Life on the MRT

[quote]JustifiedAndAncient wrote:

None of Japan’s main airports connect directly to Shinkansen either.

Nonredneck wrote:

That’s not true. Tokyo has a Narita Express Shinkansen that goes through a few stations including Tokyo Main Station before going to Narita Airport.[/quote]

JustifiedAndAncient is right. Year ago, Japan did a cost benefit assessment of Shinkansen service to Narita and decided not to do it. The Narita Express is exactly what is it–an express train, not a Shinkansen Train. The private Keisei Skyliner (which runs from Ueno to Narita) deserves a shout-out though as the fastest train in Japan that is not a Shinkansen. It’s friggin’ great. :slight_smile:

Guy

Unfortunately it’s quite slow in reality.

Yes it will be awesome. I also look forward to operating my first flying car by that stage :wink:

Unfortunately it’s quite slow in reality.[/quote]

I have tried -and failed- many time sto take a picture of a Puyuma train. Friggin thing is fast. Riding it is a doozy.

You are correct. Wiki has 130 km/hr for max speed of the Narita Express, with Taiwan’s HSR at max speed of 300 km/hr.

Taiwan could still could have done something with the HSR for the Taoyuan airport when they built it. I bet they would have made a decent amount of sales from Taipei.

I agree designing the HSR to run through CKS would have been a “check-mate” type of move. Absolutely EXCELLENT.

They missed the boat big time on this one.
The last two trips back home to the rock, i made it a point to use the HSR even with the dumb bus ride out there from CKS.

Imagine if the HSR actually stopped at CKS??? MINDBOGGLINGLY tremendous idea.

Unfortunately it’s quite slow in reality.[/quote]

I have tried -and failed- many time sto take a picture of a Puyuma train. Friggin thing is fast. Riding it is a doozy.[/quote]

I was referring to he narita express which seems to trundle along in parts. The Kesei skylines is pretty awesome though!

The Circular line is almost ready, yeah!

https://youtu.be/b6BWUG0y5oM

^Thanks for sharing that was good news.

On topic, I like Taiwan MRT though there are small problems which already mention on previous post anyway overall I like the Taiwan MRT. Been to Munich and did travel using U-Bahn and if I didn’t focus on sign board will get lost inside (i’m too short :slight_smile: European people are gigantic).

Still over 2 years to wait for the circular line (I think the report mentions this). Don’t be surprised when it gets delayed into 2019…

Construction through Banqiao is less advanced, they are still putting support columns and bridge deck into place. Could be many months before they’re laying tracks here. The way they’re having to thread it around the existing expressway 64 and Dahan Bridge seems really complicated.

I notice Liancheng road in Zhonghe is being dug up for the light green line now. That part of town was enough of a traffic nightmare already, it’s going to be hell for the next few years.

Well, they do say something like 70 percent done. At least it is going in the right direction. And they have stopped the digging and are filling up the gaping hole that used to be Minchuan road in Xindian. Looks like they will recarpet with asphalt soon.

Any word on the airport line?

I’ll probably attract some boos and hisses for saying this, but when the current MRT construction work is finished and goes into operation, there is likely going to be a big issue with where the electricity is going to come from to operate it. With the 4th nuclear power plant mothballed, and plans to shut down the rest, and the DPP’s big plan to replace them with solar panels (which don’t supply power at night, or on rainy days), I can see a serious shortage ahead.

The MRT is a big electric power consumer, and unlike factories which can be occasionally shut down on hot days when power is stretched, shutting down the MRT even for an hour will cause chaos.

Good luck with this.

[quote=“Idoloclast, post:1973, topic:782, full:true”]
there is likely going to be a big issue with where the electricity is going to come from to operate it. With the 4th nuclear power plant mothballed, and plans to shut down the rest, and the DPP’s big plan to replace them with solar panels (which don’t supply power at night, or on rainy days), I can see a serious shortage ahead.[/quote]
Yeah, I’m sure they already thought of that at the design stage. And you might have noticed the MRT doesn’t run at night.

Not in the grand scheme of things it isn’t. Electric rail traction is extraordinarily efficient, and the EMUs currently in use have regenerative braking (whether this is being used effectively is a whole different issue, of course). Napkin calculation: let’s say all 1200-odd EMUs are on the move at the same time (never happens) averaging 400kW each. That’s “only” 500MW total, which is about 4km2 of PV panels or 1.5% of the area of Taipei city. Not suggesting that 100% PV power would be possible or desirable, just describing what it would look like in theory. More realistically, it’s the output of a single common-or-garden coal-fired power station. That’s the entire metro, at full capacity. The extra lines/services being added are a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of the capital city’s electrical equipment sucking at the teat.

So why would they do that? If it were even necessary (which I just can’t envisage) they’d shut down other things instead.

The MRT doesn’t run at night? Maybe last time I was in Taipei, they turned it on just for my visit.

The only night it runs much past 12am is Dec. 31.

It runs for 7 hours after sundown. Weekday load after 10pm is modest. It runs for 12 hours during daylight, and peak morning usage coincides with about 80%max daily average insolation. Point being, it could in theory take a large fraction of its energy from PV; speaking precisely, if you had a large PV installation connected to the grid, the MRT would be a good load match for its output, and building aircon would take up the rest.

Do you disagree with my estimates? Sorry, but your post reads like another “OMG the world will end if those green nutcases make us use solar power”.

If solar power is used, it would be used as a supplement (or at most a partial replacement), not a wholesale replacement. The entire system runs well without solar power, so supplementing it with solar power would cause no harm. In any case, the fact that the sun is down at night is immaterial to the science of solar power, which incorporates power storage technologies.

Apparently they’re now willing to settle, temporarily, for 36 min from Taipei Main to TPE Terminal 1 instead of the contractual 35 (compromise from the 37 min they reached a while ago in tests).

In other news, it has been declared that line 1 simply cannot accommodate the extra carriages the platforms were obviously built for, because of…

  1. safety
  2. IPR
  3. power issues
  4. disruption while fixing the crappy stuff they have now.

Finally! Our road is carpeted, the Big Gaping Hole closed. Seems surface work is done for the spur starting in our Tapinglin MRT station.