ROLLING STOCK
“You’re getting this seamless ‘get- on-and-go-anywhere’ idea.”
What has feedback been like so far?
He said: “We’ve had lots of in- terest, particularly in the United States. A lot of people are saying it’s an interesting idea. It’s not an idea that I thought someone was going to put into production to- morrow: but the basic idea is just to challenge people and think of things in other ways. And why not?
“The next steps – we’ve been in- vited to do some talks about this at various conferences, and I think the more people who hear about it the better. With anything like this, it’s about having the opportunity to get people thinking about it. It’s a big one.
of having to build stations with acres of car parks, why can’t you park at Tesco or something, and get on a tram there.
“It’s about making different uses of infrastructure. We’re involved in designing trains all over the world at the moment; through Sifang lo- comotives in China. We’re design- ing these high-speed trains, but they still have to stop, and if we’re really going to compete with short- haul air travel, or long-haul, then we’re going to have to somehow come up with a different system.
“I have a great friend who works for a structural engineering firm, and we did some back-of-the- envelope calculations about how long the track would have to be for a change-over, and then thought about how long you’d need to transfer from one vehicle to an- other, and what speed would be realistic. We thought the vehicles would slow down to about 60mph.
“Then, they would combine, and that would then mean the track and length of docking aren’t too long: anything from 10 to 15km, which is not an awful lot longer than you’d get if you’re having to spur off a main line and stop at a station anyway, which is interest- ing. It started to make more and more sense – this idea that you’re not having to use up more land.
“One of the reasons these bigger ideas don’t happen is because they cut across so many different in- dustries. And the rail industry isn’t the most fast-moving of industries, and so to start questioning the roles of sectors of that industry… but it will change eventually.
“It strikes me that stations just haven’t changed. They’re still concrete platforms to get wet on. Also, the faster the trains become, the more health and safety issues occur. In certain countries now they’ve got some kind of barrier between the line and the edge of the platform. It’s moving in that direction. At what point do we really have to re-evaluate the sta- tion?
“Also, why do people like travelling by air? One of the reasons is they quite like the airport ‘experience’ – aviation has been quite clever in creating that ‘wait area’ concept of retail and leisure activity, which just hasn’t happened really in rail, for obvious reasons. If we’re going to convince peo- ple to get people out of the air and onto trains, we’re going to have to do something about it.”
Paul Priestman FOR MORE INFORMATION
View a short film of the concept at
www.vimeo.com/25403519
rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 11 | 99
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