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| Re: American Railcar gone (1005536) | |||
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Re: American Railcar gone |
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Posted by Jersey Mike on Sun Nov 21 11:51:28 2010, in response to Re: American Railcar gone, posted by WillD on Sun Nov 21 02:46:10 2010. You are forgetting one major problem with the lack of passthrough. EVERY station has to have platforms as long as the longest train. Instead of having a short SEPTA style platform and letting passengers walk back you have to have one 2 or 3 MU's long. Not only does this raise construction costs and hinder demand based expansion, it completely eliminate the ability for surge capacity for special events. It also reduces regular capacity because a higher % of the coupler to coupler length is overhead space instead of revenue space.Take the Baltimore Light Rail. When there's a sporting event at the stadium complex the MdMTA can run 3 car trains and they can fit in a few extra trainsets, but they simply lack the capacity to run enough trains to meet demand and the result is that the system frequently bogs down with long lines. Now if they use proper railcars they could simply hook up 5 or 6 together and only open the doors for the center three with the same number of operating employees. Or consider Pittsburgh, where only some stations can support a second car, there's a ton of procedures involving getting into the second car of an LRV train because at most stations the doors won't open. I guess one could spend hundreds of millions to add surge capacity that is only used a few times a year, but I prefer buying a vehicle design that is flexible and adaptable. Also re safety I don't want my rail vehicle to crush at all. I want my rail vehicle to crush what it hits. In the unlikely that two crush resistant vehicles hit any resulting injury would be compensated by the reduced cost and increased efficiency of the vehicle. |
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