"If only two platforms are for departing trains, that means that just to support 8 tph, maximum platform waiting time is 15, not 30 minutes."

... yes, with three minute headways in the tunnel, 12 minutes to debark, then to the tail track, then 15 minutes to embark, minus time to get from the tail to the platform.

OTOH, there is a dedicated mezzanine the full width of the train box, so with one island is a dedicated arrival island and one island is a dedicated departure island, and boarding an empty train after most passengers have been marshalled into the correct bunch in the mezzanine level seems like it could be made into a fairly quick proposition.

Still, there seems to be "mission creep" with some commentators at the California HSR blog in terms of shorter and shorter station dwells being "reasonable", including biased spin being tossed in by the TBT engineer, so maximum allowed platform dwells for the French, Spanish and German HSR services would be useful real world information.

(And, yes, Japanese terminal platform dwells seem likely to be Sugoi! ... amazing ... but if the system has to run to Japanese human tolerances to avoid delays, I don't think that will happen in California.)


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.