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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

The challenge with fast trains in cities is the acceleration. If you ride BART, for example, you are basically spending all your time either speeding up or slowing down, and yet BART stations are still spread about as far apart as they can be and realistically cover the city. Actually, they don't even do a very good job at that - much of the city is not within easy walking distance to a BART station.

We need the equivalent of offramps for trains. Some mechanism that would transport you for the last mile at 10-15 mph (scooters? pods?) while allowing trains to never come to a complete stop and wait for people to board.

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The proven solution here is to have long-distance trains and short-distance trains running on separate tracks. No need to go crazy with anything way more complicated (and thus pricier and more prone to failure).

Like, in NYC, we have the subway, which has normal trains and express trains (on separate tracks), and then we've also got regional rail like MetroNorth, LIRR, and NJT, and then we've also got long distance rail like Amtrak to DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and others.

New York also separates the different lines on to different platforms. BART and Muni shove 1-5 routes on each platform and chaos ensues.

In many countries around the world they build more than two parallel tracks - at least 3 or 4 - so you can have fast lanes as well as slower local lanes.

The problem with BART is that it's all a local train - stopping at every station on your way. If you are going from SF to Oakland - probably not a big deal - but if you live on the ends of the lines, quite annoying and very time consuming.

These systems really need to change their mindset to compete with cars. It should be fast and efficient - preferably much faster than cars - so there is a strong incentive for the public to use them.

Not just faster than cars; faster than cars under ideal circumstances for cars.

Is waiting 30 minutes for a train faster than just driving directly? Generally not. So trains aren’t necessarily faster.

BART is not a fast train. It tops out at 80 mph, which it a speed it can't reach between most stations. Where it can reach that speed it often didn't because the motors on the older trains suffered from dramatically increased wear at those speeds.

BART wasn't really intended to help you get around the city, though. Lots of places have transit systems that include both rapid and local rail transit.

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