Expansion, improvements and upgrade for Croydon Tramlink
Following the March announcement from Transport for London, that ten new Light Rail vehicles were to be procured for the successful Croydon Tramlink system.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/media/newscentre/archive/19308.aspx
The mayor of London Boris Johnson has announced the shortlisted bidders to supply Transport for London (TfL) with up to ten more trams, which will increase services on the Tramlink network. City of Edinburgh Council and CAF, who constructed the trams as part of the BSC consortium, have been shortlisted, as have Swiss manufacturer Stadler and Polish manufacture Pesa.
This week it was announced that, in the near future, the following improvements and upgrades to the Tramlink system will take place:
- The 'twining' of the sections of single line tracks on the Wimbledon line should start this year – with the section between Mitcham and Mitcham Junction being completed first.
- Reconstruction of the Carshalton Road Bridge to enable twin tracks to pass underneath.
- Demolition of the Willow Lane single lane carriageway road bridge, which has been closed to all traffic and pedestrians.
- Construction of an additional tram stop between Mitcham and Mitcham Junction to serve the Willow Lane Industrial Estate.
Kisses on a postcard
In the 19th & 20th centuries, Trams & Streetcars were part of the streetscape in towns and cities in Canada, Europe & America.
Studying contemporary postcards, it can be seen how well this form of urban transport fitted in with homes, businesses & people.
ThisAi??coloured postcardAi??of post World War One Karlsruhe, Germany, shows a typical street scene.
The postcard is taken from a website called The Daily Postcard http://postcardparadise.blogspot.com/2011/04/streetcar-sunday-karlsruhe-germany.html
and an aptly named series of postings titled Streetcar Sunday.
The Karlsruhe Light Rail & Tram-Train network is rightly held as a model for the city of Surrey and the Lower Fraser Valley to aspire to with Interurban Tram-Trains, Light Rail & tram systems.
Finally for this Good Friday posting, the Cardinal brings you a video of San Francisco.
A camera was mounted on the front of a street car in San Francisco 105 years ago (1906). Perhaps the oldest “home movie” that you will ever see!
This film was originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn, with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot.
Ai??From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates wereAi??Ai??issued!). It was filmed only four days before the Great California Earthquake of April 18th 1906 and shipped by train to NY for processing.
Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NINOxRxze9k
Experience is not what happens to you;
it is what you do with what happens to you.
— Aldous Huxley
Easter weekend Tram & Light Rail news – Europe, Australia & the USA
Light rail vehicle unveiled
http://www.railwaygazette.com/nc/news/single-view/view/bielefeld-vamos-lrv-unveiled.html
London’s Post Office Railway, The First Automatic Railway
London's Post Office Railway, also known as Mail Rail, was a narrow-gauge driverless private underground railway in London built by the Post Office with assistance from the Underground Electric Railways Company of London to move mail between sorting offices. Inspired by the Chicago Tunnel Company, it was in operation from 3 December 1927 until 31 May 2003.
The following is the Post Office today, an underground museum piece, waiting to be rediscovered..
http://www.silentuk.com/?p=2792
The Sunday Supplement Essay
Opening of Reims Light Rail/Tramway system
On April 16th the 11.2 kmAi??Ai?? Light Rail/tramway in the city of Reims, in the French region of Champagne-Ardenne was opened with much publicity.
Reims is the twenty secondAi??Ai??of the new generationAi??Ai??of tramways to be opened in France since 1986
http://champagne-ardenne.france3.fr/evenements/Inauguration-tramway-reims/
Ai??Ai??
Details on the following sites:
http://www.tramwaydereims.fr/start.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reims_tramway
http://www.subways.net/france/reims.html
Ai??Ai??
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts calls for street-level rapid transit in her city
Light rail proponents say it's less expensive than SkyTrain
They are cheering Surrey mayor Dianne Watts for her call for street-level rapid transit in her city
Apr 13, 2011 19:24:20 PM News1130
SURREY (NEWS1130) – Surrey's plan for street-level rapid transit is welcome news to people who want to bring back street cars to the Fraser Valley. Mayor Dianne Watts says they're envisioning light rail down the Fraser Highway to Langley and from City Centre in Whalley to South Surrey.
Malcolm Johnston with Rail for the Valley says it ought to link up with the old Interurban Line they want resurrected.
"Compare 140 kilometres of SkyTrain at $125 million a kilometre versus ours at $7 million a kilometre, and that's the big difference with light rail, it's much cheaper. You can penetrate into less densely populated areas affordably to collect the ridership."
Johnston says a lot more companies build streetcars and light rail trains than SkyTrain cars, which are Bombardier's specialty.
Surrey Mayor Watts ups the TransLink ante – ‘We’re redefining Surrey’
Following on from Zweisai??i?? earlier posting of the Vancouver Sunai??i??s reporting of Mayor Dianne Wattsai??i??s state of city address
`Surrey looks to light rail to ease huge growth’
`SkyTrain is too expensive, Mayor Dianne Watts says’
the Surrey Now paperAi?? published the following article on Tuesday:
‘We’re redefining Surrey,’ mayor says at annual State of City address
Ai??
By Ted Colley, Surrey Now April 12, 2011 Ai??
SURREY – “We are building B.C.’s next metropolitan core.”
That was the message delivered by Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts in her State of the City report Tuesday. The message was well-received by the audience of nearly 500 gathered in a Guildford banquet room as the mayor recapped the successes of the past five years and outlined what is still to come.
“We are redefining Surrey and creating B.C.’s next metropolitan core by fostering a strong investment climate and implementing innovative social, economic and community initiatives for our residents and businesses,” Watts said.
She pointed to initiatives such as the city’s economic investment action plan, its sustainability charter, the crime reduction strategy and others as key elements of Surrey’s present, and future, success.
“Creating the right social fabric sets the foundation for a strong economy and makes it possible to effect real and lasting change,” Watts said.
Surrey has the lowest property taxes and the second-lowest business taxes in Metro Vancouver, she said, and has 48 per cent of the region’s industrial land. These factors and the city’s aggressive $2.8-billion Build Surrey construction program combine to attract significant investment to the city and the accompanying jobs.
“We will not be raising taxes to pay for that construction,” Watts promised, citing a list of revenue sources, including infrastructure fees, a new parking authority, new secondary suite fees, gaming revenue and more that will provide the needed funds.
A significant component of the building program is the construction of a new city precinct in City Centre. A new library is well underway and ground has been broken on a new city hall and public plaza to be opened in 2013.
It’s not enough, Watts said, to develop a new downtown core and upgrade Surrey’s other town centres. They must all be connected with useful, efficient rapid transit.
“In order to create healthy communities, we need to provide safe and accessible walking and cycling opportunities. We also need to provide alternatives to vehicle transportation and are actively advocating for TransLink to build light rail rapid transit in Surrey.”
Surrey saw the value of building permits issued in 2010 rise to $1.2 billion, a 41-per-cent increase over the previous year, creating hundreds of construction jobs in the city.
Another boost to Surrey’s economy, Watts said, was the recent India mission to forge links between business here and customers on the sub-continent.
“This is an exciting time for Surrey as we build a city from the ground up,” the mayor said.
“We will continue to be an economic generator for the region, as well as a city where you can get a great education, a great-paying job and raise your family in a strong, vibrant community.”
Ai??
Ai??We’ll see if Translink will listen to Mayor Watts
Tram makers hit curve as markets adjust
Financial Times London
Published: April 8 2011 15:43
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/42c826ec-618a-11e0-a315-00144feab49a.html#axzz1JP9NTSro
By Robert Wright
The segregated track that carries smart Citadis trams alongside the
Aegean in Voula on the outskirts of Athens could scarcely form a more
marked contrast with the tram line that snakes down the narrow, cobbled streets of the St Gilles district in Brussels.
The Athens tram was purpose-built ahead of the 2004 Olympics according
to the needs of the latest tram designs, which have low floors to make
boarding easier but struggle to cope with sharp bends.
The tracks through St Gilles are a legacy of the 19th century, when
tram lines were often built through areas that would be regarded as
entirely unsuitable for them now.
Yet, after years when tram makers’ most lucrative business was
supplying southern European cities with versions of their standard
trams for new, urban light-rail lines, the industry suddenly faces a
far less appealing prospect.
For the foreseeable future, many of the orders likely to come in will
be for the types of rugged, idiosyncratic vehicles needed in places
such as St Gilles, rather than the standard designs suitable for Athens.
The question is whether the tram industry, which has spent years
developing standard platforms for vehicles to cut costs and complexity, can fit the new, more awkward orders into its strict templates while maintaining profitability.
“We have to cope with a global market that has very diverse
requirements,” says Pierre Gosset, platform director for the Citadis,
Alstom Transport’s standard light rail vehicle.
“That requires the industry to have some very reliable products and
some agility to deal with those different performance and technical
requirements.”
The reason for the shift lies in the drying up of the stream of public
funding that enabled many municipalities in Europe to invest in
light-rail systems in the past decade.
The large tram makers were able to supply cities such as Valenciennes
and Nimes in France, Barcelona and Malaga in Spain, Dublin in Ireland
and Porto in Portugal with trams designed to the latest technical
standards and based around standard designs — or platforms — that
barely needed to be changed from system to system.
According to Germar Wacker, president for light rail at Canada’s
Bombardier Transportation, the budget crisis in many eurozone countries — allied with the most financially troubled countries’
disproportionate enthusiasm for ordering light- rail systems — means
that contracts for new systems will be in short supply in the immediate future.
“There’s a higher proportion of the market volume in Europe coming from the more old-established systems, for example the German-speaking
markets,” he says.
The shift means that tram makers that want to win the new orders on
offer will have to be prepared to supply relatively small numbers of
vehicles tailored to meet the eccentricities of systems that have grown up over 130 years. Because most systems were built in isolation, nearly every parameter — from the tightness of curves and the placing of the pantograph to the track gauge and maximum vehicle weight — may vary from order to order.
Yet the change in emphasis is forcing tram operators to change — and
their suppliers too.
Bernard von Wullerstorff, head of railway systems for Unife, the
European railway industry association, says suppliers recognise it
makes no sense to try to rebuild a historic city such as Zagreb, the
Croatian capital. It uses trams with a non-standard track gauge of a
metre, so that vehicles can negotiate the many tight bends and narrow
streets.
But there are circumstances where operators, rather than the
manufacturers, recognise the need for adjustments.
“Sometimes, it does make sense to to change the radius of a curve on an existing system, rather than adapting 50 to 100 trams,” Mr von
Wullerstorff says.
Alain Flausch, chief executive of STIB, the Brussels public transport
company, who is also president of UITP, the international public
transport organisation, illustrates how operator attitudes are changing.
“We told them we wanted something that would meet our needs,” Mr
Flausch says of his initial conversation with suppliers over the
replacement of much of his company’s tram fleet. “They said, ‘If you
want it that way, it will cost more’.”
The chief engineer insisted the specification must not change. But he
left and was replaced by others who realised the nature of the
trade-offs involved.
“The new ones say: ‘If we want to pay only EUR2.5m [$3.5m] for a big
tram, we’re willing to standardise’,” Mr Flausch says.
STIB is now the largest single operator of Bombardier’s Flexity family
of trams, with 250 vehicles.
“I don’t hear a lot of complaints about it from the operating side,” Mr Flausch says.
The process under way is far more complicated than a move away from the standardisation of one-size-fits-all new tram systems back to the
near-chaos of technical non-standardisation, according to Mr von
Wullerstorff.
Different systems will continue to have unique requirements. Many of
the new tram systems likely to be ordered may be in regions such as the Gulf, where vehicles will have to cope with temperatures of more than 400C.
Some of the replacement orders are likely to come from parts of the
former Soviet Union where tracks are in poor condition and temperatures can fall as low as minus 400C.
However, there remains considerable scope to standardise at lease some
parts of light rail systems.
“There are some opportunities for further standardisation,” Mr von
Wullerstorff says. “But it cannot be forced.”
White House Comes Out For Streetcars
Jeff McMahon writes on the Forbes Blog – April 12th
http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/12/white-house-comes-out-for-streetcars/
President Obama’s clean-energy campaign hopped onto streetcars this morning with a government-made infomercial and testimonial for United Streetcars, a Portland company, published on the White House and Transportation Department blogs.
The testimonial promises streetcars will help America “win the future.” It was penned by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who might have a second career writing ad copy should the country take a turn toward the right in 2012:
[It's] good news for commuters and their families. It’s also good news for American workers because, at United Streetcar, they’re manufacturing the first American streetcars in more than 50 years.
And we mean “American.” The cars rolling out of United Streetcar are entirely Buy America compliant. That means United Streetcar’s innovation is creating an economic ripple effect, providing business for an all-American supply chain of more than 200 different vendors in 20-plus states across the U.S.
United Streetcars, a division of Oregon Ironworks, manufactures streetcars for its home city, for Tucson, and is competing for bids, mostly against European companies, in Washington DC, Cincinatti, and Seattle.
Up to 60 American cities have expressed interest in reviving the mode of transportation that thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Portland has clearly taken the lead. LaHood visited United Streetcar on March 21.
The infomercial, produced by DOT, features a jingle the likes of which will not be unfamiliar to any trade show visitor. It includes carefully worded praise for DOT from United Streetcar President Chandra Brown:
The Department of Transportation has been a true partner as the streetcar industry has developed. Without their assistance, we could not have made the private investment to make this new industry successful.”
And like Barack Obama, the video puts a big emphasis on job creation, connecting Obama’s new-energy economy to green technology.
“We’re talking about 60 cities almost interested in buying these,” says Steve Goodman, a welder fabricator. “That’ll put a lot of people to work. In fact we’ve already started putting people to work. I’m gonna need help.”
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