Part of the purpose of this web site is to encorage the brainstorming of additional ideas for how Hyperloop can be used to improve existing transportation systems and meet future transportation needs. Your ideas are welcome, and if they don't duplicate ideas already incorporated here, they will be added if deemed appropriate. Either way, I will make every reasonable effort to respond to every enquiry and/or idea with the goal of developing the idea into practical reality. Put your thinking caps on!

I am startig to create an animated demo to show how capacity on a subway system is wasted by design. I am seeking the help of others to develop this. The result of any time I have available to work on this will appear here.

What is shown below is a diagram showing how many passengers are able to ride in a subway train carring a given number of people serving a given number of stations. These two factors can be changed to see the result. The algorithm used assumes that trains will run at a frequency so as to make sure the train does not get overcrowded at any point. Unfortunately, this means significant wasted space at the beginning and the end of the route. Passengers are generated randomly, with a random starting and ending station, then the number of passengers on each segment of the route ar calculated. When any segment of the route reaches the point of maximum train capacity, no new passengers are generated, because at that point the train doors have closed and the train is run.

The diagram below shows on the left a train route with tick-marks for stations. On the right the black area shows how many passengers are on the train between each pair of stations. Passengers use 1 pixel each in a horizontal direction.

Animation
There are also input boxes and controls for an animated demonstration of unused capacity. The purpose of this is to demonstrate how difficult it is to achieve a low rate of unused capacity without suffering from overcrowding at any portion of a route. I present this as a challenge to find the ideal conditions to maximize used capacity and minimize unused capacity.

Use the input fields and buttons below to challenge yourself to achieve this goal. As soon as the first train finishes unloading at the end of the line, data will be displayed showing how many passengers were carried, how much capacity was available, how much capacity was used, and how much capacity was left unused. Also, if any station had passengers still waiting after a train departs, a warning message will appear showing that there is overcrowding at a particular station.

There are default values put into the input fields that will give you an idea as to what works and how things work.

Future improvements
I would like to exapnd this demo to cover many additional statistics, including but not limited to the following, including how each interacts and changes the others.
Cost of stations, track, cars, and other infrastructure
Amount of time train runs full or less than full, with related statistics
Fares and total passenger revenue
Effect of different train lengths and frequencies of train operation, including variations of both on different parts of the route
Branching routes and transfer stations with other lines
Average trip length per passenger, both distance and time (provide result and control input)
Adjust for common/uncommon origin/sdestinations and how busy each station is, including rush hours, off peak, weekend, and special events.
Account for speed, distance, and station dwell time, all of which may vary on different portions of the route
Crowding at a station based on train frequency, neighborhood density, destination options via the station, and any other factors I can think of
Animate the results, possibly in real time, allow interactive animation while animation is running, making it like a game.
I'm sure there's more.

Animation Speed interval, thousanths of a second

Number of Lines: (up to 10)

1

Observations
Unused Capacity Only when there are 2 stations is the unused capacity at 0%. Unused capacity rises sharply until there are about 15 stations. After about 20 stations, unused capacity seems to level off in the low 30% range. And this remains true no matter how many stations there are. Even with 100,000 stations, unused capacity was at about 34%!
Total Passengers With a train that can hold 500 people, the maximum number of passengers a train will carry on its end to end trip never goes much higher than about 1000, even with 100,000 stations!

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