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Originally Posted by DubberDom
really???
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Internally, that bus's floor has lots of high-floor sections. Since the engine is not at the back and it's not electric, it has to be under the floor somewhere. Internal circulation and capacity will be compromised, both of which affect boarding and alighting times. That's why the South American cities use high-floor models.
That model also has a ~365 hp engine. The current artics have 330 hp - and they're already considered underpowered for high-speed transitway running.
When you have low-floor buses, something has to give, and that's especially true with bi-articulated designs.
You're basically trying to put in place a bus design wholly unsuited to the task you're trying to accomplish. But take heart, you're not alone. Andy Haydon does that too. He thinks that hybrid buses are the answer to tunnel ventilation and noise issues.
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Originally Posted by DubberDom
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If you want to be taken seriously, don't point to articles involving Andy Haydon. Or Randal O'Toole.
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and let's not forget that the transitway will be closed during the conversion to light rail... for an estimated 3 years!! And also the LRT will go nowhere... Tunney's Pasture??? Who cares, you'll end up with 250 buses at Tunney's to bring people where they live and no real plan to extend the rail until another 20 years??? Silly!! how is that more efficient??
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These are failings of the City's plan, not of LRT... a plan, I might add, that was developed by consultants whose experience in Ottawa is building BRT. These are the same consultants who designed "convertible" transitways without figuring out how they would be converted non-disruptively to LRT when the time came. People more conspiratorially-minded might be tempted to argue that the BRT consultants are trying to make LRT look bad.
Anyway, most of us would actually agree with you on the specific points above, none of which are failings of light rail.
Even so, the BRT system over the 12 km from Blair to Tunney's is so damned inefficient that replacing it will save $100M annually.
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Either LRT runs from Centrum to PLace D'Orleans from Day 1, or else it is a useless waste of money
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I wouldn't go that far, but we should definitely be able to open it up from Baseline and Blair on Day 1, and preferably Bayshore as well so as to avoid having useless mega-transfer stations at Tunney's and Lincoln Fields. After that, extensions across the Greenbelt should be carried out ASAP, and down the SE Transitway as well.
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Originally Posted by DubberDom
Also, quit the silly arguments about passenger capacity
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Good plan. So why are you starting one?
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Bi-articulated BRT - between 180 to 270 assengers depending on model
4-car LRT - 220 passengers.
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A biartic bus is about 24-25 m in length. To get 270 passengers into this bus would require cramming more than 10 passengers per lineal metre of bus. Given that buses are about 2.5 m wide, you're cramming 4 people per square metre of bus. That's doable - they do it in South America - but it's not what you want to be doing if you want people to take transit.
Even 180 is pushing it. I've been in a 25 m C-Train car in Calgary with about that many people in it, and that wasn't too pleasant, but at least it was on a railcar that doesn't buck like crazy when it's underway and it has large open areas around the doors.
As for your claim that a 4-car LRT would only carry 220, that's just laughable. Where did you get that from? 220 just happens to be the claimed "crush" capacity of the 29 m Siemens S70, the vehicle we were to get with the N-S LRT. A 4-car LRT of those would have a capacity of 880, not 220.
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and another silly argument about "Electricity" as the holy grail... let's see... how do we make electricity in Ontario???
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Isn't this a red herring since no one raised it before you?
Regardless, power-station electricity is probably still cleaner than refined diesel, at the end of the day. Moreover, electricity has better acceleration characteristics and braking can return power to the grid.