T4NSW has advised that S-E light rail will have shallow tunnel in Moore Park and under Anzac Pde and possible grade separation at Lang Road.
I'm curious to see what they do at crossing of South Dowling Street, Anzac Parade intersection south of Lang Road (where the light rail will somehow cross from the current right-of way to the middle of Anzac Parade) and the Kingsford roundabout.
Buses are made to kneel simply by venting the air springs, a feature of a suspension type that, I gather, was already in use on high floor buses. Also, even if trams could kneel, they would still require accessible infrastructure, the only difference is that the platforms could be a tad lower.I don't see the connection between wheel chair accessible buses and the physical infrastructure to allow level boarding for trams. Buses can "kneel" down to meet the footpath level, most of our buses do that to (Metlink claims that 70% of bus services are wheelchair accessible), but a tram cannot (ok, one exception, the Austrian ULF), you need both low floor trams and ~300mm platforms to allow for wheelchair accessibility.
On the flipside; If a platform had been installed every 8 days since 1994, do you think that Melbourne's trams would be as accessible as buses are now?All trams ordered/borrowed since the last B2 are accessible. If you required modified footpaths as well as low floor buses do you think Sydney's buses would be as accessible as they are? The infrastructure changes are expensive and take time. Yarra Trams claims to have installed a new platform stop every 8 days, since 2004, and they don't really seem to be slowing down (contrary to the other thread asking if the program has stalled).
On the flipside; If a platform had been installed every 8 days since 1994, do you think that Melbourne's trams would be as accessible as buses are now?No, basic mathematics should prove that to you. If one stop was build every eight days for the last twenty years, we would have 913 accessible stops, out of a network of ~1700 stops that is about half, which is less than 70%-80%. And we would still only have about 30% of the fleet low floor.
Okay let's say we built on average one platform stop every eight days since the light rail conversion, how many platforms stops would we have? What, in detail is the mathematics that prove this?Ok, the lightrail was done in '88, that's 25 years. At one stop every eight days that would be ~45.5 per year, so ~1137 stops in 25 years. Out of ~1700 stops that is still only ~67%, which is less than the 100% of stops on the bus network that are accessible, and we would still only have about 20% of the fleet accessible, which - yet again - is less than the bus network, which now has about 80% of peak services utilising low floor accessible buses.
I saw the story and she doesn't look to bad and the colour scheme even matched the truck! Typical piss poor report though the reporter had to sneer down their nose at people who had turned out to see the new tram. Hope they paint up one of the new trams in green and cream with a black stripe along with red on the bottom as a nod to the old system.I hope so too!
Could you post a link of the report?
You are right. SMH does not seem to allow you to create such a link to SMH of 7 Sep 2013, p7.All I got from that link was an invitation to subscribe to the Herald !
Several overseas cities use ground power systems for their trams mostly in areas where overhead wires are perceived to be an ugly intrusion. Bordeaux in France is a prime example with their APS system.One of the early media reports stated that the trams would be battery powered, recharging at stops. Later reports described something more like the APS system, which seems more credible.
Battery charged trams???Evidently they exist. See:
Never going to happen in my opinion!
We've disabled Quick Reply for this thread as it was last updated more than six months ago.