40tph is rarely achieved in practice, systems which are intended for 40tph usually actually end up running somewhere in the 30-36tph range as it basically just takes one little old lady being a bit slow or one tourist bag stuck in a door to ruin the synchronisation. Still 36tph basically already feels like there are trains "all the time" and passengers learn to just "let it go" as you would with an elevator - you know another one will arrive shorty.

Getting rid of absolute block helps, a moving block system can allow the following train to enter immediately, rather than waiting until the tail of train A leaves the far end of the station before the front of train B can begin moving. But that's not exactly something you can just drop in on a Tuesday afternoon, you'd usually have to shut the whole railway, add new signal technology, re-train staff, maybe even buy new rolling stock.