Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
^ I'm not sure the depth makes much of a difference in regard to utilities. Besides a shallow storm drain here or there I cant think of what utility would be above 20" or so. I think its true just in general thay an LRT system is going to be built to a more robust standard closer to heavy rail/metro.
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Any kind of manhole, catch basin, utility vault in the path of the tracks needs to be relocated, because you don't want routine utility maintenance to shut down the train line. Cars can go around a
barricade, trains can't. BRT is an edge case, I tend to think you should avoid the cost of utility relocation since the bus can leave the bus lane for a detour of weeks or months. But projects like SF's Van Ness BRT did a full utility relocation anyway.
Unfortunately in older cities like LA, there was a bonanza for utility companies when the original streetcar tracks were ripped out in the 50s and 60s. The first generation of utilities (water, sewer) were built along the sides of the street, to avoid the streetcar tracks. The second, postwar generation of utilities (gas, electric, telephone) were built in the middle of the street where the tracks used to be, to avoid conflicts from the first generation. It was just cheaper to do it that way, and they figured the streetcars were never coming back.
Now we have utilities under every part of the street, so relocation is inevitable. Also the horizontal alignment of tracks is determined by traffic engineers, so even if there's a strip of virgin dirt with no utility conflicts, you can't always put the tracks there because it conflicts with car traffic too much.
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