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Comment by nodata | Hacker News Reader

What would you like to see?

Mobile phone network, for 2g and 3g. Stockholm has them, so surely it can't be that hard.

I know this doesn't affect the trains directly, but surely it's something they have to take into consideration, especially during their announcement of their plans until 2060 god damn it.

London keeps boasting "best city in the world, best city in the world", yet its citizens are under increasing work pressure, and simultaneously cannot send or receive emails during their daily commute.

Sure they have wifi in the stations, but by the time you login (assuming you're paying because see, it's not free) you train has arrived.

I remember my holiday in Tel Aviv. I was skyping on the beach, on public free wifi.

Then I return to London, and nope, back to being offline, while on my way to a high tech job. And we're supposed to be a cutting edge city? Explain how.

I'd be okay with wifi on the trains (even the pay WIFI they've got), but I don't want phone service on the train because as soon as you hit "above ground" and everyone pulls out their phone and starts making phone calls it becomes annoyingly loud.

I'm no expert, but I imagine the most cost effective way to do this would be to have wifi along the lines rather than on the trains themselves - even if I'm wrong about that, installing wifi onto a train isn't something that needs to be built into the train from conception, and is something that anything they plan into it now will probably be obsolete in its tech standards by the time these trains launch in ~10 years.

On the subject of current station wifi - who has to pay? Certainly for me (Vodafone customer) I get it free, it's still provided by Virgin but they give a semi-whitelabelled login page for Vodafone (I don't have to login, it just takes 10 seconds when it opens the authentication page and verifies me on the network). I also find it great (albeit not as great as solid coverage all along the line) to be able to hook back onto the network as I travel through stations. It doesn't require me to re-auth each time, so essentially every minute or two my phone can sync emails, twitter, whatsapp, etc. leaving me the actual driving time between stations for reading/responding as needed.

2G/3G/XG is kinda becoming irrelevant and is provider-dependant.

They should have WiFi hotspots in each train so you wouldn't be reconnecting every 5 seconds as the train moves. Also it's probably easier to connect train to whatever central network pipe.

Maglev trains. Smooth, fast, and quiet. How fast are Tube trains now? Low-speed maglevs could run between 60-100 mph.

The average speed of a Tube train is 33km/h, but speeds of up to 50mph can be reached on the Victoria line and 60mph on the Metropolitan [1]

[1] http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/09/london-underground-turns-150-t...

High speed isn't a huge advantage for trains that have to stop at a lot of stations.

Better acceleration will. Sure, the local trains won't benefit as much; but in NYC, at least, there are express subway trains.

Also, consider that the "small" benefit for the local train is applied to millions of people a day. That'll add up to lifetimes.

Standing carriages! Seats take up too much room. I think the forward 2 or 3 carriages should be standing only. And admittance based on the speed of which you walk.

By 2060: get rid of the trains, track and signals altogether and turn the tunnels into roads. Connected to the road network but exclusively (so they can go as fast and close together as safely possible) for electric self driving cars with shared ownership, on demand booking and door to door service. That would be progress.

Removal of the ticket barriers. They have no practical benefit for the customer.

Personal Transport Tubes?

I want the strips that Lije Bailey rides.

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