It doesn't, does it? ~85% availability is pretty standard, and assuming initial operations are with 3-car trains, that gives 8 consists at peak. It could be as few as 2 car trains in operation at first, which would give 12 consists. Of course, these could be "married pairs" where each unit is much longer than our current units.
It may be that this vehicle purchase assumes the downtown tunnel won't be operational at first, and an option for more will be executed once that is confirmed.
I don't know for sure, just some possible reasons that come to mind.
It is somewhat disappointing to see that Bombardier won't be providing the vehicles. I understand that Bombardier has had some issues delivering products to other cities but with the growing sentiment of nationalism and "buying local" it would be nice to see that money invested within Canada instead.
Edit: my comment is pretty irrelevant when it comes to nationalism as Bombardier rail stuff was sold off in January 2021 and is now under French ownership.
Last edited by calgarygeologist; 11-17-2021 at 11:13 AM.
Yeah, looking at the technical data for the Urbos 100 model, they are 43m in length, so I bet they will operate in pairs on Green Line, which would be longer than 3 Siemens cars (~25m each). So, 12 consists at peak for the first phase of Green Line should work.
I would guess platforms will be able to accommodate 3 car trains, which would be about the same as 5 car Siemens trains on the rest of the system.
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Probably not surprising as ridership estimates decline plus the impact of COVID. The optimistic estimate back in 2015 was ninety 40m class LRVs for the full line, fifty three for a 25km long first stage.
Opening day service will be two-car trains (each car is about 40m long - so about the equivalent of a current three-car train). Trains will be running every 8 minutes.
There's options for adding more cars to the order, so hopefully ridership goes up, or they build more track, so they can order more trains.
The DT geology made the TBM option too risky and they had to change course back in the summer of 2019. It also made going underneath the Bow impossible.
The DT geology made the TBM option too risky and they had to change course back in the summer of 2019. It also made going underneath the Bow impossible.
My office is along 9 Ave, I suspect the traffic snarls are going to get nasty with the lack of capacity on 2 St.
Ehhhh, in the grand scheme of things 2nd St SW is one of the least painful routes they could take. It doesn't have any bus routes on it, doesn't connect between downtown and the beltline, and north of 4th Ave in particular is super-quiet at all hours (although that's true for most streets downtown). The avenue crossings will be painful, but it'll be nasty no matter which street they chose to run under.
2nd St has the benefit of being pretty much right up the gut of the densest part of downtown so it should be far more convenient for transit users than, say, running it through the East Village (I can't remember which bozo councillor's idea that was), while also being a far less busy street than all the other ones around it. From 5th St SW to Macleod Trail/2nd St SE it's easily the quietest street we have, other than 3rd (which I don't think is wide enough anyway). Sleepy streets like 6th or 7th are so far west it would be a bigger pain in the ass getting it that far over from Inglewood/Ramsay and Centre Street, and the stations would be blocks further from the busy parts of the commercial core.
Ridership predictions are junk anyways, unless of course a bunch of industrial staff want to walk/find a transit connection to cover the 4+km and cross the canal to avoid the $0 parking costs at their workplaces.
Ridership predictions are junk anyways, unless of course a bunch of industrial staff want to walk/find a transit connection to cover the 4+km and cross the canal to avoid the $0 parking costs at their workplaces.
Are there relevant examples of projections overestimating ridership? In Vancouver, critics of the Canada line expressed skepticism towards the ridership projections, and it exceeded them to the point that it is now considered underbuilt. REM in Montreal looks like it's headed down the same path.
