Quote:
Originally Posted by stayinginformed
The new line should go all the way to the end of the line. Most of the students and almost all of the University employees don't get off at the stadium station.
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As a U student myself, I'd much rather see this go all the way to the end of the line. And with only 3 additional stops, I'm wondering why they wouldn't extend it. It seems in my mind much simpler to have it stop at the Medical Center instead of at Stadium.
I have a few ideas to why that might be.
One reason is probably that it needs a switch right before the final station to change to the oncoming side. Stadium has one of these switches as does the Medical Center station, but Ft. Douglas and South Campus don't.
Another is that maybe it costs more to drive it that much farther? While the horizontal distance is very short, the vertical distance is quite noticeable. I don't think this is a major reason since light rail is inherently so much cheaper to operate anyway.
My other thought is that maybe they want to stop it at stadium because of the number of trains needed to keep it running at frequency. I know for every extra few stations they need another train configuration to operate at 15 minute intervals. That's my only other thought as to why it might be the case.
Now that I think about it, I got interviewed a few months ago by a UTA employee with an iPad around the Trolley station on the red line as to where I was getting off. In retrospect, that was almost certainly for this project.