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Comment by dmd | Hacker News Reader

18 per HOUR!? Like… every 3 minutes? [cries in American] I thought Acela’s 20 trains a DAY was a lot.

Spend a few minutes at Clapham Junction here at rush hour.

Average over 24 hours (yes including night when there are no trains) is one departure every 43 seconds.

America, where I’m free to drive anywhere at any time because public transit doesn’t effectively exist for most people :(

I miss the trains in other countries so much. They’re reminders of what we could have had here had we not let NIMBYism win. https://www.quora.com/Why-wasnt-BART-built-initially-to-loop... has some of the history, there’s probably a better article out there somewhere.

It had less to do with NIMBYism and more to do with car company profits. [1]

Here in the Denver metro area, we used to have trains running all over the place, and 100 years ago, there were daily trains between Denver, Boulder, Golden, and Longmont. Then they ended service and tore up most of the tracks.

Fast-forward to 2022, and now they're trying again to put rail between Boulder and Denver, but it's a $1+ billion boondoggle that hasn't gone anywhere in 15 years. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4 [2] https://www.cpr.org/2022/03/01/rtd-fastracks-commuter-rail-b...

If you maintain similar stopping patterns you can get higher than that on a two-track railway - metro services can do 25tph,30tph or even slightly more.

From December the west coast mainline is bringing in a roughly pre-covid timetable. The railway is a 4 track railway, but looking at just the fast tracks leaving Euston, there will be 13 departures an hour on the fast lines

3tph Manchester 3tph Birmingham fast 2tph Liverpool 1tph Chester and North Wales 1tph Glasgow 1tph Crewe via Trent Valley stops 2tph Birmingham via Northampton (switch from the fast lines to the slow lines after about half an hour)

None of these are high speed - I'm currently on a train to Manchester and my phone says we're doing about 125mph (200km/h). HS2 is a more reasonable 200mph.

To be fair, Accela Washington-New York-Boston is more akin to the London-York-Edinburgh services which are only 2tph, or 31 trains per day (44 run as far as York, but only 31 continue to Edinburgh)

The frequency on the WCML can't be higher as some of those trains are non-stop as far as places like Stoke, Crewe, or even Warrington (about 90-110 minutes out of Euston), where others do stop at places like Watford, Milton Keynes and Rugby.

The full proposed timetable from Dec 2022 is here: https://railforums.co.uk/threads/december-2022-timetable-cha... which might be at https://files.smallpdf.com/files/e54b2d4e9c7a08be02a4be30522...

(In addition to the 5 trains per hour to Birmingham above, there is another one or two from a different London station - Marylebone, and there's a handful of additional trains from Euston to Edinburgh via Birmingham)

Meanwhile the average speed of our best attempt at high speed rail (Acela) is 84 mph.

Which also comes to full stops outside of stations, because it shares tracks in Connecticut

Long-distance trains in the UK manage about the same, with 200km/h max, but for more of the track (and higher accel/decel)

My normal London-Stoke train is 145.9 miles in 1h28, average of 99.4mph, with 125mph along great swathes of it.

The hourly Glasgow departure averages 105mph to Warrington

Once you get up north speeds drop -- the eng to end average for Glasgow-London is about 84mph (401 miles in 4h47), Edinburgh-London is a similar distance but a bit faster at about 4h26, so 89mph.

Washington DC to Boston is 440 miles and seems to take about 6h40 at best, just 66mph

LGV Sud-Est, France's first and Europe's most used HS line, sees 240 trains/day/direction, with a capacity of 13 trains/hr, to be improved to 16 tr/hr in 2030. It's a trunk line with many different service patterns though, mostly linking Paris to southern destinations.

I suspect that's counting both the intercity trains and the regional trains. If so, the Northeast Corridor in New Jersey and southern Connecticut will be hitting roughly those numbers already--NJT and Metro North add a lot of traffic to the NEC.

No it's not. This is purely new high speed intercity services. If you include the WCML out of Euston ("legacy line" - can still do 125mph/200kmh - which will have increased regional services as space is freed up by moving the intercity ones to HS2), then you can at least double that number. Probably triple given it is a 4 track railway.

Oh for some reason I interpreted this as that many trains departing to the same place. Like as if there were a train from New York to Boston every few minutes.

I already posted this, but I'll repeat it [1].

These are all intercity trains to cities north of London.

There will be 6 trains per hour to Birmingham (120 miles from London), three of which continue beyond Birmingham. An additional 11 trains don't stop at Birmingham, but cities beyond it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#Proposed_service_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#/media/File:HS2_v...

The thing that you're counting as "intercity" is roughly comparable to what is classified as regional service in the North East US.

Destination | Operator | Distance from NYC

Camden / Philly | NJT / Amtrak | 82 mi

Montauk | LIRR / Amtrak | 110 mi

New Haven | MNR / Amtrak | 67 mi

Except for Montauk, these places are cities in their own right, but we don't really think of them as intercity trains because the primary reason someone would board is as a commuter not as a traveler.

An intercity train stops primarily at large towns and cities. Acela looks like the only frequent intercity train from NYC, though I may have missed one as there are several daily Amtrak trains.

The planned schedule for the new line in England will have the shortest train make only these stops, 3 times per hour:

  London Euston            0 miles
  London Old Oak Common    5 miles
  Birmingham             125 miles after 52 minutes

And a longer one (also 3 times per hour) will make only these stops:

  London Euston            0 miles
  London Old Oak Common    5 miles
  Birmingham             125 miles (1 of the 3 per hour)
  Manchester Airport     205 miles

That is nothing like a regional/commuter train. The existing regional train to Birmingham stops at Watford, Milton Keynes, Wolverton, Rugby, Coventry, Canley, Tile Hill, Berkswell, Hampton-in-Arden and Birmingham — that is like the Philly/LIRR/MNR trains.

the victoria line on the London underground has 36 per hour in the peak

the next train comes into the station as the previous one is leaving

Is this local transit? It is England so practically everything feels like local transit, right? It is better than what we have, sure but it isn’t as impressive as long distance routes.

> The schedule offers trains every 3 to 5 minutes on the most used sections during rush hours. During other traffic periods, intervals range usually from 4 to 12 minutes or up to 20 minutes on outer sections. During late nights, only selected express services are operated and all late-night services usually run every 20 minutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_s...

note this is stopping services on a 2 track railway (not total trains)

if you're talking about total trains then somewhere like clapham junction is way, way higher (something like 180/hour)

back to stopping services: thameslink core manages 24, and that entire route is several hundred miles long

and crossrail core will do 24 on opening, designed upto 30 (the railway on either end is also several hundred miles long)

Yes, the core parts of most tube lines are 25tph+ in the peak.

I believe that the 1, 2 and 3 lines in NY share the same tracks in the core and can hit about 30tph in the peak

17 says Wikipedia, but the information might be out of date. See [1].

The existing quad-track line carries 15 trains per hour [2], and is full, but this is because it carries trains of varying speed -- express passenger trains, commuter/regional trains and freight.

(The Victoria Line is a metro line, pretty irrelevant comparison.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2#Proposed_service_...

[2] https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-many-trains-run-per...

Alacatel/Thales promised Muni something like 48 trains per hour (across two tracks and five lines) with their new fangled train control system. For the most part that never happened.

For the time being BART and Muni run 2–3 minute headways during peak hours (so somewhere around 25–30 tph). One of the big things BART remedied with the new cars was the lack of doors (which slows down boarding and increases dwell time).

Yamanote Line frequency in Tokyo is about every 2 minutes.

That's a short metro line with identical destinations and stopping patterns and slow top speed more akin to a subway service

I think 60 s is the lowest feasible headway for such subway services, assuming a single platform.

Victoria gets upto 36tph / 100 seconds headway with 133m length trains.

Wikipedia suggests the Wenhu line in Taipai was testing upto 50tph, and a post from 2006 on District Dave's forum said Lille Line 2 was at 47tph [0]

Both of those lines are short vehicles though - 52tph. The forum does post that many Moscow lines are 38tph (95 seconds) at long trains (140-160m)

[0] https://districtdavesforum.co.uk/thread/5210/worlds-most-fre...

This is not a like to like comparison. If you want to compare like to like, look at how many trains per hour leave from, e.g., Grand Central.

I think it's fair: High Speed 2 will be two tracks leaving London Euston. On those tracks, 17-18 trains will run every hour in each direction.

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