Trains As An Alternative to Hovercraft
As previously pointed out, hovercraft accidents are amazingly difficult to find reports of. Doing searches on hovercraft and accidents invariably yields results on how hovercraft are used as rescue vehicles after other type of craft have an accident.
Since a couple of rail options are proposed as alternatives to using hovercraft in the Washington D.C. area, let us quickly compare the safety record of trains.
According to the US Federal Railroad Administration, there were 973 total train related accidents in 2006. 2007 showed a marked improvement though with only 840 accidents.
Yes, these numbers do include all forms of train related accidents. However, this is in stark contrast to the lack of news articles about hovercraft accidents. It should be noted that this is only statistical data for the United States, not the whole world.
It is also highly doubtful that one can find any news articles on trains being used as rescue vehicles.
Trains are easily demonstratable to be more dangerous than hovercraft.
Trains are also obviously less flexible than hovercraft. Trains (and monorails) can only travel where track has been laid.
Speaking of that track and other infrastructure, the cost of any rail system is almost 50 times as much as setting up hovercraft.
This does not take into account the cost of maintenance of the track.
As for environmental impact, running any sort of rail through the areas that WaterLine Metro advocates using would be beyond environmentally devastating. It also should be noted that no cost estimate has been generated for running rail through these areas due to the total impracticality of the concept.
While hovercraft can not be called silent means of travel, they are many magnitudes quieter than trains.
The end result is that a train is just not any form of competition for hovercraft.