Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
That doesn't make any sense. Why would per mile ridership be lower if there were one line? If anything, per mile ridership will drop as secondary corridors are developed.
Light rail can carry hundreds of thousands of riders, easy. There's no way in hell Miami is going to have millions of rail riders.
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Overall systemwide per mile ridership might go down, but if the original central line has additional lines feeding into it, then ridership over the original stretch will go up. A good comparison is here in DC, the original stretch that opened has vastly more ridership over that same stretch now that the system is complete. Rail transit in general has increasing returns as a greater portion of the region is connected.
Quote:
Originally Posted by electricron
Why? Light rail trains can run in multiple units, so these trains can be as long as heavy rail trains. They are usually just as wide as just as tall, so their capacity could be the same per train.
The only physical attributes that make them different at all is how they pick up their electricity, heavy rail usually using third rail while light rail usually using overhead catenary.
So it's how they are operated that causes system capacity differences. With light rail having stations at grade in central business districts, station platform lengths, and therefore train lengths, are usually limited to city block lengths, 300 to 400 feet. Heavy rail operation off grade, under or above grade, train lengths are not limited to city block sizes. But light rail trains can operate off grade too. So I repeat again, light rail trains can be as long as heavy rail trains, and can have the same system capacity.
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If you're gonna build light rail to have the same capacity as heavy rail, then why not build heavy rail? I'm not aware of a light rail system that has similar, or even close to, the capacity of a typical heavy rail system. Can you name an example?
That's not true, as I said before, heavy rail can run more frequent headways due to being totally grade separated, faster average speed, longer cars and longer trains. You said it right there, light rail platforms are frequently limited by city block size. The only light rail system I can think of off the top of my head that comes close to what you're describing is St. Louis, and their platforms/trains are much shorter.
Besides, this is a theoretical discussion. If Miami chose light rail (which we now know they didn't for the most part), what makes you think they would construct it the way you're describing?
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