Japanese Researchers Test Flying Trains 221
An anonymous reader writes "As an alternative to maglev trains, Japanese researchers are working on ground-effect vehicles. A ground-effect vehicle takes advantage of fast-moving air and uses some stubby little wings to fly just above the ground, like a maglev without the mag. This is a tricky thing to do, since you have to control the vehicle more like an airplane than a train: you have to deal with pitch, roll, and yaw and not just the throttle. A Japanese research group has built a robotic prototype of a free flying ground-effect vehicle that they're using to test an autonomous three axis stabilization system."
Re:Would this really use jets? (Score:2, Informative)
No. They are ducted fans [wikipedia.org] driven by electric motors. The tips of the vertical stabilisers have small pantographs that contact the underside of the lip at the top of the track walls. It's mostly in Japanese, but you can get the idea from some of the pictures here [tohoku.ac.jp] (e.g. this image [tohoku.ac.jp])
Re:Ok (Score:5, Informative)
Let's suppose I want to go from Houston to Austin.
I've not been to Houston, but just 18,000 [wikipedia.org] people used Houston's Amtrak station last year. For comparison, 16,000 people used the station in a village [wikipedia.org] of 1,200 people in the English countryside. The nearest big city to that village, Birmingham (pop. 1M, 2M in the conurbation), has several large stations. The largest [wikipedia.org] had 25.3 million passengers last year. Less people used a train in all of Texas combined than my local suburban station, which isn't even open at weekends.
I think you'll find there is demand for trains (of all kinds) in many settlements all around the world. Fortunately, most people don't reject solutions that don't satisfy 100% of the population.
I just get in my car, and from my driveway to my destination takes ~3 hours. (assuming I don't try to travel during rush hours, or I start at the outskirts of Houston)
This 160 mile journey consumes about $21 of fuel each way ...
My parents live 100 miles away. The journey by public transport takes two hours (I allow 40 minutes to get from my house halfway out of London to the appropriate main station, the inter-city journey takes 1h10, and I like to arrive 10 minutes before the train departs) and a little walking (10 minutes). Driving, according to Google, takes 2h5. That's correct -- off-peak on a Sunday. Usually it's nearer to 2½ hours on a Sunday, or 3 hours + any other day. (The train is "normal" speed, about 110mph.)
I've no idea how much the fuel costs -- I don't own a car. My parents will take the train to visit me if it's one or two of them, but if they bring my younger brother they'll drive. I always take the train, owning a car would be a huge expense for the tiny number of journeys I'd make with it.
(Commenting on the rest of your post: if Houston built high speed rail, there'd probably be intermediate stops a few miles out (e.g. 5, 10, 20 miles) which you could travel to instead of going all the way to the centre. Even if you live on the wrong side of town [like I do for visiting my parents], the railway going in the other direction should connect to the high-speed station.
30mph average for a bus is way too high, assuming you're including stops. That's a decent speed for light rail. 10mph is more like it. For a huge city like Houston, buses only every 15 minutes would be pretty crap. Buses near my house are more frequent than that all night.
If transport is reliable, you wouldn't have to wait more than a few minutes for your train. You plan to leave at the appropriate time to make the connection. How much spare time you allow depends on the cost of taking a later train [here, booking for a specific train saves money] and the time you have to wait if you miss it.
Many destinations would be within a short walk of the station.)
Re:seems to occupy a lot more space (Score:5, Informative)
They will run into problems with noise. In Japan noise concerns have limited train speeds since the first days of high speed rail in the early 60s, particularly around tunnels where there is a boom every time a train exits. One advantage of maglev is that due to there being no contact with the ground noise is reduced significantly, but adding prop or jet engines would seem to make this train louder than a normal electric one.
France runs 500kph trains and the only reason Japan doesn't is noise. The latest generation bullet trains that do 300kph have a very unusual shaped nose designed to reduce noise.