A Train That's Part Plane, Flying Inches From The Ground

[M II A II R II K]

A Train That's Part Plane, Flying Inches From The Ground


May 13, 2011

By Morgan Clendaniel

Read More: http://www.fastcompany.com/1753222/a-new-train-that-flys


Friction--it's a real bother, especially for trains. Even as we make our rail faster, it's still tethered by the fact that their wheels must grind along a track. This is the problem that maglev trains are supposed to solve, but maglev trains are expensive and haven't caught on. But a new prototype from Japan would eliminate friction, and all the pesky technological requirements of a maglev: It would simply fly very close to the ground. It's being called the Aero Train and it's prototype was developed as a proof of concept for a paper given at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. It works on the principles of the "wing-in-ground effect," which is that as planes get very low, drag decreases significantly.

Take one of these planes and attach some passenger cars to it--voila!--you have yourself a very efficient flying train that doesn't require that much energy to move. Here's a video of the prototype in action, flying just inches above the ground. It requires a pilot--or a computer--to control roll, pitch, and yaw, a far more advanced skill set than normal train driving. And, of course, it's many years away from any sort of completion. But it's efficient enough that it could be powered with just wind turbines or solar panels, while still zipping along.

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[video=youtube;EaN7Kxk1_e8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaN7Kxk1_e8[/video]

 

[Eug]

Sounds interesting but I'd just be happy if that damn Eglinton LRT subway actually gets built in a timely manner.

If this comes flying train comes to fruition in 25 years, look to the GTA getting something like that 50 years later.

 

[EnviroTO]

If this comes flying train comes to fruition in 25 years, look to the GTA getting something like that 50 years later.

I don't think so. Trains that go 200km/h have existed for 50 years and this year VIA implemented another speed reduction between Windsor and Toronto. If we can't get trains to go 200km/h in the year 2011 then I really am not too optimistic.

 

[nfitz]

... this year VIA implemented another speed reduction between Windsor and Toronto.

What speed reduction? Or is this just a reference to a temporary reduction because of seasonal construction ... which happens every year since long before VIA was around.

 

[Hipster Duck]

It's interesting to see these weirdo transit inventions, but I have to say that the primary modes by which the vast majority of us move around - car, bus, plane, boat, bicycle, train, tram, subway, on foot - were all around, in some form, or another, 100 years ago. And that's quite something, considering that the world of 2011 would be completely unrecognizable to the average person from 1911.

There's a good reason for this: if you've sunk trillions of dollars into the infrastructure for one type of transportation, and all the people of society have sunk even more into buying the vehicles or the kind of development, or even entire economies built around that form of transportation, you're not going to be able to simply abandon it when something more newfangled comes along.

 

[Electrify]

As cool as this looks, I don't see it surpassing maglev (which also hovers above the track) anytime soon.

 

[EnviroTO]

What speed reduction? Or is this just a reference to a temporary reduction because of seasonal construction ... which happens every year since long before VIA was around.

Oh they always say it is to deal with seasonal weather or seasonal construction at first, but if you look at the speeds on the corridor they are lower than 30 years ago. Every few years there is an adjustment to reflect real travel times and I can't recall it ever ending up that the real travel times were shorter then scheduled.

 

[EnviroTO]

As cool as this looks, I don't see it surpassing maglev (which also hovers above the track) anytime soon.

It really would only take a single installation 50 km long to blow maglev out of the water. Maglev hasn't caught on.

 

[Markster]

It really would only take a single installation 50 km long to blow maglev out of the water. Maglev hasn't caught on.

It's not that "maglev hasn't caught on", it's that building a new, unproven tech that requires its own dedicated (and very, very straight) right of way takes a lot of money to get going.

Shanghai already has a short demonstrator track, and Japan has, after a decade of full scale testing, approved plans for a maglev line from Osaka to Tokyo.

And judging by that YouTube video, this tech has another 20 years of hard testing to go.

 

[Amy Rose]

I could see this as a very good candidate for a Toronto Crosstown system. We also got to move people from STC to Pearson in less than 30 minutes you know !