Trolled by trolls

ai???If you tell a SkyTrain lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The SkyTrain lie can be maintained only for such time as the provinceAi?? and TransLink can shield the people from the political, economic and/or transit consequences of the SkyTrain lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the province to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the SkyTrain lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the province and TransLink.ai???

The SkyTrain lobby are up in arms because they refuse to believe basic transit facts. To bad.

There is a magic aura about the internet and many think that everything that is posted is honest or truthful; sad fact is the opposite is true. Today, I can prove via the internet that the holocaust did not happen and that aliens have landed and there is a great cover up. I can give you the links if you wish, but I rather not.

The internet is home to some of the most fanciful and illogical nonsense ever thought of, yet here are many that believe.

The SkyTrain boys and girls just can’t get over the fact that no one builds with it anymore and the world has moved on from light-metro. Many of the studies supporting light-metro are so badly skewed in favour of the mode, it becomes laughable, yet there are still those who still believe. One can visit the ‘skyscraper’ SkyTrain page to get ones fill of stuff and nonsense. The empty rhetoric that is breathtaking.

Many transit studies are not on line and can be purchased for a fee. Zwei has invested $500 for the four Hass-Klau, “Bus of Light Rail – making the right choice” series of studies which do not appear on line. In fact, Zwei has invested over $2000 on studies in the past decade or so and non of these appear on line, yet they are important studies. The same is true with industry periodicals, which again many are not on-line.

So to Richard and Rico please answer this simple series of questions, please link when you can, if you dare to:

1. SkyTrain has been on the market since the late 1970’s, yet only seven such systems have been built, why?
2. During the same period over one hundred and fifty LRT systems have been built. If SkyTrain is so superior to LRT why doesn’t anyone build with it today?
3. Not one of the SkyTrain systems built ere allowed to compete directly against light rail, why?
4. Though the SkyTrain Lobby claim that SkyTrain is cheaper to operate, why has Translink refused to compare SkyTrain with LRT in a “apples to apples” comparison, why?
5. Why do the SkyTrain Lobby claim that SkyTrain has a larger capacity than LRT, despite the fact the contracted capacity of the present SkyTrain system is 15,000 pphpd, while at the same time modern LRT can and does carry more during peak periods?

Answers please.

 

Subway Economics

The difficulties of making subway lines run at a profit have existed for over ten years and, up until now, no solution has been found.
It’s obvious that simply relying on revenue from ticket sales is not enough to cover the sizable operating costs.
Attempts to replicate the Hong Kong model have also proved unsuccessful, with most city governments instead being forced to pay out billions of yuan each year to subsidize operations.

Subway Economics: Why D.C. Needs More Chains

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2011/01/25/subway-economics-why-d-c-needs-more-chains/

Relationship Economics

http://www.relationshipeconomics.com/shorter_pieces/subway_v_starbucks.htm

Subway USA have a standard price of $5 for a number of foot long subs and back this up with heavy advertising. However, Subway restaurants in San Francisco are the only place in the USA not to offer this deal and they blame the newly increased minimum wage. The city of recently implemented a minimum wage of $10.24 per hour (compared to the mandatory federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour). This has meant that the $5 foot-longs are simply not profitable in San Francisco.

Worldwide Tram Market Review – 2014

The Cardinal posts hereAi??the schedule ofAi??Worldwide Tram orders as of March 2014, courtesy of Tramways & Urban Transit

Manufacturer	City’s	Orders	Options	Sub-Total		Orders Pending
				OrdersAi??	Options
Alstom	Aubagne, Avignon, Bordeaux, Constantine, Cuenca, Dubai, Montpellier, Nottingham, Ottawa, Oran, Paris, Rio, SAi??tif, Sidi Bel AbbA?s, SNCF, Toulouse	374	214
AnsaldoBreda	Genova, Firenza, Kayseri, Zhuhai	70	7
Astra	Arad	24	51
Bombardier	Antwerp, Basle, Berlin, Brussels, Essen, Frankfurt am Main, Ghent, Gold Coast, Halle, Karlsruhe, Krefeld, Linz, Manchester, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mulheim, Nanjing. Plauen, Rotterdam, Suzhou, Toronto, Waterloo-Kitchener, Vienna	802	128
Brookville	Dallas	2	2
CAF	Birmingham, BesanAi??on, Budapest, Cagliari, CuiabA?, Cincinnati, Debrecen, Freiburg, Houston, Kansas City, Kaohsiung, Stockholm, Sydney, Tallinn	257	144
CNR Dalian	Manila	48	0
CSR Tangshan	Samsun	5	0
CSR Zhuzhou	Izmir, Guangzhou	37	0
Durmazlar	Bursa	10	0
Inekon	Almaty, Olomouc, Seattle, Tashkent	70	21
Kinkisharyo	Los Angeles	175	97
PESA	Gdansk, Katowice, Krakow, Moscow,Ai?? Pavlodar, Sofia, Torun,Ai?? Warsaw	383	6
Siemens	Calgary, Charlotte,Ai?? Den Haag, Doha,Ai?? Minneapolis, Munich, Portland, San Diego, Vienna	282	0
Solaris	Braunschweig, Jena, Olgztyn	38	0
Ai??koda	Bratislava, Konya, Miskolc, Prague	153	30
Stadler	Basel, Bergen, Bochum, Croydon, Potsdam, St Gallen, Stuttgart	102	0
Vossloh	Chemnitz, Chengdu, Gmunden, Hannover, Karlsruhe, Leeds/Sheffield, Rostock, Santos, Wuppertal	240	98
Transtech	Helsinki	40	95
United Streetcars	Portland, Tuscon, Washington	12	0
				3124	893	1619
					Total Orders	5636

Memo to theAi?? infantile trollsAi??retained by Translink, please take note of the figures in the above table.

Fifteen months ago one of the twins said:

“Worldwide, I would expect the number of metros is closer to that of trams and LRT. What is for certain, is that the number of people who use metros far exceeds the number who use trams and LRT.”

Really!

…Ai??hardly correct to say that was it?

TransLink’s Subway Fiscal Time Bomb – A Repost from 2013

The SkyTrain/metro Lobby remain mute on the long term fiscal effects of operating subways, especially on routes that have low ridership, say less than 15,000 pphpd.

Building a subway is a very expensive proposition and many factors should be considered before embarking on such a costly investment. The first questionAi??any knowledgeable transit planner must ask is; “Is the traffic flow along the subway line enough to sustain it?”

Generally speaking, if average traffic flows are less than 15,000 pphpd, a subway is not needed , as a surface transit route would be more economic. If a subway is built on a route with low ridership, then the subway must be subsidized, with the lower the ridership, the higher the subsidy.

There are many other expensive problems associated with subways, but one that is seldom admitted to is the extremely high maintenance costs that come with a subway. Subways must be cleaned as the accumulated debris and dirt because the piston like action of every passing train acts like a sandblaster on signalling and power equipment. As a subway ages, the maintenance costs escalate. German cities that joined the subway mania in the 60’s and 70’s are now ruing the decision as onerous maintenance costs for the subways have all but bankrupted many transit companies.

It is sad that Vancouver City hall and TransLink are infected with the subway mania and our transit planning shows this as it is 40 to 50 years out of date!

The Broadway SkyTrain subway is a throwback to earlier days, where “mass transit” schemes were built to win votes, built at a time when money was thought ‘cheap’ to borrow and ; “hell anyways, it is just built for show as we must keep the road clear for cars.“

In 2013, politicians lose elections due to bad transit decisions; money is not cheap; there are way too many cars on the road, so much so that gridlock is a daily occurrence, and the European light rail Renaissance has not yet reached Vancouver.

 

The following is from a transit specialist from Germany.

When some light rail subway systems over here (Koeln, Bochum) converted some lines built for high-floor cars in the 60/70s to low-floor cars, they simply filled the trackbed in the stations with enough ballast to lift the rails up.

The operating and maintenance cost for all those escalators, lighting and ventilation of the tunnel stations (not to mention cleaning) etc. might kill such a project, however. Over here, the electricity bill just for all that tunnel-specific equipment is already typically higher than that for traction energy of the rolling stock.

Decades ago, they wanted to put the streetcars on grade-free tracks in order to reduce cost by running them driver-less.

Today, all transit operators that have buried their streetcars face serious financial problems due to the operating and maintenance cost of the grade-free infrastructure. It’s those operators that did not follow the “tunnel-mania” that have the lowest operating cost today. Burying streetcars turned out as a huge mistake.

Cutting edge to the cutter’s torch. (A repost from 2011)

What happens to old transportation technology?

It becomes less valuable than scrap!

The Birmingham airport MAGLEV was cutting edge transportation technology in 1984 (two years before the SkyTrain Expo Line opened) but by 1995 was scrapped as obsolete.

This is reminiscent of another cutting edge transportation technology more than a century ago, the atmospheric railway. Touted in the 1840’s as a replacement for the new steam railway, a decade later it became but a bad memory for its promoters. The first practical use of the system was on the Dublin and Kingstown Railway’s Dalkey Atmospheric Railway between Kingstown (DA?n Laoghaire) and Dalkey, Ireland. This 1.75-mile (2.82 km) line was built by Vignoles and surprisingly operated between 1844 and 1854, only slightly shorter than the eleven year run of the Birmingham Airport MAGLEV. The few other atmospheric railways built barely lasted a year in operation.

The lesson to be learned in this sad tale is that today’s ‘state of the art’ transit system is tomorrow’s obsolete transit system, something that TransLink hasn’t realized with the automatic proprietary SkyTrain light-metro system.

---

Birmingham Airport’s MAGLEV carriage resold for A?100

 

 

A magnetic carriage that transported people from Birmingham Airport to its railway station sold for just A?100 after a A?25,100 eBay bid was not paid.

The airport used a Magnetic Levitation (Maglev) line between 1984 and 1995 before replacing it with cable cars.

The Maglev carriage attracted 35 bids and was sold on the internet auction site eBay in November for A?25,100.

The bidder defaulted but Andy Jones from Warwickshire snapped it up and is moving it to his home near Kenilworth.

Mr Jones said: “The Magnetic Levitation Line came out of use back in 1995 and was put to one side by the Birmingham Airport people and at the back end of last year they decided to sell it on eBay.

Maglev memories

“The bidding went up to A?25,000 but whoever bought it the deal didn’t go through so it went back on eBay again at the start of this year for Help the Heroes and a hospice.

“So I thought I would get things going by putting in an opening bid of A?100 and nobody else bid for it.

“As a consequence I’ve got a five tonne train to get shifted into a field opposite my house and I’ve now got to find a suitable use for it.”

He said he used to be a frequent flyer from Birmingham Airport and remembered riding on the Maglev.

He said: “As a British invention of its day I thought it was absolutely tremendous. It was the forefront of its technology and a high speed Maglev has just been opened up in Shanghai which I think is a direct development of what took place in the old days.”

He plans to work with local companies to refurbish it and to install lighting and seating and said he wanted to hear from any groups who thought they could put it to good use.

Stop fighting Massey bridge, Delta mayor doesn’t get it

Some politicians ‘get it’ and many other don’t; the same goes with regional transportation planning.

Delta’s Mayor, Lois Jackson clearly doesn’t get it. The proposed Massey Tunnel replacement bridge will not solve congestion, only move it a few kilometres from Delta, across the river into Richmond.

Someone must explain to Mayor Jackson, that unless a new crossing into Vancouver is also built, a multi billion dollar eight or ten lane bridge, replacing the Massey tunnel will do little or nothing relieving congestion and may well exacerbate gridlock in Richmond.

The BC Liberal’s meddling in regional transit affairs is just leading us down the road to a massive financial and transportation disaster and the government’sAi?? hanger-on’s, in regional government are doing the taxpayer and the commuter a great disservice promoting the Liberal’s back of an envelope planning.

Stop fighting Massey bridge, Delta mayor urges Metro Vancouver

• byAi?? Jeff Nagel – Surrey North Delta Leader
• posted Mar 12, 2014 at 5:00 PM

Oops, Evergreen Line Guideway Shifts

When you do expensive jobs on the cheap, s**t happens.

Looks like the guideway fell off its bearings, I wonder why?

Ai??By TIFFANY CRAWFORD, VANCOUVER SUN March 14, 2014

METRO VANCOUVER – A 300-tonne beam dislodged early Friday on the new Evergreen SkyTrain Line in Coquitlam, forcing authorities to close a major commuter road.

Como Lake Avenue, which runs under the SkyTrain line in Coquitlam, is closed in both directions as engineers work on the section of the guideway, according to the Ministry of Transportation.

Amanda Farrell, project director for the Evergreen Line, said at around 1 a.m., a temporary concrete spacer that sits between the column and the guideway beam at Como Lake and Clarke Road failed, causing the beam to shift about six inches.

ai???This particular beam is slightly different and slightly more curved than the normal beams because itai??i??s going to come up and swoop over the intersection and down toward Coquitlam and itai??i??s going to be connected to other beams,ai??? she said.

She said engineers put in temporary metal spacers and then later will replace it with a permanent concrete spacer. She could not say why the spacer failed.

ai???Thatai??i??s what the engineers are out there doing now. They are looking at why it failed, how they are going to fix it and whether the road can reopen,ai??? she said.

When asked whether that 300-tonne beam could have fallen on the road, potentially crushing a vehicle, Farrell said there were no public safety concerns.

ai???Iai??i??ve been talking to the engineers here. The beam is on four points of contact and what they are telling me is that it is very stable where it is now and thatai??i??s not a concern,ai??? she said. ai???I donai??i??t want to speculate while they are out there investigating until I have all the facts.ai???

She said engineers have been following the standard methodology for building the SkyTrain and to her knowledge she had never heard of anything like this happening before during construction of a SkyTrain line.

ai???We will have to look at what has happened here and why that temporary spacer failed.ai???

The Coquitlam RCMP received several calls after the incident happened, with people saying they had heard a loud bang. Como Lake is expected to remain closed until around noon. The ministry says flagger personnel are at the location, helping motorists with detours. TransLink says due to the problem with Evergreen bus number 143 is detouring.

The $1.4-billion rapid transit line is slated to open in 2016 and connect Burnaby and Coquitlam. Tunnelling is expected to begin within days.

Once complete, the Evergreen Line will connect the Tri-Cities to the rest of the SkyTrain system, creating the longest rapid transit network in Canada, at 79 kilometres

ticrawford@vancouversun.com

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/Coquitlam+road+closed+incident+Evergreen+Line+construction/9617740/story.html

With a file from Kelly Sinoski

U.S. (And Canada) Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs (a repost from 2012)

With BC Transit quoting silly prices for LRT in Victoria and TransLink doing the same in Vancouver and Surrey, the following article from Bloomberg should be essential reading. As the previous post has shown, modern LRT/streetcar can be built cheaply, if there is the political and bureaucratic will to do so.

With thank to Justin Bernard.

U.S. Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs

ByAi??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? Stephen SmithAi??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? Aug 26, 2012

 

Bloomberg

 

If the first segment of Manhattanai??i??s Second Avenue subway opens on schedule in 2016, New Yorkers will be reminded that it was once ai???the line that time forgotai??? — a project more than 75 years in the making, with no end in sight. It should be remembered for another failing as well: It will be one of the most expensive subways in the world.

Tunneling in any dense urban environment is an expensive proposition, but the $5 billion price tag for just the first two miles of the Second Avenue subway cannot be explained by engineering difficulties. The segment runs mainly beneath a single broad avenue, unimpeded by rivers, super-tall skyscraper foundations or other subway lines.

American taxpayers will shell out many times what their counterparts in developed cities in Europe and Asia would pay. In the case of the Second Avenue line and other new rail infrastructure in New York City, they may have to pay five times as much.

Amtrak is just as bad. Its $151 billion master plan for basic high-speed rail service in the Northeast corridor is more expensive than Japanai??i??s planned magnetic levitating train line between Tokyo and Osaka, most of which is to be buried deep underground, with tunnels through the Japan Alps and beneath its densest cities.

The numbers for Californiaai??i??s proposed high-speed rail system are similarly shocking.

California Bloat

The French rail operator SNCFAi??told the California High-Speed Rail Authority that it could cut $30 billion off the projectai??i??s $68 billion estimated price tag. San Francisco can barely build underground light rail for the price that Tokyo pays for high-capacity subways. Los Angelesai??i??s planned subway to the sea will be a bit cheaper, but is still very expensive considering the areaai??i??s lack of density.

The budgets for other types of urban public-works projects can be just as shocking. Who can forget Bostonai??i??s Big Dig, the$24 billionAi??highway boondoggle? But mass-transit networks stand to lose most from out-of-control infrastructure costs.

A huge part of the problem is that agencies canai??i??t keep their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out the project management and early design concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and quality up. And even when they know better, agencies are often forced by legislation, courts and politicians to make decisions that they know arenai??i??t in the public interest.

Comparing American transit-construction practices with those abroad yields a number of lessons. Spain has the most dynamic tunneling industry in the world and the lowest costs. In 2003, Metro de Madrid Chief Executive Officer Manuel Melis Maynar wrote a list describing the practices he used to design the systemai??i??s latest expansion. The donai??i??t-do list, unfortunately, reads like a winning U.S. transit-construction bingo card.

Perhaps the most ostentatious violation of Melisai??i??s manual of best practices is expensive architecture in stations. ai???Design should be focused on the needs of the users,ai??? he wrote, ai???rather than on architectural beauty or exotic materials, and never on the name of the architect.ai???

American politicians have different priorities. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is spending $3.8 billion on a single subway station at the World Trade Center designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect known for his costly projects. If New York could build subways at the prices that Paris and Tokyo pay, $3.8 billion would be enough to build the entire Second Avenue subway, from Harlem to the Financial District.

Spainai??i??s Model

Melis also warned against ai???consultants who consultant with consultants and advisers who advise advisers,ai??? something American planners would do well to learn. He said he didnai??i??t hire any ai???large firm of consulting engineersai??? as general project managers for his Metro de Madrid expansions, and that designers werenai??i??t allowed to interfere with, or bid for, their own construction contracts.

Not so in the U.S. Parsons Brinckerhoff, perhaps the biggest name in the nationai??i??s transit construction industry, is both the lead-design contractor and project manager for Californiaai??i??s planned high-speed rail line, and the company stands a good chance of winning construction contracts for its own designs.

As if that conflict of interest wasnai??i??t bad enough, the California High-Speed Rail Authorityai??i??s new CEO, Jeff Morales, arrived at the agency after a stint as senior vice present at Parsons Brinckerhoff, where he worked on the authorityai??i??s business plan.

Parsons Brinckerhoff, like all the other multinational contractors and construction companies that win bloated contracts in the U.S., can do good work. Its rail projects for Hong Kongai??i??s Mass Transit Railway were built at a reasonable cost, and its participation in Turkeyai??i??s Marmaray rail tunnel across the Bosporus in Istanbul shows that it can deliver affordable results in forbidding terrain. But absent the right incentives and oversight, even the best private companies will resort to rent seeking.

Larry Littlefield, who has worked in logistics and as a budget analyst at New York City Transit, also suggests the U.S. legal system is an obstacle to designing and building affordable infrastructure. (The U.K. and India share a common-law legal heritage with the U.S. that is heavy on judicial review, and they also have trouble controlling costs.)

New York government agencies are saddled by procurement rules dating back generations, Littlefield says, when corruption in infrastructure projects was endemic. Reformers demanded objective and easily policeable standards, which often meant lowest-price bidding rules. Bidders compete mostly on price, not quality.

Speed Matters

In Madrid, on the other hand, cost was given only a 30 percent weight when picking designers and builders, according to Melis. Speed was weighted at 20 percent. Melis praised quick execution as necessary for an efficient, affordable project. (Compare this with multigenerational projects, such as Californiaai??i??s high-speed rail and New Yorkai??i??s Second Avenue subway.) The remaining 50 percent was determined by the technical merits of proposals and the staffai??i??s subjective considerations.

Littlefield also argues that judges in New York routinely side with contractors in disputes with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. ai???In the private sector, if you rob your customer, you will suffer a hit to your reputation and possible losses in the courts,ai??? he said in an interview. ai???Not so if you rob an agency like the MTA. Then itai??i??s all rights and no responsibilities.ai???

The MTA must continue to award contracts to the lowest-price bidder, and without the ability to hold bad contractors accountable, Littlefield said, the agency turns to ai???writing longer and longer and longer contracts, expressly prohibiting every way it has been ripped off in the past.ai??? The byzantine contracts that come out of this process drive entrants away, limiting competition and pushing up costs.

Littlefield holds out hope, however, that transit agencies are capable of building with reasonable costs and timelines –at least when they have to. ai???Remember how fast and how cheap they rebuilt the 1 train after 9/11? Thatai??i??s what theyai??i??re capable of. But it just doesnai??i??t happen otherwise.ai???

(Stephen Smith is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York, who covers land use and transportation. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: Stephen Smith at smithsj@gmail.com.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-26/u-s-taxpayers-are-gouged-on-mass-transit-costs.html

New Tram-Train service in France

FRANCE: Tram-train services on a 64 km route linking Nantes and ChA?teaubriant are launched by SNCF on February 28.

Opening on 28 February a new tram-train service is now operational on the reopened regional railway between Nantes and ChA?teaubriant. The railway has been renovated totally after the closure for passenger service at 31 May 1980. Rolling stock is the Citadis Dualis, already operational at the mainline railway between Nantes and Clisson and at two regional railways in the south of France operating from Lyon St Paul station to Brignais and to San Bel. Renovation costs have been 210 million euro excluding 60 million euro for 12 tram-train vehicles. Operation costs will be 5,2 million euro annually excluding the maintenance costs of the rail infrastructure. An interesting feature is the level crossing between tram-trains of SNCF and local trams of Nantes tramway operating company TAN. This crossing is claimed to be unique in France. Daily 48 tram-trains and 220 trams will pass this crossing in both directions. Track layout, overhead configuration and signalisation have been designed and built specifically to this location. First photo displays a coupled tram-train unit ready for departure in the new built HaluchA?re-Batignolles stop

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/passenger/single-view/view/nantes-chateaubriant-tram-train-services-launches-this-month.html

The tram-train service will use part of a former Nantes – Rennes railway route which originally opened in 1877. The Nantes – ChA?teaubriant section closed to passenger traffic in 1980 and to freight in 2008. This section has now been completely modernised in preparation for the tram-train services, with the track replaced and the 11 stations gaining new platforms, shelters, ticket machines and car parking.

Tramway signalling has been fitted, except at Nantes station, and automatic half-barriers have been installed at 30 level crossings, with 11 crossings closed.

The modernised line is designed to be suitable for use by conventional SNCF trains, including works trains, but no freight operations are planned. In contrast to the shared running on the Mulhouse tram-train service, the Nantes tram-trains will not use the city’s urban tram network, which is operated independently by Semitan.

Two dedicated platforms electrified at 25 kV AC have been built at Nantes station. After leaving the station, tram-trains will run through the suburbs on a 15 km double-track alignment with 750 V DC tramway electrification. This parallels a Semitan tram line, and shares five level crossings which follow tramway practice in having warning lights but no barriers. Near HaluchA?re-Batignolles station the Semitan line crosses the tram-train route on a flat crossing.

From BabiniA?re the line will operate as a railway, with 25 kV 50 Hz electrification and a maximum speed of 100 km/h. At the terminus a buffer stop separates tram-trains from the 62 km ChA?teaubriant – Rennes section of the former through route. This lies within Bretagne and has been unaffected by the project, with SNCF X2100 diesel multiple-units operating seven return trips a day.

Alstom has supplied 24 Citadis Dualis vehicles for the tram-train route, equipped with a toilet and more comfortable seats than conventional trams as the end-to-end journey takes 1 h 07 min. There will be seven return trips a day over the full length of the route, with higher frequencies between SucAi??-sur-Erdre and Nantes where there will be services every half hour in the peaks and hourly at other times. HaluchA?re-Batignolles will be served by 46 tram-trains a day. Ridership is predicted at 11 200 passengers/day

Project funding, ai??i??m
Pays de Loire region	62Ai??5	31Ai??5%
Loire Atlantique department	54Ai??0	27Ai??3%
National government	35Ai??3	17Ai??8%
EU sources	21Ai??0	10Ai??6%
Nantes	20Ai??3	10Ai??3%
SNCF	5Ai??2	2Ai??53%
Total cost	198Ai??3

http://www.alstom.com/transport/products-and-services/trains/tram-trains-citadis-dualis-and-regio-citadis/

Combining the best of trains and tramways

The challenge

The urban fabric now extends well beyond the city centre, with regional and urban networks tending to merge. Users’ needs are changing. They want to be able to move with ease from the city centre to neighbouring towns without having to change their transportation mode.

The Alstom solution

Introduced in Germany with the Regio Citadis, the concept of the tram-train has since been enriched by the Citadis Dualis model. This mode of transportation permits seamless daily journeys between city-centres and suburban centres.

Tram-trains benefit from the latest Alstom innovations

…to ensure seamless travel without load changes between city centres and suburbs

• Tram-trains run equally well on tramway networks and on regional rail networks (compatible power tension on wires, signalling and wheels),
• Alstom tram-trains have a reinforced structure in the event of a crash that conforms to the latest safety standards,
• Its collapsible coupling enables better shock absorption in stations.

BRT to LRT in Ottawa

Until now, Ottawa invested in BRT to move transit customers into the city. This of course to an operationally expensive transit system as employee costs can be as much a 80% of a transit system’s budget.

(Ottawa’s bus photo’s courtesy of Mr. Haveacow)

With BRT, buses jams were frequent and city streets became congested with buses.

Congested busways tend not to be very efficient in moving people.

Congestion extended to the busways and the transit system began to buckle under the sheer weight of buses used.

To alleviate bus congestion and associated diesel pollution, as well as reducing operating costs, Ottawa is now building with modern LRT, using European style modular cars, built by Alstom of France.

Whilst the cost of building with LRT is much higher than building busways, especially ifAi?? subways are built, the operating costs are much lower (not so much lower when including subways) as one modern tram and one driver, is as efficient as six buses and six bus drivers. Even someone doing calculations on the back of an envelope can understand the economy of operating modern light rail.

Now a memo for those who want a Broadway subway. The preceding pictures show the level of bus congestion needed before transit authorities begin to plan for light rail. On Broadway with a B-line bus every 3 minutes or so does not indicate a need for a subway, rather it indicates a need for better management. Current bus flows along Broadway warrant an economy LRT line and nothing more and of course when ridership demands more service, modern LRT can meet the challenge affordably.