Rethinking Rail Travel: Boarding a Moving Train 357
PolygamousRanchKid tips this article about an idea for revolutionizing the rail system in the long-term:
"The idea is to have a city-wide network of trams that travel in a loop and connect with a high-speed rail service. But instead of passengers having to get off the tram at a rail station and wait for the next HSR service to arrive, the moving tram would 'dock' with a moving train, allowing passengers to cross between tram and train without either vehicle ever stopping. 'The trams speed up and the high-speed train slows down and they join, so they dock at high speed,' explains Priestman. 'They stay docked for the same amount of time that it would stop at a station,' he adds. While Priestman admits that it will be some time before his vision could be implemented, he says the time has come to rethink how we travel. 'This idea is a far-future thought but wouldn't it be brilliant to just re-evaluate and just re-think the whole process?' he says."
Caves (Score:5, Insightful)
and perhaps to encase cities in caves of steel
Is the real problem here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the time has come to rethink _how much_ we travel...
Asimov. Strips. (Score:3, Insightful)
Subject says it all, really.
Simon.
Ummm ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, when we have our city with flying cars, domestic robots and all of the other commensurate sci-fi amenities which will never happen, we will also have a train we board at speed.
I'm sure in some abstract, never-going-to-happen way this is a really cool idea.
But it's so far detached from anything which will ever happen as to basically be a meaningless suggestion. These fantastic cities of the future will never actually happen unless we suddenly have unlimited cheap energy or resources ... the cost of rebuilding any major city would be absolutely ridiculous.
Harumph ... I must be getting old. Time was I'd think this was something cool. Now it's just another pointless futurist thought experiment.
I can imagine a scenario... (Score:2, Insightful)
I can imagine a scenario where one of the trains is packed, users try to squeeze in from one train into another. One person (or more..) does not fit in, there is no more track for the trains to be coupled, they HAVE to split even if the doors are held open by the passengers, and people up on the track between the wheels of both trains.
WEDWay People Mover (Score:4, Insightful)
This is nothing new. Disney has been doing this for decades. In fact, the rest of the world could take a lesson or two from Disney's playbook. Notice that Disney designs its rides such that the line (queue) is constantly in motion. By contrast, Six Flags and other theme parks, you have to wait while the people on the ride are off. We should take this a step further and design aircraft with a removable passenger compartment akin to the 747 air freighter. The nose would open up and the incoming passenger module would slide out to be replaced by another outgoing module. This has the advantage of eliminating the one door bottleneck.
And the problem with this plan: (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever been at the station when there was a really slow moving old lady at the front of the line, trying to get into the train, but moving at a snail's pace, holding up the whole line, and then still being in the doorway when it starts trying to close? Remember the loud buzzer that sounds to signal people to get out of the doors, that she's too deaf to hear, and ignores as she slowly continues toddling her way into the car, holding up the train, and still nobody else has managed to even get in?
I've been behind her several times. It's weird, almost every time I go to Toronto (the nearest place I've had to ride the subway), she's there in line in front of me. She's a really nice lady, but oh so very slow moving, and she won't accept help.
This proposed system would ensure that I would only ever be behind her once, because when the high-speed train and moving tram were not able to un-dock because she was still toddling along in the gap between them, they would either end up crashing and killing everyone, or they would separate anyways and either tear her in half, or drop her between the tracks and grind her into paste on the ground.
Re:How do you get on? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is the last point that gets me. one would need a couple of miles of track next to each to be moving fast enough to make it worth while, however that eats up space, and the slow train would have to circle back around for the next train in sequence.
Also how do you do multi train platforms?
to me it seems like someone didn't think the idea through all the way.
God no! (Score:5, Insightful)
lets figure a way to bring the office, the work back home.
Home is home. Workplace is workplace.
The problem we have with all the smart phones and tablets and wifi and the internets is that we CANNOT shut ourselves of from our daily grind.
No thanks. I'm much happier knowing that when I leave my offices I'm done. There is no expectation that I am available to do work.
This is just moving back to 'cubes' where instead of being in a cube in an office space, your 'cube' is your room at home. That on so many levels is horrendous.
Why not instead of bring the work back home, all move in and live at work like.. oh I don't know.. those folks at Foxconn.
Yeah sounds great.
Re:Is the real problem here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, I like "my" smartphone and tablet for "personal" use because that is why "I" bought them with "my" money. I like having my work and home separate and I don't want to be available 24/7 because I have no interest in being a "drone".
You might find this hard to believe but, as a software developer, I feel that I'm much more productive now that I work in the main development office than even when I worked from a satellite office. Modern software development is a very social pursuit with standup meetings, white boarding sessions and meetings with stakeholders.
Software is no longer written using the waterfall approach where some analyst talks to the user to get requirements, writes up a large requirements document and then the developer works off that and later hands it off to QA for testing.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is the real problem here? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Face time with your boss. The difference between the Office Drone and the guy who gets a raise and promoted, is the person who gets more face time with the boss. This isn't a bad thing, I don't mean sucking up to the boss, but being there where he can see what you are doing and you can show him your good job that you are doing. Bad news travels up naturally to the boss. If you have good news you need to push it there.
2. Interaction with other workers, across your department. Normal office chat helps build up teamwork, you learn the strengths and weaknesses of different people and you have a better idea on how to make the best solution with them.
3. Anticipate problems. If you hear something is going on you can have a solution almost done before it gets to your place to be done tomorrow.
4. You are not slacking off as much. We all need a break to clear our mind. But when you are working from home, the comforts from home are quite compelling, especially if you are doing something you don't want to do. In the Office knowing your boss can come over and see you playing WoW or what ever game that is now hip and cool or browsing youtube for hours on end. You will make sure you temper your habits. At home it is much harder. Sure the argument is if I get my work done on time it really doesn't matter. Well it won't get you fired, but the slack off time is a period where you could really prove that you excel.
By agreeing to be a telecommuter you have basically agreed for most companies to stay in your positions for the duration of your employment unless you are much better then most people.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is poor rail network flaw, not szome absolute barrier. If you've ever used european mass transit, you know th system can be designed well. You get on a bus for the ride to yojr local station, which connects to larger stations... there are multiple paths, fast trains that only top at major cities, and slower trains that split off and stop at each, or every other town. The efficiency is awesome, and you can beat a car easily.
Re:Is the real problem here? (Score:5, Insightful)
My work doesn't require 'just' interaction with systems and data. It also requires interaction with co-workers both in the physical office and in newrly every time zone on the planet. My 'customers' are no longer just in North American, but on every continent except Antarctica and Africa, and the latter is coming on board soon. I already telecommute, but I need to do so from a location where my most important collaborators are physically available, and that is the 'office'. I project my services from there.
To be at home would deny me both ready and rich access to my team. Physical presence permits ad hoc meetings, adding in team members, quick face-to-face covnersations for minutes that avoid IMs and email chains that take much of an hour, and avoid misunderstandings. No teleconferencing works like that yet. For one thing, cameras are banned - data loss policy. We have a teleconferencing space to use, but it's for extended international or cross-continent needs.
And I very much prefer to be part of a team, not alone. I did that for the better part of 14 years, and it's not very attractive.
Telecommuting is so attractive in principle.
And to answer the unasked question of telecommuting offering the equivalence of a raise, well there are things to consider. Including your employer's reasonable and justifiable perception that saving money on commuting translates into a lower pay rate, since your expenses are decreased. This will probably be expressed as either lower raises or slower raises. Compensation is often based on market forces, and if a telecommuting job is attractive to others who would take less pay for the convenience of being home (mothers seem to fit this model very well), then you are competing with people who otherwise would not be in the market. Child raisers in particular may use the calculus of a tlecommuting job permitting them to avoid expensive day care. This lets them see a discounted job as actually incremental income where an office job is income offset by expenses. Work that out and tell me you can compete. Maybe.
Telecommuting will, one day, be seen as another advantage to Corporations, and a detriment to the worker. Watch.
Let's not get too far into the collision of telecommuting data access (ISPs) and bandwidth. If we start streaming our favorite videos during the day to avoid the nighttime crush and gamers, watch when telecommuters start using that bandwidth all day long. And watch when ISPs filter VPNs and ask you to pay more for unfettered corporate access. I would expect them to offer corporations that deploy their workes to home a 'deal' on dedicated access. Wait, I bet they do already... SOHO accounts and such. For more money.
Side-by-side is impractical (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd need a significant length of straight track to accomplish the transfer. In corners, the different corner radii mean that you'd need to increase the distance between the train cars on the outside of the bend to make sure the cars stay lined up.
It'd be much simpler to link up the trains front-to-back. The Dutch ICM [wikipedia.org] shows a practical design to do this. The ICM is only linked at standstill, but a few tweaks to the coupling (and possibly the doors) would allow it to be linked while moving. The mechanical link also makes it easy to ensure the trains keep matching speeds (just drive the rear train at a slightly higher power level than the front).
The drawback of this design is that there's only one connection point so the transfer is much slower.
Mass transit is an energy hog (Score:5, Insightful)
The inconvenient truth is that mass transit must be sized for peak loads, and therefore runs no where near capacity most of the time. A train, tram, or bus fully loaded is very energy efficient. A train, tram, or bus lightly loaded uses way more energy per passenger-mile than a car. No transit authority remakes trains between rush hour and mid-day, nor do they have two fleets of buses so that they can switch from long articulateds at rush hour to mini-vans during mid day. Mass transit wastes huge amounts of energy, and we can't afford it any more.
The answer is self-driving cars. We already have door-to-door infrastructure for cars. With self-driving cars road capacity increases because the cars can run closer together and at higher or at least more consistent speeds. A self-driving car is a self-valet-parking vehicle, so parking lots and structures can be moved further from office buildings.
People working on any kind of mass transit solution that involves large vehicles like trains are exactly the fools that are wasting our fossil fuels the fastest. Show me solutions that scale up/down with the daily load fluctuation, and you have my interest.
Re:Is the real problem here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Software is no longer written using the waterfall approach...
Speak for yourself.
You agile folk like to claim that "requirements will always change, so let's plan for it and embrace it." Bullshit. Requirements only change when (1) people don't plan properly, and (2) developer and project managers cater to the whims of clients without charging what they should for change orders. If I hire an engineering firm to build a commercial building, I can't expect to keep changing the requirements after I sign off on the spec, the way people seem to think they can when they hire a software developer. The change order charges would be exorbitant, because with every change a traditional engineer will properly re-evaluate the plan from the ground up and adjust the infrastructure as necessary.
There's a joke out there about what would happen if structural engineers built structures the way software developers build software. I don't remember the exact punch line, but it doesn't take much imagination to realize that it's along the lines of "no one would dare use bridges or enter commercial buildings out of fear that they would fail." It's funny because it's true. We've set such low standards for software reliability that there is now an entire development methodology that advocates (and attempts to justify) a lack of planning and QC only of completed work, rather than QC'ing design plans BEFORE we waste time building something that may or may not pass QC.
Apologies for the rant, but the whole agile mindset just pisses me off.