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ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit


A bit concerning, for several reasons;

-The geometry of the trains used on G:link are the same as ours (except theirs are 7-section trains, not 5). To be clearer: our trains have wheels which are fixed rigidly to the frames of the odd-numbered modules, not on bogies which swivel like Toronto's CLRV and ALRV's. The fixed wheel arrangement makes it possible to have 100% low floor, and results in a lighter vehicle with a lower cost, but the disadvantage is that the entire mass of the module sitting on those wheels has to be steered by the flanges. I'm worried about the number of sharp turns our system has. Ottawa chose Alstom CITADIS trains which have articulated bogies.

-G:link was built by many of the same players as our system.

-A resolution was found by using special lubricants to mitigate some of the squeal in some sections. I hope this information is passed along to us.

I'm just going to put it out there one last time and bookmark this post to bring it up in 2-3 years Smile that Monorail or other rubber-tyred systems (VAL/CityVal, Kobelco AGT, INNOVIA APM, Crystal Mover, or heck - even TransLohr etc...) would have none of these problems. Their own other issues, sure, like the resistance to overhead guideway, but if you really wanted LRT over any of the other possibilities of newer transit technologies, this is the price.

I really don't want this to sound like doom and gloom, but just that I hope proper plans are in place to work the noise problem when it comes up.

(I'm happy to further the discussion about articulation/bogies/chassis design, if there's interest - I've actually been meaning to put together an animation about this for a while)
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RE: ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit - by Canard - 04-12-2015, 09:35 AM
[No subject] - by Spokes - 08-28-2014, 04:16 PM

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