Tram Trains for Romania!
The flexibility of the modern tram to operate on mainline railways is now being exploited in Romania.
This means affordable, quality public transport can be extended to service customers, who would otherwise be excluded from transportation planning.
Until our politcans and public clearly understand that building subways and elevated transit is not how to increase a transportation’s user-friendliness (translates to ridership), rather affordable options, such as TramTrain, serving remote destinations at a far cheaper cost, will attract far more new ridership to transit.
It is time to stop building transit to win elections and build transit to move people!
From the Light Rail Transit Association.
Oradea (population 184,000), a city in Romania which has a smallish tramway system has plans to extend this into a tram-train project.
This will involve using bi-mode and tri-mode vehicles capable of operation on the urban tramway using 600 V dc, the state railway system which uses 25Kv ac and there will be some sections unwired on which battery operation will be used.
Publicity states that there will be 11 vehicles but as this is split into 8 bi-mode and 5 tri-mode it will probably be 13!
BC needs this. A tram from Whistler to Burnaby. The track is already there. There is an old rail bridge and tunnel beside the 2nd narrows bridge.