Operation conditions:

The network of guideways covering Los Angeles has a mesh size of 3 miles x 3 miles. At each crossing, the RUF vehicles have to reduce the speed to 20 mph. The top speed is 95 mph and acceleration is 0.2 G until the speed is 60 mph. The acceleration from there is reduced to 0.1 G in order to reduce the necessary power delivered by the motors.

A typical RUF-train during peak hour consists of 20 RUFs or 10 MAXI-RUFs and is 60 m long. At 20 mph the safety distance is 20 m, so the distance between train centres is 80 m. One train-passage takes 10 seconds at 8 m/sec.

It takes 147 seconds for a RUF-train to travel 3 miles (75 mph average speed). The maximum number of trains (20 RUFs each) running on one rail is 147/10=15. At 95 mph the distance between trains will be 340 m. An emergency braking at –1G, using the very effective rail brake, will stop the train safely in 80 m.

Maximum use of the system corresponds to 30 simultaneous trains running on bidirectional rail between the stations.

An utilization of 50% RUF and 50% MAXI-RUF on the rail network corresponds to 75 MAXI-RUF per 3 miles or 25 MAXI-RUFs per mile of unidirectional rail. Since the network consists of 625 miles of bidirectional rail, this would correspond to 2 x 625 x 25 = 31,250 MAXI-RUFs and 62,500 RUFs on the network at the same time.