Throw Momma (and everyone else) off the train

Here's one way to speed up your commute: Ride a train that never stops. But wait a sec. How do you get on and off a train that is constantly moving? Well, watch this video and see.

Engineers in Taiwan are playing around with a way cool, though way out there, idea for a new kind of efficient train transport in which the local and the express are the same train. While the express zooms down the track, it catches and releases pods that sit atop it at stations along the way. Riders wanting to get on the train climb up into a pod that's suspended over the tracks. As the train races by, it scoops the pod onto its off while simultaneously dumping a pod off the back so those passengers can disembark.

OK, now the questions: First? Wouldn't there be whiplash involved? It's unclear how quickly these pods would accelerate and decelerate. Second: how do you pass between the main train and the pod? Third: what if 100 people want to get off the train but the pod holds only 75? Details, details, I know. But viability often becomes fantasy once you start pondering the details.

I've had the thrill of riding "the world's fastest train," the maglev that runs between the city of Shanghai and its airport. The thought of jumping on or off it, even at half speed, is, well, unthinkable. Let's hear a better explanation of how those pods would work.

Don Willmott's blog posts are provided by LifeWire, a part of The New York Times Company.