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Commute to work on the roller coaster train

Read More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ter-train.html

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The Eco-Ride train feels like a ride on a roller coaster - and that's pretty much what it is. In a few years' time, this cheap and energy-efficient train could be ferrying passengers around areas of Japan devastated by last year's tsunami.

- Eco-Ride works in the exactly the same way as a theme park roller coaster. By turning potential energy into kinetic energy, it coasts along its tubular tracks without an engine. The train's speed is controlled by aerodynamics and by "vertical curves", sections of track that form the transition between two sloping segments. The Eco-Ride is set in motion and slowed at stations via rotating wheels between the rails that catch a fin underneath the train.

- When fully installed, Eco-Ride would ply a route, ideally circular, at speeds of up to 60 kilometres per hour. The idea is that Eco-Ride will use its own inertia to get up most slopes but may on occasion need to be winched up steeper inclines. If it was first lifted to a height of 10 metres, the train could comfortably cover a distance of 400 metres, says its developer, Yoshihiro Suda, director of the IIS Advanced Mobility Research Center.

- The lack of any engine makes carriages extremely light, so the energy required to propel them is small and the emissions low. Plus there is no need for the expensive, bulky infrastructure that usually accompanies the building of new train tracks.

- "This is probably the ultimate energy-saving transportation system," says Suda. A number of municipalities in Japan have shown an interest in the system, including communities hit by last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region in the north-east, he says. Other uses could be feeder routes between other transportation networks, or communities and college campuses located beyond what might be considered a reasonable walking distance, he added. Suda expects the first Eco-Ride to be in operation sometime in 2014.

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