Eco Ride is Energy-Sipper for Japanese Commuters

Japan is no stranger to figuring out eco-friendly commuter methods, but they’ve come up with something that could be very neat. A test line is going up this October in Japan for the Eco Ride, a commuter train that uses the same principles as a roller coaster to get its passengers from stop to stop.

Basically, drive units are installed at points along the railway that will pull the cars up so that the Eco Ride can get the potential energy needed to run. The strategy reduces the size of the railroad, structures and stations, as well as the need for drive units on each car, and so the line can be built along the medians of expressways and sidewalks for a pretty low price.

The cars can pull up to 2,500 passengers each hour at a rate of about 20-30 km/h, and uses half the energy needed to run trains and a third of that needed to run busses. Sounds pretty great, but the test line will figure out if it is marketable. Considering the crazy-yet-cool stuff coming out of Japan, the novelty of it will probably find an audience.

Via GoodCleanTech

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written by Dur, August 26, 2008

20-30km/h is REALLY slow. thts about a 5-5:30 mile which for running the marathon would be fantastic but not so much for public transportation.

is enough
written by daniel, August 26, 2008

Man, 30km/h for urban transportation is enough. You don't need more. For metropolitan transportation you will have another methods. And of course, if 30km/h is the best thing we have for sustainability, its wellcome. The future is not about if a transportation method is slow or not, this variables will be given by the amount of energy we are going to have .. thats is not going to be so much.

Meh
written by NKJ, August 26, 2008

Looks a little impractical judging by the info here, It seems like chain rollers and hills wouldn't work. You have to climb a hill before you roll down said hill, the energy used in a constantly spinning chain roller is coming from where? :P May be fun to ride though!

Not Enough
written by William, August 29, 2008

Trains here in Japan typically run at about 50-60 km/h (the Shinkansen runs at about 210 km/h). It's easy to save half the energy when you are only going half as fast. Unfortunately daniel, 30 km/h is not fast enough. The majority of people who use public transportation in Japan (myself included) commute from far outside the city center. The typical commute is around 30-45 minutes one way. With this tech the same trip would now take roughly 1-2 hours. Plus, there will be no more lines built in central Tokyo (we just got the last one built at the end of 2007) so this train would either run on modified existing rails, barring other trains from using it, or be placed in a rural area, which would probably prove very unpopular because of it's slow speed. Interesting, but not the answer.

It could replace busses
written by Marcel, September 01, 2008

Over here in the Netherlands, more and more suburbs are converted to "30km/h" zones. Busses already are travelling at these speeds unless special bus lanes exist. In that respect, the 30km/h speed isn't that strange at all.

Also, while a cyclist probably goes somewhere between 15 and 25km/h (we're not racing to work!), it is possible to keep up with the bus as it stops alot (and no, the bus doesn't stick to the speedlimits usually.) If you want speedgains in public transport, it either has to go relatively fast between stops or stop alot less and go slower.

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