Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Obviously, yes, as is true as everyone else on the planet. Why aren't people in the Northeast commuting to Manhattan via Acela? Gee, I wonder why. Why isn't half of France commuting to Paris via TGV?
|
A combination of journey time, frequency, capacity, cost, and origin/destination connectivity.
Acela has several key flaws that undermine its ability to be a viable mode of commuting, which is why the entire Amtrak NEC had just 12mn riders (FY17). TGV’s tend to have low frequencies, measured in terms of frequency per day rather than per hour which isn’t conducive to commuting, especially over long-distances.
Coming to the topic of trainsets. I think the majority of trains on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen are 400m trainsets rather than 2x200m coupled units. 400m trainsets only really make sense if there is the demand to fully utilise the entire train; moving empty trains at high-speed is not cost effective, which is why you tend to have a mixture on routes that are high-intensity (Beijing-Shanghai, the u/c HS2, etc…). A big benefit of running two coupled units is that it gives you operational flexibility either to split the train further down the line to serve two destinations or regulate capacity whilst maintaining frequencies off-peak.
Double-decker trains aren’t too much of a problem if they are running non-stop, the issue is when you have stopping services, the dwell time eats into the journey time savings. It also makes operating high frequencies more of a problem.