(01-09-2016, 10:04 PM)tomh009 Wrote: They can still design for three-car trains, even if they only build for two-car trains. Ensure that all platforms etc can be extended to handle a third car, when the time comes to extend them.
Oh, I know all about planing for future capacity - I'm a designer My point is, all this 3-LRV's coupled together thing is coming from is one picture from the UoW bridge where you can see there's a gap that looks about as long as one train between the end of the current platform and the next pedestrian road crossing. It's a bit of a wild jump in my mind that this automatically means the Region is planing for it. You could just as easily say "Oh, they're planing on making 401 20 lanes wide through Cambridge" because the nearest house just happens to be set way back or whatever. Can Conestoga's Terminal accommodate 3 LRV's coupled together? Is there enough space between the buffer stops at the tail tracks and the crossover at the other end of the platform?
Quote:But hopefully they will increase frequency before they start even thinking about adding a third car to the trains.
Correct - the 30-year operations plan in the Project Agreement has a very detailed roll-out plan for coupling 2 LRV's together, and also on how they will increase service frequency. At the end of the 30 year projection, each train is two LRV's coupled together, 14 in total, exercising the future additional 14 LRV purchase option from Bombardier, running at 7.5 minute headways. Schedule 15-3 Appendix D Baseline Service Plans 2017 to 2047
I really really really hope that any consideration to increase capacity beyond that would involve running trains closer together, rather than longer - 7.5 minutes is still too long in my mind.
While we're talking about long trains - Chongqing built their entire Monorail system (both lines) to handle 8-car trains. When the system opened ~10 years ago, they were running 4 car trains. They've just started rolling out 8 car trains due to the wild success of the system.