For urban rail, stopping distances (station spacing) are often quite short - on the order of 1-2 kilometres. This is because people won’t walk further than a kilometre. Wider spacing requires an all-stops and express configuration, perhaps combined with the use of feeder buses.

As a result, acceleration and braking performance become a significant factor in journey time. There’s even a certain point where increasing the top speed does nothing, because the train has to start braking before it has fully accelerated.

Acceleration and braking performance is limited on trains, because standing passengers can’t take much more than about 1 m/s².

For high speed rail, stopping distances are much further apart - tens to hundreds of kilometres. Here the acceleration and deceleration performance is much less important.

High-speed and urban trains are usually geared differently for this reason. The same power output can support high speed or high acceleration, but not both.

Inputs

Stop spacing and vehicle performance

Speed over distance

Results

Per‑scenario distances, times and averages:
Scenario vpeak (km/h) Accel dist (km) Cruise dist (km) Brake dist (km) Section time (s) Avg speed (km/h) tacc (s) tcruise (s) tbrake (s)