The solution with fade out / fade in is pretty clever. Short layovers will cross-fade automatically, but you don’t need complicated internal information about which train continues from one run to the next.
Stopping would be neat, but may also be visually messy.
The trains typically stop for ~16 seconds at a time. Even on say 8 platforms thats under 3 mins.
Plenty of time for gaps between lighting up! (could also alternate colours with blinking)
It might sound dumb to you but your solution is used by Japanese train engineers before leaving at a station and trains in Japan are really efficient and on-schedule.
Does this ever actually happen though? I'm not aware of variable length passenger trains along a single route. And the stations for boarding are only so long.
> This doesn't work for an electric aircraft, or many normal public transport methods as they are all focused on batching people up into large groups (planes, trains, etc).
True, but as the batch size gets smaller, so does the interval between vehicles. "one every minute, on the minute" is not much different from "It leaves when you arrive". This may not work for aircraft, but it certainly would for automated light rail systems.
Nice! Really liked the sunk cost part. However, sometimes leaving isn't really a good idea because it's another N minutes to another station, which could take you M minutes farther from your destination than your current train, which arrives O minutes after you get there, which takes P minutes to your stop. For each station, would it be possible to instead calculate the point where (M + N + O + P) < max_wait_time?
Would this really save much efficiency versus the much less disruptive option of taking the trains out of commission (for the evening/morning/etc) when they get to the end of their route?
If my train has a delay or doesn't run at all, I need to know a detour quickly. Sometimes you need to decide within the minute to take another line. Otherwise I have to wait 30 minutes for the next train, if that one even runs.
And I need to inform the person that I'm meeting with that I will arrive later (if I didn't have slack in my transit time).
> random factor of passenger loading and unloading and changing gaps between trains as they accelerate and decelerate between stations.
Solution: Never arrive early, never depart late, and keep the stopping durations fixed, at the longest time possible (which is one quarter the time between the two closest neighbouring stations).
> Subways solve this problem by running every couple of minutes.
Similarly, in many transport corridors intercity rail runs several times an hour (not so much in the US) and shuttle flights run every hour or two. Which are also sufficient in those contexts, in that it becomes reasonable to show up at the station/airport without checking the timetable.
I've always wondered why we don't just account for full bus/train loading deloading plus a buffer. Each stop has the mass transit stop for multiple minutes. Bingo, automatic buffer. If the bus is running late, it stops briefly.
I left that out because the train is also subject to delays, and if you are quick with the pit stops it's no more than the time spent getting in and out of the station (you don't want to arrive at the station the moment it's leaving)
There's an intriguing way that railways handle the transition around here (central Europe): one way, trains stop in stations for an hour, the other, they all get an +1 hr delay at next station.
This is a fun visualization, but as you mentioned it's inaccurate precisely when you need it most (when there's a delay). Actually, some JR stations in Osaka already have an indicator that shows when incoming trains are stopped at the previous station or whether they are in between stations.
In Russian metro there are count-up timers. Not that this is a big deal, though, when intervals between trains are shorter (2-4 minutes in St.-Petersburg; less in Moscow).
Stopping would be neat, but may also be visually messy.
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