Brad Ideas - Trains that decouple and recouple - Comments

Trains that decouple

A fisher — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:05:48 -0800

In the 1930 and 40's Britain has such working, known as slip coaches,

the rear coach could detatched whilst the train is in motion, it had no power but a brake that could be applied to bring it to stand in a station.

the whole thing however was eventually dropped as too costly too impractical on a modern high speed network.

I wrote a paper on PRT in my

brad — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 00:12:16 -0700

I wrote a paper on PRT in my high school geography class (that's the 70s) so I know about it And while the tech for it continues to improve, it's hard to say when cities will actually buy it. It's not likely to succeed any more than other forms of transit in the sprawls of California, it could do well where other transit does well.

I have wondered if they couldn't make a PRT hybrid, based on a standard (and thus cheap) car chassis, with regular tires for the road and magnetic drive for the PRT track. That would get people more into it.

personal rapid transit

Edgar Johnson — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:15:50 -0700

Brad, actually, there was an academic paper with this scheme that was rejected at the main natl transp. conf this year. No offense to you - the academic author had some problems with the scheme.

Meanwhile personal rapid transit gets the same job done differently. PRT is an elevated monorail system with many three-person, driverless, electric vehicles. It is ideally suited for short "feeder/distributor", shuttle, and "circulation" operations at train stations, airports, office parks, and shopping centers. PRT provides non-stop, no-wait, 30 mph service.

Vehicles travel above ground on 16' elevated "guideway." Stations are located near building entrances. Many stations are situated along the route to minimize walking once the trip ends. Vehicles travel non-stop to their destination along the main guideway at 30 mph, speeding at twice the average speed of autos on congested streets below. Stations are NOT located on the main guideway; instead, stations are located on separate station guideway that branches from the main guideway. Thus, stations are described as "off-line," meaning "not on the main line."

PRT combines concepts from monorail (Disneyland), automated people movers (SeaTac Airport), roller coasters, and automated highway systems (California Governor Schwarzenegger's GM OnStar van drives itself in the science fiction movie The Sixth Day).

Passengers travel alone or with people of their choosing. Vehicle weight minimization greatly reduces the size of the elevated guideway and supporting columns, dramatically reducing construction cost and right of way acquisition. Vehicles flow along the guideway almost like data packets on the Internet, anticipating demand so that wait time is eliminated. In addition to improving commute alternatives, the PRT system eliminates mid-day stranding caused by traditional carpooling/transit, by providing efficient transit to adjoining shops and restaurants.

PRT system capacity is roughly 4,000 person trips per hour per PRT "loop." Systems may have many loops, providing more capacity.

For a nice animation of PRT visualized at Microsoft campus, check out http://www.bettercampus.org/

wwwa Anderson — Sat, 14 May 2005 13:49:52 -0700

Holy Moly!

I sent this to Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the internet at least where he hides-out in Maine, and he poo-pooed it, as been thought abt be4. Soo. You are the first I've seen who thought abt it enough to write it. Bene. http://www.wwander.com/excursions/chaincar.html
I call it chaincar, and like your inventor of the net being accting, everybody pipes in half, is kind of a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome, linkage. BUT, my substantiation is irrelevant to the mechanisms, for what cannot man do mechanically..., rather that the man hours lost, or GAINED, if one could address activities of work or pleasure by not keeping you eye on the creeping car in front of you. The gain is staggering. The creator? mobile phones. cells! And finally, the link? Visuality, moving visuals unleashes the mind.

250 per second

TheBlog — Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:44:33 -0700

Trackback from TheBlog: I make that the figure for what Bill Gates has earned (and this figure is increasing) on average in the last 25 years. As Brad points out, that makes it just about feasible that he can pick up a......

Trains that decouple and recouple

brad — Wed, 12 May 2004 18:25:22 -0700

I've often wondered why, when you have an electric train line that has a terminus as the main destination, you can't give everybody an express train.

To do this, imagine for the commute home, a 5 car train starts downtown. It leaves and expresses a few stops down the line. (A local car leaves after to handle the stops close to downtown.) When it gets to point one, with sufficient warnings and many safeguards, it decouples, and the rear car brakes to stop at the first of its stations.

Passengers get off (and on as well, see below) and the car, which has its own power coupler, takes off to drop folks off at the next few stations. The main train releases another car after that which handles the next few stations.

This has been thought of before, but next the hard part, something needing more modern technology. After the drop-off car has completed its local run, it would attempt to rejoin the next express train, allowing local passengers who got on it to get on an express, then move to the car that will eventually decouple to go to their stop. With the right timing this could go on all day.

Not that this is easy...