for 5 minutes at the station

2- Completely reconfiguring all the trains and platforms.

 

Very interesting. However, the train will need to slow almost to a complete stop or the occupants in the connector cabin are going to emulate flies hitting a windshield! Maybe the attached connector cabin could be uncoupled and slowly brought to a stop on its own rail and vice versa on the pickup end of things, but that's really getting complicated.

 

Seated, facing forward and perhaps seatbelts as they accelerate? It is still a concept.

 

Oh, it's a cool idea to be sure. Remember way back when folks were talking about several moving sidewalks running parallel to each other? The idea was to permit passengers to travel from one end to the other at speeds faster than your average turtle, but to permit gradual speed changes along the way for getting on and off. I'm still holding my breath on that one!

 

Great idea.


What could possibly go wrong...

 

If anyone can do something like this it would be either China, Japan, or Singapore (though Singapore wouldn't need it). Our infrastructure here in the US is barely innovate for the 1950s. Meanwhile Japan has had true high-speed rail for 50 years and not a single fatality. China has had it since around '06-'07 and has had one fatal accident but it is the highest volume ridership in the world and the largest network in the world. The real risks and where we should ask "what could possibly go wrong?" are with our own ancient and crumbling infrastructure.

Here in the US we still don't have true high speed rail. I've taken the Acela a bunch of times to DC or Boston and its a joke, barely faster than the normal train. But I've taken those trains throughout Asia and they're not only fast but super-efficient and comfortable.

We have so much trouble getting anything done in this country nowadays that almost any project is guaranteed to fail. Look at the clusterfukk that went on with the Trans-Hudson tunnel completely out of left-field. True high-speed rail for major metro areas? Forget about it, makes too much sense. Better to just keep falling behind apparently.

 

Then nothing should ever be done, and none of what exits would have ever been done. Including the entire industrial revolution. Capex always takes time to pay off.

Not too complicated because what you describe is sort of how it works, at least based on the graphic.

Its essentially two cars moving at different speeds. The bottom car (which is the actual larger train) at a constant velocity and the top car which grabs hold of the bottom train and than slowly accelerates towards the back of the train. Same with the car that is being dropped off, it is released before it reaches the station and slowly decelerates until it reaches the platform.

Very clever!