The potential of dynamic skip-stop to address the coverage paradox in urban transport through superconducting maglev rail technology

Door-to-door journey time is an essential performance metric of a transport system and is key is the modal shift from car to public transport to incentivise more sustainable travel behaviour.<br/><br/>Urban rail systems have a systematic limitation in door-to-door journey times due to the trade off between average line speed and station access time, the coverage paradox. Traditional approaches to improve journey time focus on performance components such as acceleration, braking, line speed and dwell time but there is a fundamental limitation as the operating concept still requires all trains to stop at every station.<br/><br/>This research develops on the previously proposed Dynamic Skip-Stop system concept that was designed to address the coverage paradox with a heuristic approach to both infrastructure and operations. It is shown that implementing this would require technologies that are still at development or emergent stages, superconducting MagLev technology is one of these technologies and has potential to meet the system requirements and therefore implement the system concept.<br/><br/>As history has demonstrated, when new technologies are introduced, if the system concept is not adjusted to reflect the technology then the application will be limited by the concept and will not reach the full potential of the technology. Therefore, unlike previous research, this work considers the application of a new technology from a heuristic perspective, starting at the concept, and demonstrating how technology research could significantly improve public transport.