~ Would you take a high-speed train that doesn't stop?
The video shows the "non-stop MRT system" of its Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-lun and is in Mandarin, but you can get a pretty good idea nonetheless of how passengers use ingenious reusable shuttles to get on and off a high speed train without it stopping or even (much?) slowing down:
English explanation here.
Possible problems:
- Trains are taller, so existing bridges might need to be rebuilt
- Not everyone in the train can fit in the shuttles, so they couldn't all get off en masse at the stadium station to go to the ball game
- Acceleration of the shuttle may be too exciting for those with heart problems or other health issues
- Most people are too terrified of derailments anyway
- US patent 4,425,851 from 1984. Why did no one do this already?
- A great Peter Tosh tune would be obsolete:
A friend, working in the PRC for many years, who knows Mandarin, writes:
The platform announcer tells travellers that train 168 non-stop from Beijing to Guangzhou is approaching the station. Passengers travelling in the direction of Guangzhou are to board the shuttle. Then the train's announcer tells passengers disembarking at Wuchang to board the train's shuttle. Lastly there is a welcome to Wuchang station announcement. The inventor explains that he has put together a simple mechanical frame just to demonstrate the basic concept. He then describes the passenger movement for boarding and exiting the non-stop train from Beijing to Guangzhou.
Adapted from a post from my earlier blog of 6/2/10.
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