Tram on Tires – Guided Light Transit (GLT), the ultimate BRT

Guided Light Transit or GLT is a hybrid bus/tram system, where rubber tired vehicles are guided by a single rail and the TransLohr GLT falls into this category. It has been long realized that for a bus to obtain higher performances to compete against LRT, it must be guided. The Achilles heel of BRT in busways is that the kinetic envelope needed for BRT operation is much greater than LRT, thus the land take for a busway was much more expensive than for light rail. The Ottawa busway cost more to build than for originally planned for LRT! To reduce the kinetic envelope for buses, they must be guided and the German O-Bahn addresses this problem by side wheels running on a cement guide-way. Visually ugly, the guide-ways have not proven popular and are almost impossible to locate in city centres, which means the O-Bahn operates just as a bus in the city. In Germany, this problem has been some what overcome by O-Bahn track-sharing with LRT on reserved rights-of-ways and in tunnel; though problems still persist.

By guiding a bus by a single rail (monorail?), flush with the street (like a tram), enables the GLT to safely operate in city centres, within its kinetic envelope thus providing the bus with most of the benefits associated with light rail- but at a cost as GLT became only a little cheaper than LRT, but with a much more limited capacity than light-rail and limited productivity as GLT buses can’t operate in multiple unit. In Paris, GLT is more expensive to build than tram!

The new ParisAi??Ai??tram-on-tire or GLT line Saint Denis-Sarcelles (6.6 km) will serve some popularAi??Ai??destinations, as wellAi??Ai??trying to revitalize strategical urban areas. Many modal interchange points will be located along the route: Marche de Saint-Denis (T1 tramway line), Saint-Denis Basilique (metro Line 13), Garges-Sarcelles (RER local railways Line D), besides many other bus interchange stops.

A further standard tram line (steel wheels) will also serve Seine-Saint-Denis department, connecting Saint-Denis, Epinay-sur-Seine, Villetaneuse and serving UniversitA?A? de Paris XIII-Villetaneuse. It will interchange with metro L13 (Saint-Denis Porte de Paris stop) and tram T1 (Gare de Saint-Denis stop), but not directly with Saint Denis-Sarcelles line.
RATP (official site)

What is interesting to see is the cost ofAi??Ai?? Paris’s new GLT, CAD $52.7 million/km is much higher than Le Man’s new LRT line costing $31.2 million/km. or Paris’s tramway T-3 cost of $42.5 million/km! It seems the TransLohr GLT or tram on tires is very expensive for what it does and like SkyTrain,Ai??Ai??be built in very numbers.

It is important to note, when provincial politicians espouse the notion of Bus Rapid Transit as an alternative to LRT, Rail for the Valley must expose this nonsense asAi??Ai??both BRT and GLTAi??Ai??could beAi??Ai??more expensive to installAi??Ai??than light rail and certainly GLT/BRT will cost more to operate than LRT.