Thread: Light Rail Boom
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  #718  
Old Posted Aug 3, 2018, 3:18 AM
llamaorama llamaorama is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GlassCity View Post
Fills the role of making you feel good about your city, sure. As a transportation solution, not even close. Actually, you're spending double for what a bus route could do. Truly the worst of both worlds.
A comparable BRT system would be almost as expensive as a train with higher operating costs.

Light rail is such a broad category. It includes lines and systems which are similar to streetcars, ones which are similar to metros, and everything in between. Instead of building obligatory grade-separated heavy rail metro with third rail for the entirely of a corridor, you can run trains that have overhead wires and can cross roads and walkways at grade.

Look at the Seattle East Link. It's almost entirely elevated or in a tunnel and reaches the the cores of Seattle and Bellevue with underground stations, but there are a few parts of the line that go through industrial areas along side streets and a couple stations that don't have a huge capacity requirement. LRT saves money over HRT, which is what that line would have been otherwise. BRT would be ridiculous in that alignment. You aren't going to dig miles of tunnel and build several subway stations for buses. Seattle already tried that.

Even in Houston where the Metro Red Line isn't grade separated and runs in the street, it is probably better than what it used to be like. The buses that used to run on Main caused traffic congestion because there were too many of them and they stopped in the outer lane. To improve the situation with buses would just involve tearing up the street and building something almost exactly like the light rail which is there now except without rails. If you didn't want the diesel buses they would have to be electric and need a charging depot, or you could have catenary. At least the longer trains have more capacity so there are fewer of them blocking intersections and because they run on tracks they ride smoother and make significantly less sound.

Last edited by llamaorama; Aug 3, 2018 at 3:29 AM.
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