01-05-2020, 09:15 PM
(01-05-2020, 08:49 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: The discussion was in the context of rising ridership, justifying more vehicles. So the question is whether to run 2-car consists every 10 minutes or single cars every 5; and the only significant difference in system operating cost there is in the drivers; there is no capital cost difference.
Given the number of people that would be carried by such a service, I think one brief interruption every 2.5 minutes on average is easily justifiable. Remember, it’s perfectly routine for a typical major road to have its traffic flow interrupted every couple of minutes: it’s called a traffic light. A certain amount of fine-tuning of crossings would be needed to minimize the time during which road traffic would need to stop but ultimately it wouldn’t really be that different from having a cross street with a traffic light at the location of the crossing.
You're absolutely right about the motor traffic delays- they would be trivial in the face of the kind of ridership that would prompt a conversation about five-minute frequency. But I don't really see the need for five minutes- if the question is between ten minute and five minute frequency, yes, that's significant. But we should be at eight-minute headways now, and I can't really see the benefit of moving from seven or eight minutes to five, presuming zero capacity issues with the multiple car trains.
At seven minutes, a rider doesn't really have to check a schedule. Most of the benefits of increased frequency have been realized by that point.