TramTrain – Regional Railways – Why Not Here?
As all levels of government pretend they are fighting Global Warming and Climate change, via the much hated Carbon Tax, real solutions such as TramTrain and regional railways are ignored.
Germany has been a forefront in the fight against Global Warming and Climate change and part of that fight is reopening abandoned rail routes and improving their public transit infrastructure to be extremely user friendly.
In Canada we have the Carbon Tax that goes into general revenue and funds mostly new highway and bridge construction, which politicians believe will win their reelection. This is classic Canadian blacktop politics in action.
The Carbon Tax has become a placebo for politcal inaction with government pretending it is doing something to fight Global Warming, but in reality they are not!
The following is what Germany is currently doing to improve regional transportation by installing user-friendly transit. The TramTrain, which has been in operation since 1992 has revolutionized public transit, by providing literally one stop (no-transfer) service to destinations over 120 km away!
TramTrain
The following are just three of the twelve TramTrain Statbahn routes offered by the transit authority, the Karlsruhe Stadtbahn is operated in co-operation by Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (Alb valley transport corporation, AVG), Verkehrsbetriebe Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe transport authority, VBK) and Deutsche Bahn (DB).
Not bad for a city with a population of just over 300,000!
https://youtu.be/bTYbgdNF2w8?si=k9qrQGvjuPY3BlUz
Comparison of ridership before and after the first TramTrain line in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Regional Railways
Lint DMU’s
The following links are for the Siegen to Bad Berleburg regional railway in Germany. The local line was built to accommodate small 6-axel tank locomotives hauling 4-axel passenger and freight cars and 4-axel rail;buses. Lots of flange squeal from the non articulated Lint DMU’s on the tight curvatures.
https://youtu.be/_Q1ZEODWhtQ?si=ofnHDkhQLNHEtpCh
https://youtu.be/jFxCwwmGvs8?si=jIrUKl-RKdOgLbeO
Cost of operations is not sustainable to the BC transit or translink of Operate the rail for the valley. There’s too much focus on keeping costs down to build. not to keep operation costs low or sustainable. BC transit and province Went with the bus option because it was economically viable operating and something the Municipality willing to subsidize operation for a new service.
Zwei replies: Again, you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. The operational costs for a regional railway is much less than SkyTrain and over a 25 year operation, probably would be cheaper than bus operation. The province will noit build with light rail, simply it will show 44 years of deliberate misinformation, politcal deceit, bureaucratic & professional misconduct.
Legoman if these super cheap regional railway operations are not financially sustainable then the Skytrain is absolutely, massively, unaffordable. That’s why Ottawa has been using them since 2001 for or Trillium Line. Unlike Skytrain its actually scalable in its operations.
Original Bayview Station from 2001-2015 and 4th improvement of Bayview now.
https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?p=10045393