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I'm cautiously optimistic about this, it seems like an okay idea and the fact that they have vehicles working on a test track IRL means it's at least not an obvious scam like hyperloop.
Also the fact that they have a specific use case in mind, don't say it's going to revolutionize all transportation, and are reusing existing infrastructure, all bode well.
The crane is the part I don't get. Is it a stationary crane? Is that not more work than just putting a track switch in place instead?
Seems over-complicated…
I could imagine an autonomous, on-demand rural train service. Due to the low expected traffic, it seems like you could just build some additional sidings and use a more conventional design.
Mobile fuck shack.
Project founder Thorsten Försterling tells us that the team is working on a track-installed machine that will be able to lift individual pods off of one rail and place them on the other (without passengers in them at the time), keeping them from all collecting at either end of the route.
What the heck, can't you just have a Y at the end?
on-demand pods that travel on existing abandoned railways.
They're reusing existing tracks.
Hmm, so your thinking is they're not allowed to modify the existing tracks at all?
It just seems like building and maintaining a machine that lifts these pods, that's gotta be a magnitude more expensive than a slight change to the rails...
I don't see why it'd be that expensive, it'd basically just be a fancy crane.
I'm not saying that it's hugely expensive. I'm just saying that a Y-shaped rail with a switch should be significantly cheaper.
Particularly, moving parts are a pain for maintenance. These kind of systems, you want to operate for 20+ years and the less bearings there are to oil, the better.
They're probably marketing this as requiring zero infrastructure changes to attract buyers and investors. Just put the pod lifter at the end of the track and it's done.
Yes Louis Brennan designed a gyroscopic monorail in the early 1900's but there's a reason it didn't work out. Every car needs its own gyroscope which is a lot of dynamic components that need maintenance. A regular two rail train is much simpler and cheaper to operate. The idea these techbros have that everything is made better with individual pods is pretty wasteful when we already have better and cheaper solutions to virtually every problem they have tried to invent for us. Are we even super concerned about rural folks taking transit? By definition they are a small portion of the population and have the greatest need for personal transport. Where we need transit adoption is in urban areas with large populations who all want to drive their personal 2 tonnes of plastic and steel right into town and park it (for free obviously) in their own little parking space.
A gadgetbahn like this will only serve a limited population and won't be able to tie into the existing transit network. There might be niche situations where it's not a terrible idea but it is not a good generalized solution.
I could see those as an option for rural areas without much traffic. A full train might not be economical, but a small pod is. It could transport people to the closest proper train station where they can hop off.
But that would mean you'd have to maintain a ton of tracks for a handful of people.
Great, now we can have traffic but on these old rails.
How about, and I know this is a radical idea, actually fixing up the old rail lines and putting trains on them instead of this gimmick?
This wouldnwork better on smaller scale, less traveled rural routes. Maintaining a whole ass train for a few dozen people is overkill. I kinda like this.
Would it though? It's just vans on tracks instead of roads.
It's not going to be more energy efficient with individually powered cabs. It's not going to be more convenient unless your origin and destination are near a station. It's not going to be more time efficient because of the extra distance getting to and from tracks and because you aren't going to drive highway speeds in tiny self-balancing cars on old rails, especially when passing cars going the opposite direction. It's not going to be more cost efficient because it's more total moving parts requiring maintenance per person per trip.
It sounds like they are solving the problem of turning around only for terminal stations. This might make sense for trains that carry many people, but if you're making cars on tracks there is no good solution. If you need to spend money on a system that turns the cabs around, then you either spend more money installing those systems at most stations or you spend money maintaining cabs that are driving around empty. Either way, cars on roads are cheaper.
They say it's good for people who don't want to wait for public transit, but they don't say how this solves that problem. With public transit, you know when the train will be there. With this, unless they have a way for the cabs to wait at the station without blocking other cabs going the same direction, you have to wait for a cab to come and you can't time your trip to the station around when the cab will be there. Maybe they have one? It would be a disaster if you wanted to get on from near the middle and needed to wait for either a cab that has already been vacated to come or for a cab to come all the way from the start of the track.
I know it's kinda cheating to bring them up in this context, but the Swiss manage to run trains to very small towns just fine
Depends on what you call a "whole ass train". Many of these routes could be easily service by a 1 or 2 car DMU like the rural routes in Scotland and Wales.
Seems like a train that uses both sides of the track fulfills different requirements. A train can only be made to go one way at a time, but can hold more people (increased bandwidth), but these smaller half-cars can be moving people in both directions at the same time (lower latency). Seems quite clever if it works out.
There are stations on Anglesey where you have to stick your arm out to hail the train, and the only two routes they lie on are served by the kind of 1970s DMU like you mentioned on its way to Chester or a Pendelino on its way to London or something.
I live next to a railway line in the south west that is similar. A single train runs up and down the line. If you're on one of the stations, you wave to the train so it'll stop for you. If you're on the train and want to get off, you ask the driver to stop.
I've used those request stops! Those sort of rural lines are exactly what we're missing here in the states, just bouncing back and forth on the line. You can see here Americans don't even know what they are, but they're the perfect solution for these lines going between little towns
I would love a mini rail system like this in my community.
Actually, I’ll take most any public transportation at this point.
The Brennan monorail rides again!
Some of this technology may sound a bit "over-ambitious," but keep in mind the project was inspired by a fully functional self-balancing monorail that mechanical engineer Louis Brennan designed and demonstrated back in the early 1900s.
Looking forward to the Adam Something video about this.
I immediately thought about connecting multiple of these together to make a train haha
Connect them together for efficiency, and maybe use both rails for stability and to reduce design conplexity. (you dont even need any additional infrastructure!) Also, have them arrive regularly, so that users don't need to bother with an app! Brilliant!
Seriously though, it's really amazing how people keep inventing trains but worse. I guess this idea makes some sense if there aren't enough riders for regular train service, but still...