[HN Gopher] Coventry Very Light Rail
___________________________________________________________________
Coventry Very Light Rail
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 179 points
Date : 2025-06-07 21:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.coventry.gov.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.coventry.gov.uk)
| xnx wrote:
| I wouldn't be planning any fixes infrastructure transit programs
| that didn't have an ROI in the next 7 years. It will be hard for
| anything to compete with the efficiency of Waymo.
| digitalPhonix wrote:
| Each Waymo vehicle is probably close to half a million USD in
| just hardware cost.
|
| I don't think fixed route transport infrastructure is going to
| have trouble competing on efficiency.
| cyberax wrote:
| The hardware costs for Waymo are estimated at $30k.
| digitalPhonix wrote:
| Source?
|
| They were targeting $7.5k for their in house honeycomb
| lidars and they have 12 of them - that's 90k already.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/27/22644370/waymo-lidar-
| stop...
|
| They also aren't close to the $7.5k target (there isn't any
| public source for that so you'll have to take my word for
| it).
|
| Also $30k wouldn't even cover the base vehicle.
| cyberax wrote:
| This is an estimation for the self-driving hardware cost
| (computers, LIDAR, sensors). It does not include the base
| car price, as it can be easily optimized down to almost
| nothing (sub $10k).
|
| The price is somewhat of a guess, several years ago, the
| hardware in Waymo was priced at $130k by
| Munro&Associates. But since then the cost of the LIDAR
| sensors fell by 90% or so, reducing the main expense.
|
| And Baidu has cars on the road that cost $30k for the
| _entire_ car. So presumably, so even a couple of pricier
| sensors won't affect the estimate too much.
| rafram wrote:
| > include the base car price, as it can be easily
| optimized down to almost nothing (sub $10k).
|
| Waymo uses brand-new electric Jaguars.
| cyberax wrote:
| Sure. Because why not? The cars are in the experimental
| stage, so they might as well use nice ones.
|
| But there is no _reason_ to use Jaguars and not
| specially-built smaller and less powerful cars, when
| Waymo finally starts a real rollout.
| digitalPhonix wrote:
| Source? None of those numbers make sense.
|
| > The price is somewhat of a guess, several years ago,
| the hardware in Waymo was priced at $130k by
| Munro&Associates
|
| 10 years ago they had even more sensors dotting the car,
| instead of one honeycomb on each corner they had 2, so I
| find $130k hard to believe given what we know about the
| sensor kit today.
|
| > But since then the cost of the LIDAR sensors fell by
| 90% or so, reducing the main expense.
|
| I do not know of any lidar that has done that, and Waymo
| makes their own and we know their price(-ish) (and
| quantity). I think they've actually gone up in price (but
| also capability - honeycomb 1 vs gen 2).
| cycomanic wrote:
| Are you talking about raw material costs? Or is that one of
| these extrapolations of if we scale everything to millions
| of cars and realise no inefficiencies and nobody making any
| money in the supply chain?
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm talking about the current cost of the self-driving
| system, that is already produced by companies that charge
| a significant markup. With volume, it will go down more.
|
| I'm not including the base vehicle in the cost. It's
| highly variable, and can be as low as $10k for small
| personal intra-city taxis.
|
| China has already launched a $30k taxi: https://www.forbe
| s.com/sites/bradtempleton/2024/05/14/baidu-...
|
| This _completely_ blows any transit out of the
| competition. Literally nothing can come even close in the
| end-to-end efficiency.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Why does it blow away any other public transit? That
| can't be true because if you put the same self driving
| tech into a bus, you already am an order of magnitude
| cheaper per passenger (likely more). Moreover let's
| assume robotaxis are cornering the market and make all
| other forms of transport non viable. Why would the public
| then maintain the roads? So at that point at least costs
| are suddenly going to explode.
| cyberax wrote:
| Sigh. People are WAAAY too accepting of urbanist
| propaganda.
|
| Buses are _barely_ more effective than cars. A regular
| passenger car with 4 people is more efficient than a city
| bus. An EV needs 2.5 people (these numbers are for the
| US).
|
| The explanation is simple:
|
| 1. Buses have to drive _all_ _the_ _time_, even when
| there are few passengers. As a result, the average bus
| load tends to be around 10-20 people. And you can not
| increase the bus interval to compensate for it because it
| makes off-rush-hour bus commutes impractical.
|
| 2. Buses have INCREDIBLY polluting components: 2-3
| drivers for each bus needed to provide the service. They
| are by far the dirtiest part of the bus. This part can be
| removed with the self-driving hardware, but...
|
| A full self-driving bus also makes no sense. It defeats
| the main advantage of self-driving: door-to-door
| transportation.
|
| That being said, self-driving mini-buses seating 6-10
| people are a good idea for rush hour transit.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > Sigh. People are WAAAY too accepting of urbanist
| propaganda. >
|
| Sigh people just like to make statements without evidence
| to back them up.
|
| > Buses are _barely_ more effective than cars. A regular
| passenger car with 4 people is more efficient than a city
| bus. An EV needs 2.5 people (these numbers are for the
| US). >
|
| Evidence? Moreover you know that average occupancy rates
| of cars are around 1.5 [1], for short trips like
| commuting it's more like 1.1 [1] so that's a factor 2 off
| from your 2.5. So even if we believe your numbers you
| have to explain how you're going to increase occupancy
| rate by a factor of 1.5 to 2 before they become just
| better (not even blowing out of the water). [1] https://w
| ww.eea.europa.eu/publications/ENVISSUENo12/page029....
|
| Note I could not find numbers on buses, but trains in the
| above source have occupancy rates of 50%.
|
| > The explanation is simple: > > 1. Buses have to drive
| _all_ _the_ _time_, even when there are few passengers.
| As a result, the average bus load tends to be around
| 10-20 people. And you can not increase the bus interval
| to compensate for it because it makes off-rush-hour bus
| commutes impractical. >
|
| And robotaxis have to drive empty to and from the person
| they are picking up.
|
| > 2. Buses have INCREDIBLY polluting components: 2-3
| drivers for each bus needed to provide the service. They
| are by far the dirtiest part of the bus. This part can be
| removed with the self-driving hardware, but... >
|
| Not sure how we should account for bus drivers,
| considering that even if they are not working as bus
| driver the person is still around (also should we include
| the emissions from all the engineers working on self
| driving tech at the moment then) . However your statement
| is also false in most western countries, at least green
| house gas emissions of private households are dominated
| by transport (i.e. Cars).
|
| > A full self-driving bus also makes no sense. It defeats
| the main advantage of self-driving: door-to-door
| transportation. >
|
| You're contradicting yourself. If the bus driver is the
| most polluting part of the bus (according to your
| statement above), then it would definitely make sense to
| get rid of them.
|
| It would be great if your statement was true and
| robotaxis are the most efficient thing ever. I'd love to
| see well laid out evidence for this, but from what I just
| found your statement is not supported by reality.
| pja wrote:
| > Sigh. People are WAAAY too accepting of urbanist
| propaganda. > > Buses are _barely_ more effective than
| cars. A regular passenger car with 4 people is more
| efficient than a city bus. An EV needs 2.5 people (these
| numbers are for the US). > > The explanation is simple: >
| > 1. Buses have to drive _all_ _the_ _time_, even when
| there are few passengers. As a result, the average bus
| load tends to be around 10-20 people. And you can not
| increase the bus interval to compensate for it because it
| makes off-rush-hour bus commutes impractical. > > 2.
| Buses have INCREDIBLY polluting components: 2-3 drivers
| for each bus needed to provide the service. They are by
| far the dirtiest part of the bus. This part can be
| removed with the self-driving hardware, but... > > A full
| self-driving bus also makes no sense. It defeats the main
| advantage of self-driving: door-to-door transportation.
|
| Even if you focus only on emissions this completely
| ignores the cost of congestion, which is huge.
|
| Your complaint about self driving buses makes no sense
| either. If the most polluting part of the bus is the
| driver then removing the driver makes the bus far, far
| less polluting.
|
| When your arguments don't even make sense on their own
| terms it suggests that you're making them from an
| emotional position instead of a rational one. That's ok:
| if you don't like buses just say so, but be honest about
| it instead of making spurious arguments.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Even if you focus only on emissions this completely
| ignores the cost of congestion, which is huge.
|
| Congestion should be fixed by removing buses, de-
| densifying city cores, and forcing companies to build
| offices in a distributed fashion.
|
| Meanwhile, replacing buses with shared taxi-style
| vehicles will do most of the job, while _reducing_
| congestion. It's a bit complicated, but it's entirely
| possible.
|
| The reason is simple, there is an unavoidable tension
| between the density of bus stops and the average speed.
| As a result of frequent stops, in most cities buses move
| at an average speed of less than 20 km/h.
|
| For example, in Seattle it's 15 km/h. This is just 3
| times faster than a rapid walk!
|
| If we reduce the number of cars by 2x by adding mild car-
| pooling during the rush hour, then we'll have more than
| enough throughput to eliminate congestion _and_ buses in
| Seattle. This does not generalize to all cities in the US
| (e.g. Manhattan needs a serious demolishing to become
| sane) but usually, it's in the same ballpark.
|
| > Your complaint about self driving buses makes no sense
| either. If the most polluting part of the bus is the
| driver then removing the driver makes the bus far, far
| less polluting.
|
| Sure. But why stop there? Buses have an INCREDIBLE impact
| in the number of lifetimes wasted during commutes.
|
| > When your arguments don't even make sense on their own
| terms it suggests that you're making them from an
| emotional position instead of a rational one. That's ok:
| if you don't like buses just say so, but be honest about
| it instead of making spurious arguments.
|
| Nope. There are no rational arguments _for_ urbanism.
| It's a failed obsolete ideology, and it's leading to the
| downfall of democracty and the rise of populism.
| pja wrote:
| Bus stops are often set too close by municipalities, but
| that's driven by the lack of density in US housing.
| Density drives efficiency.
|
| > Manhattan needs a serious demolishing to become sane
|
| Ah yes, lets demolish one of the most economically
| productive regions of the USA, both in GDP / capita and
| GDP / km^2 in order to make it easier for people to drive
| through it.
|
| Listen to yourself, this is deranged.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Bus stops are often set too close by municipalities,
| but that's driven by the lack of density in US housing.
| Density drives efficiency.
|
| Doesn't matter, dense cities start having their own
| issues. Instead of taking "the bus", you'll need to wait
| for the correct bus to arrive. Also, density drives up
| misery and nothing else. Proven by the birth rate.
|
| > Ah yes, lets demolish one of the most economically
| productive regions of the USA, both in GDP / capita and
| GDP / km^2 in order to make it easier for people to drive
| through it.
|
| Yup, exactly. There's no freaking reason so much GDP has
| to be crammed into several square miles of space, sucking
| the life from everywhere else.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| > A regular passenger car with 4 people
|
| How common are those? I always see them with just one
| person on board.
| vidarh wrote:
| Others have largely dealt with your arguments, but to
| this:
|
| > > And you can not increase the bus interval to
| compensate for it because it makes off-rush-hour bus
| commutes impractical.
|
| Most transit systems _DO_ operate different intervals
| during rush hour. Most places I 've lived there's been
| anywhere from 3-5 different intervals at different times
| of day: At a minimum a night schedule which might be once
| an hour or not at all, a rush hour schedule, and 1+ day-
| time non rush-hour schedule.
|
| I do agree that mini-buses would be an advantage though,
| once you don't need drivers, and that'd further reduce
| the advantage of small self-driving cars by allowing for
| far more routes.
| johnea wrote:
| It is really efficient, at sitting in traffic with all the
| other cars 8-/
| cyberax wrote:
| And yet, still faster. That's the paradox of cars.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Cars are very much not faster than trams in high traffic
| conditions. Nevermind heavy rail.
| cyberax wrote:
| Yes, they are. Do an experiment, drop ten points randomly
| on a city map. Then plot routes between them, using
| Google for transit and cars.
|
| For most cities, cars will be about 2-3x faster. For
| three simple reasons: no walking, no waiting, no
| stopping.
|
| And that's the paradox. Cars are better than transit, yet
| modern cities are hell-bent on destroying the car
| infrastructure.
|
| You can also check this site with isochrones for
| different transport modes:
| https://www.geoapify.com/isoline-api/
| xnx wrote:
| > Cars are better than transit
|
| And are even better when parking isn't a concern (e.g.
| taxi service)
| rafram wrote:
| Public transit isn't supposed to have a financial "ROI." Are
| highways expected to turn a profit from tolls?
| bluGill wrote:
| The libertarian answer is yes highways should. Most self
| proclaimed libertarians refuse to go that far - if you allow
| for highways to not make money then transit shouldn't be held
| to the higher bar.
| xnx wrote:
| Fair, but how unprofitable should they be? -$5/passenger-
| mike? -$12/passenger-mile? I think we can do a lot better
| than the current US mass transit status quo.
| rafram wrote:
| In 2022, the NYC Subway budgeted about $0.75 per passenger-
| mile (and that was during Covid, when ridership was very
| low) [1]. You're really overestimating how much public
| transit costs to run. Private vehicles are an extremely
| inefficient way to move people around, hence the cost of
| Uber/Lyft/taxis.
|
| [1]: https://data.transportation.gov/Public-
| Transit/2022-2023-NTD...
| xnx wrote:
| NYC is special in that it's on of the few places that
| subways make sense in America. That said, operating costs
| are common but extremely misleading way to measure
| transit costs when new tunnel costs $2.2B/mile.
| xnx wrote:
| That's a useful data set. Thanks for sharing.
|
| NYC is special in that it's one of the few places that
| subways make sense in America. That said, operating costs
| are common but extremely misleading way to measure
| transit costs when new tunnel costs $2.2B/mile.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The proper way to recoup the capital cost is through the
| increase to land values that arise from building the
| railway. You buy land around the future stations and put
| a shopping mall or business center on top.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That and/or land value tax, yes.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| > NYC is special in that it's one of the few places that
| subways make sense in America.
|
| The built environment is not fixed or exogenous. NYC is
| great for the subway because it was built around the
| Subway. If America followed international best practices,
| it could go a long ways towards steering other places'
| built environments too.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Single passenger cars still have a problem with density even if
| there's no need for a driver. Combining multiple people into
| one trip can help, but also lessons the utility of Waymo if
| riders have to go out of their way to pick up additional
| passengers.
|
| Getting 1000 people downtown could be up to 2,000 Waymo trips
| (one trip to drop off the worker, another trip for the car to
| go back out to pick up another passenger). While one of these
| 56 passenger very light rail cars can do it in 18 trips. A
| light rail vehicle like the Siemens trains used in San
| Francisco can carry up to 200 people at crush loads, so that's
| 5 trips.
| mmooss wrote:
| Yes, I always say: Next time you see mass transit pass,
| imagine all those people in their own private cars on the
| road.
| cycomanic wrote:
| You mean it's very difficult to compete with a company that is
| massively subsidised by public infrastructure? That's what
| really killed freight rail in most of Europe, make the train
| companies pay for track maintance (often the rail companies
| even want this because it keeps competition out as well), while
| trucks atpapy very little of the cost they impose on the public
| (i.e. much higher road usage, causing most of the traffic
| issues).
| jcranmer wrote:
| If this were true, cities would have abandoned mass transit for
| taxi system decades ago. The requirement for there to be a warm
| body driving a taxi isn't among the prime causes of its
| inefficiency.
| yyyk wrote:
| The big AV transit efficiency gains* can only happen when
| nearly all human drivers are removed from the road. Alas,
| that's at least 20 years ahead of now**, or more (e.g. if tech
| stalls for some reason, though I consider it unlikely).
| Otherwise they'd be limited by having to account for human
| drivers and that limits speed and throughput enough so other
| solutions are a must.
|
| * Think having much higher speed limits (as far as humans are
| concerned, nonexistent), or mass coordinating movement over the
| entire traffic.
|
| ** We can reasonably estimate the minimum without bothering to
| ask how fast the tech will improve: Even if the tech were
| available now, think about fleet replacement costs which no one
| group would be too eager to pay. Best case, it's the typical
| 'make a concentrated pressure group lose for societal benefit'
| and we know how that politics goes. It will happen, but slowly.
|
| *** Another thing to account for is that there's no good reason
| to design an AV car like a normal car, and there'll be some
| iteration time over that too.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Higher speeds increases noise and stopping distance, even for
| autonomous vehicles.
| yyyk wrote:
| True, but this can be compensated for. Current vehicle
| design is based on human-operated gas vehicles - so it
| better be aerodynamic (to save gas), and a human needs to
| be in the front (to see) with only a glass to separate, and
| it needs a particular stopping action (again a consequence
| of carrying humans without enough separation). This has
| unfortunate implications for noise and stopping distance.
| Electric-powered AV can have creative designs to enable
| much quicker (yet safe) stopping action, an action which AV
| would also make rarer.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Autonomous vehicles can have faster reaction time, but
| once they hit the brakes, stopping distance will still
| increase with speed because it's limited by the friction
| between tires and pavement. Unless you put parachutes or
| rockets on these vehicles, or thrust spikes into the
| pavement...
| yyyk wrote:
| There's no reason a car should have only 4 wheels, we can
| even have special wheels deployed only when the breaks
| are hit at high speed. The AI will be disciplined enough
| to always use them when necessary (or maybe use an
| automatic system based on speed alone?).
|
| Or you can have a different wheel count and arrangement
| normally, as the AI can be trained for this. We don't
| have to standardize AV cars as much as we have to
| standardize cars for humans.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Stopping distance is actually unaffected by the number of
| wheels a vehicle has.
| skybrian wrote:
| What advantages are there over bus service?
| johnea wrote:
| Trains have their own right of way, buses sit in traffic.
|
| Modern urban light rail is also typically electric, using
| overhead power. Although buses can also use this.
|
| This is one of the main reasons the super dense Japanese cities
| aren't as air poluted as other urban centers.
| qgin wrote:
| You can have a bus-only lane easier than a tram-only track.
| johnea wrote:
| A bus only lane is also a vehicle lane that is sitting
| empty a good part of the time.
|
| Not really that efficient...
|
| And, as has been rediscovered about 200 times in Southern
| California (by the drivers, not by the sstate government),
| you can add additional lanes almost indefinitely, and it
| doesn't really help congestion that much.
| askvictor wrote:
| > A bus only lane is also a vehicle lane that is sitting
| empty a good part of the time.
|
| You can make the same argument (in terms of space) about
| a train track. The real advantage of trains (light or
| heavy) is permanence. It's easy for the next government
| to remove the bus lanes because "OMG too much traffic,
| one more lane will fix it." It's much more difficult to
| rip out a rail line and convert it to a road.
| mmooss wrote:
| > A bus only lane is also a vehicle lane that is sitting
| empty a good part of the time.
|
| A rail track for the same route sits empty just as much.
|
| > you can add additional lanes almost indefinitely, and
| it doesn't really help congestion that much.
|
| I don't think adding bus-only lanes would have that
| effect. Adding lanes for private vehicles reduces
| congestion, which encourages people to move to places
| along the route until the congestion reaches the previous
| barely-tolerable level (as I understand it).
| Veedrac wrote:
| This is one of these sets of information that don't seem
| to make sense until you fit it all together.
|
| Busses aren't much more efficient when riding down a lane
| than lower occupancy vehicles, but streets aren't
| bottlenecked by their roads, they're bottlenecked by
| their intersections. The key advantage of a bus is at the
| intersection. A bus holds the intersection for far less
| time than the equivalent passenger capacity of cars.
|
| The problem bus lanes try to solve is dominantly that
| without them the traffic advantage of people riding
| busses mostly goes to people _not_ riding busses, and
| this makes for a pretty terrible incentive structure.
| Busses are intrinsically disadvantaged against cars
| (schedules, uncertainty, routes), so if you don 't help
| them, then people will prefer to drive. Bus lanes
| internalize the externality.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| > A bus only lane is also a vehicle lane that is sitting
| empty a good part of the time.
|
| While that bus lane may look empty most of the time it
| likely carries far more people per hour than the
| congested car lane next to it.
|
| > While the Lincoln Tunnel's car lane can only move 3,000
| people per hour in each car lane, its bus lane moves
| 30,000 people per hour.
|
| https://transalt.org/blog/bus-commutes-are-significantly-
| lon...
| xnx wrote:
| I think you've been lied to with that highly misleading
| statistic. The 3000 for cars is actual (though I'm
| skeptical of that now too), while the 30,000 for buses is
| theoretical. "While a typical traffic lane carries
| approximately 3,000 people in 2,000 cars each hour, the
| XBL lane _can carry_ over 30,000 people in 700 buses
| during that same time period. "
| http://fourthplan.org/action/highway-congestion
| laurencerowe wrote:
| That doesn't seem unreasonable for the Lincoln tunnel.
| Rush hour buses are pretty full, 50 on each seems pretty
| reasonable - everyone got a seat!
|
| > Now the XBL handles 1,850 buses that carry more than
| 70,000 passengers from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. each weekday,
| which comes to 600 buses an hour. The bus lane operates
| at its maximum capacity for 90 minutes of its four-hour
| operation.
|
| https://www.govtech.com/transportation/fed-funds-study-
| of-ai...
|
| Here in San Francisco along Mission St we have about 20
| articulated buses an hour in each direction. These have a
| planning capacity of 94, 85% load standard 80, 125% crush
| capacity 119 according to https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSF/
| comments/445xdg/what_is_the_m....
|
| While mostly a bus and taxi lane Mission St allows local
| traffic within each block so buses are still a minority
| of the vehicles in the lane.
|
| Meanwhile the main 2 lanes in each direction street
| nearby has 1020 vehicles an hour in the peak direction.
| At 1.6 people per vehicle that's only about 830 people
| per lane at rush hour. So even at 'standard capacity' the
| buses in a regular city street not completely dedicated
| bus lane carry double the number of people. (From
| experience I suspect it is somewhat more than that.)
| TylerE wrote:
| 700 busses per hour is a BIT unreasonable.
|
| That's a bus every 5.1 seconds. In a single lane. (and at
| 30mph it'll take 1.5 of that 5 seconds just for the bus
| itself to pass. That's very marginal braking distance).
|
| Also, 1850 / 4 is 453, not 600.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| > 700 busses per hour is a BIT unreasonable.
|
| The article I quoted to which you are replying suggests
| 600 busses an hour. I don't think that is unreasonable
| for a dedicated highway lane into a bus terminal. There's
| a nice picture of it here: https://abc7ny.com/port-
| authority-lincoln-tunnel-technology-...
|
| > Also, 1850 / 4 is 453, not 600.
|
| Quoted in the post you are replying to:
|
| > Now the XBL handles 1,850 buses that carry more than
| 70,000 passengers from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. each weekday,
| which comes to 600 buses an hour. The bus lane operates
| at its maximum capacity for 90 minutes of its four-hour
| operation.
|
| I read that as they reach the maximum capacity of 600
| buses an hour only for the 90 minutes of rush hour.
| Across the 4 hours it operates each bus averages 38
| passengers (70000/1850). It seems reasonable to assume
| that the rush hour buses are more packed given they are
| looking at ways to increase capacity and have you ever
| taken a rush hour bus in a big city?!
|
| From the picture linked above these seem to be 53 seat
| coaches for longer distance routes rather than city buses
| which would carry more passengers with some standing. 50
| * 600 = 30,000. It's in the ballpark!
| bluGill wrote:
| No less efficient than track sitting empty most the time.
|
| And your bus only lane has a lot more options. If there
| is a major disaster you can divert other traffic (not
| necessarily all traffic though that is an option) into it
| which might be a useful compromise at time. If you need
| to repair your bus only lane you just divert the bus to
| regular traffic. For that matter most places there isn't
| any traffic and so a bus in mixed traffic has no
| downsides thus not costing you that whole lane (or
| track), just build the bus-only lane where it is needed.
|
| Trains are a good thing when they do something a road
| cannot. However the common bus can be just as good for
| much less. If you have the money and want good service
| and ride quality the bus can do it too, and typically for
| much less cost than a train.
|
| Trains are good where they don't mix with traffic
| (meaning elevated or underground) because they can then
| be automated (and also faster). Alternatively a train can
| hold more people, so if you are in the rare situation
| where a 100 passenger bus every 5 minutes can't handle
| the passengers a train is good. Most of the time though
| you are not in either situation and so a bus can do
| everything a train can.
| testing22321 wrote:
| > _No less efficient than track sitting empty most the
| time_
|
| Unless the track is just in a regular lane that can be
| full of cars/busses/trucks whenever there isn't a light
| train. Like how trams work in most of the world
| rpep wrote:
| I live in a city with trams in the UK and that's not how
| it works. There are sections that run on dedicated train
| lines, and sections where it runs on the street. Where it
| runs on the streets, priority is given over cars by
| switching traffic lights to red. Once the tram has passed
| onto the road it switches back to green so you can end up
| following the tram in your car.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Don't measure vehicles per hour. Measure people per hour.
| Also letting the cars in means more people use cars means
| you soon need another lane.
|
| Other advantages: people who don't drive, which includes
| children can get about. Lots of public transport can
| compensate alot for un walkability of suburbia.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Physically easier. Often not politically easier. Voters are
| often more willing to pay for a metro than lose a lane from
| cars. We ran into this in Seattle over and over.
| bombcar wrote:
| Busses don't _have_ to sit in traffic, but they can (and
| trams can too, in some cases)
|
| Bus rapid transit, when done _right_ (basically, almost like
| a tram) can be quite successful:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh1IaVmu3Y8
| Schiendelman wrote:
| When you have a cost overrun on BRT, the easiest way to
| save money is to share ROW with cars.
|
| Since it's harder to make that choice when you're building
| rail, it's more likely to be done right.
| Centigonal wrote:
| no tire dust
| Johnny555 wrote:
| One advantage is that light rail encourages transit oriented
| development.
|
| The fact that buses are so flexible and easily (and cheaply)
| rerouted makes developers less likely to build developments
| that rely on access to transit, but once a community spends a
| hundreds of millions of dollars on a light rail line, they know
| it's there for the long term.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| That's sad but I can see that. Maybe more with train and
| metro stations though than light rail that often makes little
| difference to commute times vs a bus.
| bluGill wrote:
| I've seen that claim, but places that run good bus service
| for decades see plenty of transit oriented development. (most
| of those places also have subways though. The other options
| seems to bad bus service which won't get transit oriented
| development but bad service is enough to explain why)
| jltsiren wrote:
| As a city grows, it's common for the transit system to
| evolve from direct bus routes to trunk lines supported by
| local buses. Maybe there was a good bus service to the city
| center when you bought your home. But now the buses only go
| to the nearest transit hub, because there is no space for
| all the buses in the city center anymore. While the average
| quality of transit may have improved, your services are
| slower and less convenient than they used to be.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| You and I are well aligned on a lot of things - but in
| general, buses do not result in TOD. There are some
| exceptions, but they are very much exceptional. Trains
| generally _do_ result in TOD because the people pushing for
| TOD get to try over and over again.
| ripley12 wrote:
| That's sort of the popular wisdom, but rails don't guarantee
| it will be there for the long run. DC recently announced that
| they're replacing their light rail with buses:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-
| va/2025/05/27/steetcar-...
|
| Jarrett Walker has a good piece about it:
| https://humantransit.org/2025/05/what-was-wrong-with-the-
| was...
|
| I agree with him that in order to endure and justify a
| permanent operating subsidy a transit service needs to be
| _useful_ and used by many people. Most American light rail
| doesn 't meet that bar.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| Interesting piece, thanks. I also enjoyed his piece
| "Streetcars: An Inconvenient Truth." His argument is based
| on length, speed and cost; the main point is that a
| technically equivalent bus would often be cheaper and thus
| could be run on a longer, more useful route. If you look at
| the hundreds of millions spent on DC Streetcar and its
| limited utility, this all starts to look quite obvious. So
| why did we do it?
|
| I think there is another aspect that usually goes unstated,
| which is the vibes. If you're a mayor you want to build a
| tram. If you're a tourist you want to ride a tram. If
| you're a prospective resident you want to live near a tram.
| Yes, it's smoother and yadda yadda, but really it's because
| it has more sex appeal. A technically equivalent bus may
| well be _technically_ equivalent but could never be truly
| equivalent. Nobody would write a play entitled A
| Technically Equivalent Bus Named Desire. In a way, spending
| money on a tram is similar to spending money on parks or
| flowers or public art. And so we will spend the money; and
| we will build the streetcar; and damn the technical
| equivalence.
|
| I wonder what the world would be like if we were honest
| with ourselves.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I never heard of the (Washington, D.C.) DC Streetcar
| until this comment.
|
| Wiki tells me: > The DC Streetcar is a
| surface streetcar network in Washington, D.C. that
| consists of a single line running 2.2 miles (3.5 km) in
| mixed traffic along H Street and Benning Road in the
| city's Northeast quadrant.
|
| Is it even worth building a rail project that short? I
| had less than 900K riders last year. Something about
| light rail is so underwhelming to me.
| kj4211cash wrote:
| There's been a ton of research on this and the conclusion has
| been that light rail does indeed attract more development
| than bus rapid transit, but that there is no net gain in
| development across an urban area. It just shifts development
| to the corridor in question. There's a reason the
| overwhelming majority of transportation engineers favor bus
| rapid transit. On the other hand, I personally prefer to ride
| in light rail and I think many people would agree. So there's
| a reason that many urban planners prefer light rail.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| For me, trams have a much more comfortable ride. The lack of
| pitch and roll reduces a lot of motion sickness and the rails
| are obviously a lot smoother than paved surfaces.
|
| There's nothing stopping a road from being smooth but,
| logistically, there's clearly no reason to rush to repair roads
| when they deteriorate. That means potholes get tolerated,
| potholes means suspension, and both of those mean bus-like
| rides instead of suburban light rail rides.
|
| Railway track _has_ to be flat. Anything less than perfect is
| intolerable so it tends to hold its maintainers to a higher
| bar.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| As I understand it tracks do a much better job of spreading
| the load than asphalt which makes it much more durable.
|
| I've found the new battery buses to be far more comfortable
| to ride in than older diesel buses since they remove the
| vibration when idling. The extra weight might mean more
| potholes to repair though.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| What pitch and roll? And potholes in a road can be maintained
| at far lower cost than building railway lines.
|
| And lastly badly maintained railway lines are just as prone
| to causing motion sickness as badly maintained roads.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Buses are just... _bouncier_!
|
| You're absolutely right about potholes, technically, but my
| point was more about how people work not the immediate
| technical difference between road and rail.
|
| If you have a system that requires 100% upkeep in order to
| function at all -- the rails of a tram system -- then it
| receives nothing less than the complete maintenance it
| demands.
|
| The social and technical economics of roads, on the other
| hand, practically ensures that they're only ever barely
| maintained to the lowest possible standard people (and air
| suspension) will tolerate.
|
| Trams, the divas that they are, will tolerate nothing less
| than perfection!
| youngtaff wrote:
| They're much more energy efficient due to the lower friction
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Try to transport the following objects - would you rather do it
| on a bus or tram?
|
| a longtail ebike, a pushchair with/for 2 kids (horizontal
| arrangement), a dining table for 6 people and 30 kg of cement
|
| I tried it, and with most of em they don't let you on a bus or
| you can't fit but tram is fine
| habosa wrote:
| Comments so far are not discussing what makes this light rail
| "very" light, so here's an excerpt. The project claims to cost
| half of "normal" light rail.
|
| > The vehicle is battery-powered, eliminating the need for
| overhead wires. It features an innovative turning system,
| enabling it to handle 15m radius curves. This allows for
| installation in tight corners within the existing highway. The
| Council intends for it to operate at a high frequency, providing
| a turn-up-and-go service. The vehicle has a capacity of 56, is
| comfortable and has low floors to enable passengers to embark and
| disembark easily. The vehicle has been developed to allow
| autonomous operation in future.
|
| > The new track is laid just 30cm within the road's surface,
| minimising the need to relocate pipes and cables, which is time-
| consuming and expensive. It achieves this by leveraging cutting-
| edge materials science, while still utilising standard rail parts
| to ensure ease of manufacture.
| jsnell wrote:
| These things are tiny! I've traveled in larger airport
| shuttles.
|
| It feels like that's putting this into a really awkward place
| in the tradeoff space. Trams work because they can scale higher
| than buses. That scale comes at the cost of more up-front
| infrastructure, much less flexibility, and needing dedicated
| lanes. So cities don't have trams everywhere, but they're only
| installed on routes that can support the scale.
|
| For these you still have the up-front investment (just less of
| it) and inflexibility, but don't get the efficiencies of scale
| due to how small the capacity is.
|
| Is this really just a bet that they can get autonomous tram-
| driving on city street approved a decade+ sooner than
| autonomous buses?
| bluGill wrote:
| Tiny might make sense if they are running every 2 minutes and
| thus getting their capacity via frequency. However there is
| no reason to think they will do that. (if they were running
| anywhere near that frequent overhead wire would be a lot
| cheaper than a battery on every tram)
| bardak wrote:
| Yeah but you could do that with a bus today without
| miltiions in infrastructure spending
| scott_w wrote:
| Not really because buses get stuck in traffic all the
| time because there's a point where they need to share
| roads with cars. Once you spend the money on segregating
| buses entirely, you're at the same level as the tram
| line.
|
| Also, because of the expensive infrastructure that can
| only be used by trams, there's a permanence there that
| prevents future politicians from ripping it out to put
| more cars on for a quick political win with drivers.
|
| Going back to point 1: having a line means that any route
| needs to be properly planned because you never have an
| escape hatch of "just stick them on the road." Example:
| where I live, the council installed a bus lane and a
| cycle lane. Where it pinches in (planning fuck up), it
| dumps all the traffic into a shared route with 2
| roundabouts and 5 exits, each with an insane amount of
| traffic coming to or from them. Buses that are forced to
| use that route are _always late_. It takes me just as
| long to drive as it does to take the bus, faster if you
| factor in me waiting for a late bus.
| vidarh wrote:
| Trams very often still share the road with cars.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| The Nottingham tram, not far from Coventry, usually only
| shares road with cars in the city centre which is mostly
| pedestrianised. So mostly avoids commute traffic.
| scott_w wrote:
| Not for all of the route, typically. Metrolink only in
| the city centre then it turns into a Metro line for the
| rest of the commuter route.
| vidarh wrote:
| Quite a few do, and the point remains that sharing or not
| sharing the space with cars isn't a feature that
| distinguishes trams from buses. You'll can - and do -
| have dedicated rights of way for both, and you can - and
| do - share routes with cares for both.
| scott_w wrote:
| I know of no bus routes that completely separate from
| cars beyond a strip of paint. I also know of no countries
| that give buses automatic priority over cars outside of
| bus lanes.
| bluGill wrote:
| they exist several places. Brisbane comes to mind but
| there are others
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| LA metro G line is a brt with its own private guideway.
| Supposedly the bus network has been getting more signal
| priority.
| closewith wrote:
| > Not really because buses get stuck in traffic all the
| time because there's a point where they need to share
| roads with cars.
|
| Like many tram lines, CVLR is being laid in-road and not
| segregated. In fact, while not mentioned here, the it's
| 15 m turning radius is so important is because it's
| planned to traverse roundabouts in-lane.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The solution to that is dedicated bus lanes, which are
| quite common in some cities. Usually they allow taxis and
| emergency vehicles as well.
|
| Trams here in Berlin share the street with the cars on
| some streets. So, it's exactly like a bus that can get
| stuck in traffic (and they do). Dedicated tracks are also
| common but they take up a lot of space and it's expensive
| infrastructure to install. Mostly trams are limited to
| the former East Berlin, though they've started to spread
| to some parts on the west side.
|
| With electrical buses and bus lanes, you get most of the
| advantages of trams. There are probably still some
| advantages to dedicated tram lines. But they are
| expensive to install. I'm not sure it's worth the
| investment.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| It's not uncommon at all in London to have a traffic jam
| in a bus lane just from the volume of buses and taxis
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Step 1: Remove taxis from your bus lanes.
| scott_w wrote:
| You missed this part:
|
| > Also, because of the expensive infrastructure that can
| only be used by trams, there's a permanence there that
| prevents future politicians from ripping it out to put
| more cars on for a quick political win with drivers.
|
| A few things to further this:
|
| - I've seen bus lanes get ripped out and moved around,
| you can see where the paint was cut off.
|
| - Taxis use bus lanes, usually.
|
| - People use bus lanes illegally if they're not enforced
| with cameras (political cost of installing the cameras).
| _m_p wrote:
| > Also, because of the expensive infrastructure that can
| only be used by trams, there's a permanence there that
| prevents future politicians from ripping it out to put
| more cars on for a quick political win with drivers.
|
| This is definitively not true. It's something people said
| about the Washington, DC streetcar and it turns out they
| are about to remove the streetcar in order to replace it
| with buses:
|
| https://www.railwaygazette.com/light-rail-and-tram/dc-
| street...
| scott_w wrote:
| I would have hoped it was clear that I never stated
| infrastructure was never ripped out, since there have
| been numerous examples of this happening, including my
| own home city. I'm merely making the point that tearing
| up tram lines is more costly than simply paying someone
| to cut paint lines off the road. That plus the initial
| investment creates an inertia against undoing it, though
| nothing prevents politicians pissing public money up the
| wall if they're determined enough.
| bluGill wrote:
| there have been no trams in my city for 70 years, but the
| tracks are still there in places. Trams are no more
| perminate than buses.
| jsnell wrote:
| I didn't really mean that they needed higher capacity. If
| they had the passenger volume to justify such high
| intervals, they'd already have real trams.
|
| But rather, this is giving up the benefit trams have over
| buses, without gaining any new edge to replace it. So why
| is it a good tradeoff? And why now, not 20 years ago?
|
| The autonomous driving angle is the only idea I have.
| bluGill wrote:
| A bus cannot be run ever two minutes. No amount of
| dispatch anywhere has pulled that off. I'm not sure if a
| tram can be run that often but subways are
| grues-dinner wrote:
| Bus Rapid Transits can operate at frequencies of about 10
| seconds per bus. Obviously they're highly parallelised to
| achieve that and have special infrastructure to enable it
| like dedicated stations and pedestrian access, so it's
| not just "a bus", but bus-based systems are how many of
| the very highest-throughput public transportation lines
| function, with up to 35000 people per hour per direction
| with three digit numbers of buses per hour.
|
| For comparison, the most frequent London underground
| service is 100 seconds per train and the system moves
| about 50k passengers an hour (based on a 21% increase
| representing 10k passengers, I couldn't find a direct
| figure), presumably that being both directions.
| chgs wrote:
| What single BRT line runs at that capacity?
| dantastic wrote:
| Probably the Rio de Janeiro one. The BRS Presidente
| Vargas corridor has a peak frequency of 600/hour,
| according to this site [0]. Pretty impressive IMHO.
|
| [0]: https://brtdata.org/location/latin_america/brazil/ri
| o_de_jan...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I've used a bus service that ran buses every five
| minutes. It was eventually replaced by a tram.
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| I don't know if two minutes are possible, but in Berne,
| Switzerland, the bus line 10 runs every three minutes.
| Parts of the loop have dedicated bus lanes, but it's
| probably less than a third of the distance.
|
| PDF: https://www.bernmobil.ch/sites/default/files/2025-02
| /ah_0201...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Buses can hit that on interleaved lines. Here is a bus
| lane in downtown LA that moves 70 buses an hour:
|
| https://x.com/metrolosangeles/status/1153807208229957632
| ehnto wrote:
| That is in the article. The intention is a frequent, arrive
| and go service. Maybe every 2, 5, 10 minutes, whatever the
| actual details will be, that is the goal.
| Veedrac wrote:
| Trams don't actually scale higher than busses; the highest
| ridership BRTs have far more ridership than the highest
| ridership light rail. The key thing that makes it work is
| having a dedicated right of way. I expect busses get a bad
| rap as a scaled transit solution mostly because they have to
| share the roads so often. But it's indeed an advantage of
| light rail that it's a lot harder to make that mistake with
| it.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Those BRTs will have lower passenger/operator ratios though
| since trams tend to be bigger than articulated buses and
| are frequently coupled together for busier routes.
|
| I definitely agree that the dedicated right of way is the
| main thing. It's why some of San Francisco's trams are so
| slow outside of the city centre (where they run in a
| tunnel) and why Manchester's trams are so slow through the
| city centre (where they run at surface level sharing the
| street with pedestrians.)
| scott_w wrote:
| Absolutely! I've used the Manchester Metrolink and it
| definitely slows down in the city centre. It does speed
| up a lot (and likely beats bus in rush hour) when you're
| off the streets, which makes it an incredible commuter
| option!
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Much of it is built on repurposed heavy rail lines and
| those sections are great. The Eccles Line through Salford
| Quays is horribly slow and windy though which was a pain
| for commuting to Media City from south east Manchester.
|
| I believe the new Trafford line improves things somewhat
| but Manchester really needs much more heavy rail
| capacity.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think the up front investment is quite literally the
| problem this is solving for. If it weren't, you would just
| use light rail.
|
| The ability for the tracks to be laid so shallow is in my
| view, the entire innovation and cost is the reason for this
| approach.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| If higher capacity is needed you can always link multiple
| units together
| closewith wrote:
| In CVLR, you actually cannot as the extreme bogey angles
| mean they can only operate individually. You also can't
| order longer cars.
|
| You can run them at high frequency though.
| mhandley wrote:
| With computerized control and a comms link between the
| vehicles, you could probably have one vehicle follow 1m
| behind another, so they are effectively a train. If you
| still have a driver at all, you only need one in the
| front vehicle.
| closewith wrote:
| I don't think you could do that for CVLR specifically as
| it's not segregated from traffic and the second car would
| have to react individually to vehicles, pedestrians,
| roundabouts, etc.
| mhandley wrote:
| If it's really just 1m behind, it doesn't need to respond
| individually to anything except pedestrians. And you can
| solve that with some extensible tapes that actually do
| connect the vehicles to prevent pedestrians walking
| between them.
| analog31 wrote:
| Linking multiple units means making the stations longer. A
| more likely scenario is to deploy more units and deal with
| staffing by migrating to autonomous operation.
| brnt wrote:
| Buses on dedicated lanes are OK indeed. However, buses are
| simply not as comfortable as trams: roads unless in tiptop
| shape are not as smooth as rail, and bus drivers always take
| corners too fast.
|
| Having to hold on to something discards it from my preferred
| list of solutions.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Have recently read Gareth Dennis' How Railways will fix the
| Future...
|
| It's a worthwhile read BTW
|
| I suspect these are too small to carry a significant number
| of passengers per hour
|
| They'll also probably never be autonomous as the challenge
| with autonomous is less the driving and more with passengers
| getting on and off, getting trapped etc
| James_K wrote:
| I'd assumed the point of them was that you can take the
| several cars of a tram and split them up to have more
| frequent services. Though I suppose this would compound with
| the cost of having a driver on each car, potentially
| cancelling some of the gains from cheap installation. As for
| the point of automation, I think the tram can probably be a
| lot easier than the bus because of the human factor. It seems
| safer, so legislators will be more willing to legalise it and
| residents less likely to complain. Also, you've got rails in
| the road that clearly mark the route of the tram which make
| it more visible than an automated bus. Most of these
| automated taxi companies still have a human supervising the
| process, and I imagine that could be employed here to good
| effect and with fewer or faster manual interventions than
| would otherwise be needed.
|
| Even if all that falls through, I'm not gonna complain about
| it. We sorely need more public infrastructure in the UK. Even
| if an experiment like this fails, at least you actually get a
| tram line and experience out of it. Much better than a
| project which sucks up million then gets cancelled. (Cough
| cough HS2.)
| chgs wrote:
| Trans don't need dedicated lanes, not sure where you got that
| idea from. Trains do.
|
| Buses however are slow (in London about the same as walking)
| and (outside London) prone to vanishing on timetable changes.
| Closing a rail link is tricky, you can be confident that if
| you live near a tram stop it will be there in 10 years. 60%
| of our local (say 10 mile radius) buses have been removed in
| the last decade, removing entire villages from service.
|
| A rail solution allows you to read, a bus throws you around
| everywhere and makes you sick.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Trams can be removed too. Bristol used to have trams. I
| doubt it is alone.
|
| I definitely feel like trams are a weird technical solution
| to a policy/perception problem. On a technical level I
| don't think there's that much to recommend them over buses
| _with bus lanes_. It 's just that governments never put bus
| lanes the whole way like you are forced to do with a tram.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Buses are considerably faster than walking, no? Eg 8 to
| 9mph or about 13kph in London on average[0].
|
| I also observe that this is an average speed, which night
| be useful for statistical summarization but is not as
| useful as knowing whether the portion of the route that you
| want to take is in the faster part or the slower part of
| the data readings.
|
| For example, if I took a bus from Aldwych up Holborn to
| Euston I might expect that the first mile would indeed be
| walking pace but the second mile I would be zipping along.
| It's important as a bus rider to not let the slow parts
| color your perception of the whole ride.
|
| [0] https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-
| assembly-do...
| blackguardx wrote:
| My data point: in NYC, the crosstown bus on 125th is
| noticeably slower than walking.
| ghaff wrote:
| I usually take the tube in London but there are some
| point to points where bus is clearly faster than tube
| connections would be and absolutely faster than walking.
| Don't really know Manhattan up that far but crosstown
| tends to be slow in general.
| imtringued wrote:
| >A rail solution allows you to read, a bus throws you
| around everywhere and makes you sick.
|
| I got exactly the opposite impression the first time I rode
| a tram in my life. The tram is really really shaky and the
| connection with the overhead line is flaky, leading to all
| sorts of strange noises.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I wonder which tram that was?
|
| My experience has been the opposite: every vehicle on
| rails has offered a superior ride quality to every
| vehicle on rubber tires. I can't read on a bus, but on a
| train it's no problem.
| jameshart wrote:
| Buses also put a lot of weight on the road surface. Even
| more if you fill the bus with batteries. If you can reduce
| road surface wear at a cost of an upfront investment in
| installing these rails that could be a good trade off.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| This is such a typical American sneer at public transport.
|
| It's tiny, how it possibly carry all those 2x4s, powertools
| and sheets of plywood when I'm out doing manly things. I'd
| better go buy that monster truck so I can look like a real
| man.
| JdeBP wrote:
| In many non-North American cities one _needs_ tiny. Big
| stuff just does not fit.
| imtringued wrote:
| A normal public transit bus has twice the seats and doesn't
| need rails.
| JdeBP wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| Yes, this is smaller than the double-deckers in Coventry,
| that you can even do an eyeball comparison with if you
| watch the ironic publicity video mentioned in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44217231 and keep
| your eyes peeled for the buses queued up at those
| temporary traffic lights in the background.
|
| No, it's roughly on a par with the single-deckers,
| though, and there are quite a lot of those used by the
| local bus operators.
| ericmay wrote:
| In the US a bus is a strictly worse version of the
| private car. Walking/biking/rail are effectively category
| differences so they don't compete on the same playing
| field as a car and bus will. It's very important for
| public transportation officials in particular to
| understand this, because not understanding it will
| continue the car-only suburban development until we run
| out of money and economic physics dictates how we do
| transportation but with insane costs in the meanwhile.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| I guess you don't need much space to dip your baguette in a
| cuppa tea
| JdeBP wrote:
| Amusingly for this stereotyping, the demonstrator that
| they have constructed has a Burger King a short walk to
| the south and two Chinese restaurants and one Indian a
| short walk to the north. (-:
| strken wrote:
| This is a) an unnecessary counter-sneer at two whole
| continents and b) dismissive of something that would be a
| real problem in a city bigger than Coventry.
|
| Those teeny tiny little carriages have a capacity a quarter
| of what the trams in my city provide. If one of them pulled
| up in peak hour here, I imagine it would fill up after two
| stops and be a nuisance from there on.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Trams can share lanes with normal car traffic. There's still
| a massive cost in terms of infrastructure (especially the
| overhead lines, utilities that need to get out of the way for
| the rail base, that sort of thing), but this project has a
| detailed description of why those aren't a problem for this
| project.
|
| The tram they show in the animation also very much has a
| driver in the front.
|
| If they can deliver on what they show in their demos, I don't
| see why the size of the trams or the infrastructure should be
| a problem. All the expensive stuff has been thought about,
| the system barely takes up any extra space, and the system is
| capable of scaling up by just sending more vehicles into
| service.
| notahacker wrote:
| Generally I'm in favour of this sort of project, but having
| lived in Coventry (albeit a while ago) I'm a little
| sceptical: it's basically just adding a lot of
| infrastructure cost to what were low frequency suburban bus
| routes (the actual centre of Coventry is compact and
| walkable). You can run regular buses with similar capacity
| on batteries too, and divert them more easily.
| JdeBP wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44217164 .
| Coventry _actually does_ , right now, run quite an
| extensive network of electric regular buses, not only out
| of Pool Meadow but also the ones that circle the Trinity
| Street/Burges loop. And they had to divert them to build
| the demonstrator track for this.
| switknee wrote:
| Buses have slightly lower capex but much higher opex from the
| perspective of the community. City street gets ripped up by
| buses, cyclists get caught under the bus and dragged for
| miles, children get asthma from the tire dust. It being
| easier to give trams priority at traffic lights and easier to
| make the tram autonomous are just added bonuses.
|
| Lower flexibility is actually a feature when it comes to mass
| transit: People will build density along rail lines because
| they assume the town won't rip them up, making the rail line
| more valuable over time. A bus route can be cancelled the day
| after a disruptive mayor is voted into office.
|
| I also don't see why you can't scale up the tram with
| additional cars, as long as you keep the lbs/sqft the same. 3
| car trams are fine, 3 car busses are... not
| brookst wrote:
| Definitely the high points of the story. And to emphasize --
| 15m corner radius!
| kps wrote:
| Toronto has 11m loops. Newark 10m. Boston had 10m until a few
| years ago. This used to not be a problem anywhere.
| t_luke wrote:
| It's fairly obviously designed to avoid the issues which almost
| caused the cancellation of the new Edinburgh tram -- spiralling
| costs caused by the need to move existing utilities under the
| deep track base. That crisis was probably as much to do with a
| badly formed set of contracts as with the technical issues
| themselves, but it's still worth designing out.
| robocat wrote:
| Contracts that lock in a waterfall process.
|
| At last they were not trying to use agile!
| chgs wrote:
| I do wonder how much of the backlash against agile is
| driven by people who never experienced waterfall
| mannykannot wrote:
| The key issue appears to be how long it took to realize
| that existing infrastructure would present a showstopping
| cost. In practice, waterfall and agile are virtually
| indistinguishable in their ability to anticipate such
| issues early - they can, but doing so depends on factors
| independent of the differences in methodology.
| sevensor wrote:
| Either one of fine as long as you are doing it and not
| having it done to you. In the latter case, waterfall will
| crush your soul under a stack of binders, while agile is
| death by a thousand cuts.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| That's a really excellent insight! I'm going to use that!
|
| Another common pitfall seems to be engineering teams
| choosing agile when the business engagement model is
| waterfall. This puts you in the unfortunate situation of
| trying to change requirements without being able to get
| paid for those changes.
| pydry wrote:
| Or who only experienced waterfall, which was always
| branded as agile.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Avoiding relocating utilities is only really a stopgap until
| the utilities reach end of life at which point you would be
| ripping up the newly installed trackbed during the middle of
| _its_ life.
|
| At least in the US utility relocation also generally involves
| moving what was underneath to the side, so it can be accessed
| without disrupting the new transit line.
| Animats wrote:
| A 15 meter turning radius is tight, but not revolutionary. San
| Francisco's MUNI system's tightest turns are 45 feet, or 13.7
| meters. The newer vehicles are designed for that, and the old
| PCC cars had to be modified to allow the trucks some extra
| rotation. The turning loop on Embarcadero near Market is that
| tight. There is much wheel screeching when a PCC car goes
| through that loop, because wheels have to slip to turn that
| tight. But it works.[1]
|
| Battery powered trams have real potential, now that batteries
| with 5 to 7 minute charging and large numbers of charging
| cycles are a thing. That's compatible with typical end of line
| holding times. Steel wheel on steel rail is low friction, and
| you get most of the energy used to go uphill back when you go
| downhill. This could work out.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/XKN0MTCUSV0?t=265
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Steel wheel on steel rail is low friction, and you get most
| of the energy used to go uphill back when you go downhill.
|
| If you were going up and down hills, would you still use
| steel wheel in steel rail unless you had some sort of cable
| to work with? I always thought the Muni did relatively level
| routes for that reason? The Lausanne m2 for example uses
| rubber (well, ideally you'd be able to just balance the train
| going up with the train going down, but that only works for
| simple inclines with limited stops). Actually, a battery
| powered rubber wheeled tram service on some sort of steep
| incline like SF's cable car routes could get some wicked
| regen going down.
|
| Even if level, they could still get some regen from making
| stops.
| brnt wrote:
| Problem with rubber wheels in metros is absolutely
| atrocious air quality. I avoid them like the plague.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| How many rubber wheel metros exist? I only know of a few
| -- Paris is one, but not all lines. Where do you live
| such you need to "avoid them like the plague"?
| brnt wrote:
| Lyon.
|
| Its not hard to find out where they are, Michelin is
| quite proud of them.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Montreal uses rubber tires in the underground. Never
| bothered me.
| brnt wrote:
| Fine particulates don't 'bother' you until you have that
| lung cancer diagnosis.
| motorest wrote:
| > Fine particulates don't 'bother' you until you have
| that lung cancer diagnosis.
|
| Care to point out a source that supports a hypothetical
| link between rubber wheels and lung cancer?
| andy99 wrote:
| I wonder if there's every been a study if the air quality
| in the montreal metro vs comparable cities. Or even
| within Montreal... does the blue line use tires? (Edit,
| yes, for some reason I thought one line didn't have them,
| apparently they all do)
|
| I was told the tires are to reduce noise but I wonder if
| part of it is to handle some of the steeper sections like
| Vendome up to Villa Maria.
| amiga386 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-
| tyred_metro#List_of_sys...
| ahartmetz wrote:
| What's the problem? Rubber dust? Rubber smell? Maybe even
| burning rubber smell?
| masklinn wrote:
| > would you still use steel wheel in steel rail unless you
| had some sort of cable to work with?
|
| A rack rail is also an option, though tends towards the
| noisy and slow.
|
| But yeah usually light rail keeps under 5%, and can't
| really go above 10 on pure adhesion.
| fotta wrote:
| The J Church line on Muni is still a train in part because
| back when they were converting lines to buses, the hill on
| Church St was too steep for buses.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Wiki says it was more because of the private right away
| used, not necessarily its steepness:
|
| > While many streetcar lines were converted to bus lines
| after World War II, the J Church avoided this due to the
| private right-of-way it uses to climb the steepest grades
| on Church Street, between 18th Street and 22nd Street.[9]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Church
| andbberger wrote:
| muni has "relatively level routes" because the routes that
| were preserved were ones with tunnels that buses couldn't
| fit through (or narrow ROW in the case of the J), and given
| sf geography those tunnels invariably go through hills.
| muni, and especially the J, is one of the steeper adhesion
| railways in the world
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Modern speed control technology has expanded the incline
| range for steel-wheeled trains quite a bit. Inclines that
| would have historically pointed towards rubber-tired or
| non-traction systems are usually within the range of steel
| wheels with solid-state motor control. Basically the
| control of torque is much finer than in old resistance-box
| parallel/series speed controllers, so you can avoid
| slippage much more easily.
| vidarh wrote:
| Maintaining a quiet operation is listed as one of the
| advantages of the turning system for this system.
| closewith wrote:
| > A 15 meter turning radius is tight, but not revolutionary.
| San Francisco's MUNI system's tightest turns are 45 feet, or
| 13.7 meters.
|
| Revolutionary as the turning circle will be used at speed
| with passengers to traverse roundabouts in-lane. CVLR doesn't
| need turning loops, as the vehicles can be driven from either
| end.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Overhead power is more efficient and sustainable though. No
| batteries to chug along, no batteries to replace or
| manufacture. And I wonder if the cost over time really makes
| up for hanging a few overhead lines.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Heavy and Light Rail in the UK is also a safety distinction:
| Light Rail is limited in speed, drives on sight (exceptions
| apply) and a few other restrictions
| (https://www.orr.gov.uk/about/who-we-work-with/railway-
| networ...).
|
| Trams are one example of Light Rail, but so is the Docklands
| Light Railway in London (an exception to "on sight" - it's
| automatic), as opposed the the Tube (underground) which is
| Heavy. But the Welsh "metro" project's "tram-trains" (Stadler
| Citylink) are also Light, even though their tracks into the
| valleys are very much not urban in the usual sense - the full
| valleys journeys are over one hour with the current trains and
| go through mostly rural areas with small towns.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Why is it easier for cities to develop obsolete stuff than to
| eg, run their own Uber?
| alternatex wrote:
| Uber and mass transit are an apples and oranges comparison.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| What's the highest capacity vehicle Uber has ever operated?
| Because Tranist can move thousands of people with a single
| operator
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| In the whole universe of intellectually honest, valuable
| benchmarks for transportation, do you think ride sharing
| wins on zero?
|
| I'll give you an important one as an example: door to door
| journey times. I support RTO, which is the best way to
| improve that metric for the average person, which is to
| say, I was hoping this would be a discussion for out of the
| box thinking. Or really, what do you invest millions of
| infrastructure bucks into? All of Uber was only a little
| more expensive than a single high speed rail line. Why
| can't cities run ride share? Why would they run ride share
| worse than a train service?
| OJFord wrote:
| > All of Uber was only a little more expensive than a
| single high speed rail line.
|
| And charges/charges more for the service rendered, and
| still makes a loss.
|
| And if the city would charge for the taxi service... Why
| run it when other operators can and do? And multiple
| operators can effectively compete.
| tommoor wrote:
| > All of Uber was only a little more expensive than a
| single high speed rail line
|
| Sure, if you don't count the vehicles and the roads - the
| actual _transportation_ bit
| tuukkah wrote:
| If you want a real tram that is compatible with existing street
| geometries, the really nice Skoda ForCity Smart Artic tram was
| developed to meet the requirements in Helsinki, which wanted a
| smooth modern tram even though there are 15m radius curves and
| 8% inclines in the old parts of the network.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_Artic
| bluGill wrote:
| Gadgetbahn - a derisive term transit advocates use for something
| that claims to be innovative but in fact doesn't do anything not
| thought of before and doesn't solve any problems.
|
| They make all kinds of claims that don't stand up to over 100
| years of history running trains. The claim they are innovative,
| but there is nothing new here, and no evidence they have looked
| at the real problems of transit systems. Someone is going to make
| a lot of money on this at the expense of the community that
| loses.
|
| Trains have been around for a long time. You can buy all the
| parts you need for a good system off the shelf. You won't be
| saving money by designing something new, you just waste money on
| engineers to design something and then lose the scale factors you
| could get from buying the same thing as everyone else. If you buy
| the same thing as everyone else that means there will be a market
| for spare parts and thus in 20 years when (not if!) something
| breaks you can keep the system running.
|
| Yes overhead wires are expensive - but they are a rounding error
| compared to track. Batteries are expensive too, and you have to
| buy a lot of them. Batteries need to be recharged which means
| these trams will be out of service often so they have to buy a
| lot more so that when one is out of service for charging the
| others can work. (you still need a few extra for maintenance, but
| battery charging is more common so you need a lot more)
|
| If you want to build a train the best way to save money is to
| build exactly the same as everyone else does: standard off the
| shelf trains, running on standard off the shelf rails, and
| standard off the shelf overhead rail. If you want to innovate
| make sure that everyone is fluent in Spanish, Turkish, Korean, or
| Italian - because places where those languages are spoke build
| and run trains much cheaper than other places you can think of so
| you want to learn from them. (note that French or Japanese are
| not on the above list - while those areas do cheaper than English
| speakers, they are still expensive)
|
| I'm not sure about the UK, but in the US most of the cost blowout
| for trains seems to be in stations, so focus all your innovation
| there: don't make them monuments to how much money you can spend.
| (The UK has cost problems almost as bad as the US, but I'm not
| aware of any study on where the issues come from, while at least
| in the US there are studies).
| TylerE wrote:
| You're grossly oversimplifying and ignoring knock on effects.
|
| Eliminating overhead wires isn't about cost. It's about being
| able to build in existing urban areas that don't want high
| voltage live wires everywhere, and likely already have above
| ground infrastructure they would interfere with.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Well the standard response to this kind of "do it the way
| everyone does it" is "... change has to start somewhere". It's
| hard to tell, without hearing a report from a council of open-
| minded-rigorous-experts, whether some claimed innovation on a
| particular is actually worth doing or not---but certainly
| neither of "innovation is always good" and "innovation never
| works" is true.
|
| Anyway everyone is pretty sure that that _something_ is wrong
| with the standard train economics as you describe them, because
| if there wasn 't something wrong with it there'd be a lot more
| trains. I can't tell from the site, or from your comment, if
| this is the solution, or even worth doing as an experiment...
| but "don't change anything ever" doesn't strike me as
| productive either.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problems with trains are well known and they are not
| addressing them. There might be unknown problems an well, but
| the things they are talking about have already been tried and
| failed for reasons they don't seem to be aware of.
|
| Innovation should require some knowlegde of what is already
| done - otherwise you invent square wheels.
| bombcar wrote:
| They're addressing one problem, and one problem only.
|
| Adding a bus line isn't sexy, even bus rapid transit (BRT)
| sounds like a wet fart. They work, they can work extremely
| well, but nobody gets excited about it.
|
| This thing is just like a monorail; something worse than a
| bus but that sounds sexier.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Interestingly, in public policy, how sexy something
| sounds tends to be directly proportional to how much the
| public is willing to spend. It's often _easier_ to get
| 10-100x the money of a bus for a rail link.
| closewith wrote:
| CVRT is proposed to replace existing BRT for cost,
| environmental, and safety reasons.
| bombcar wrote:
| What is CVRT? I'm getting "Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance
| (Tracked)" and though that sounds like it would be
| cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and safer than a
| bus ;) I doubt it's what you're talking about.
| closewith wrote:
| Hah, I used to work with a CVRT squadron (Scorpions) back
| in the day, so I think it was muscle memory. It should
| read CVLR - my apologies!
| thehappypm wrote:
| They are addressing the problem of cost by 1) using BEVs to
| reduce overhead wire cost, 2) using tighter turn radii to
| reduce retrofitting needs, and 3) reducing the depth needed
| to avoid costly subservice infrastructure disruption
| bluGill wrote:
| There is no evidence that wires are expensive. There is
| evidence that wires are cheaper if you are running
| frequent service.
| Someone wrote:
| > There is evidence that wires are cheaper if you are
| running frequent service.
|
| Given the rapid progress in battery and battery charging
| tech, I doubt that evidence still applies today.
|
| Also, they may be cheaper in the long run but require
| more up-front investment. Depending on the interest rate,
| that can swing the answer to the "what's cheaper?"
| question
| danpalmer wrote:
| You're talking about trains, but this is about trams. The
| design constraints of building into an existing and very dense
| road network are complex.
|
| I agree with much of your sentiment, and hope that the Coventry
| council is being challenged in these sorts of ways, but at the
| same time I recognise that each city is going to have quite
| different requirements for trams driving down the roads in its
| centre.
|
| Perhaps a better push back is: why isn't this just a better bus
| network?
| bluGill wrote:
| A tram and train are the same thing. No difference at all.
|
| There are different modes of operation that differentiate
| them but fundamentaly they are all trains and face the same
| issues
| danpalmer wrote:
| They operate in completely different scenarios. They're the
| same shape, but they're a different set of hardware,
| constraints, accessibility, need to be scheduled in a
| different way to account for traffic, different safety
| concerns, different signalling systems, different
| distances, different surroundings.
|
| Again I sorta see what you mean, but feel you're massively
| over simplifying this.
| bombcar wrote:
| I mean trams basically are street-running trains. The
| light rail/heavy rail distinction is more one of weight
| and size than actual issues.
|
| Ceci n'est pas une tram:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kMUANU9H6aw
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_bus also exist.
|
| (For me, the big thing about trams and trains and
| subways, etc is that the track is a kind of social
| construct - the track _tells_ me that eventually a
| vehicle will come for me - no need to really worry about
| timetables, etc. A bus, a bus may come, maybe it won 't.
| It's all psychoillogical but it's there the same.)
| TylerE wrote:
| The fundamental operational principle is different. Trams
| operate (typically, on street running sections) on sight
| - they are responsible for monitoring traffic, and
| stoping if necessary. Contrast with the block-based
| approach used for trains, especially in combination with
| Euro-style positive train control systems.
| chgs wrote:
| A tram is just a bus running on smaller, steel, roads.
| sokka_h2otribe wrote:
| Maybe another analogy:
|
| A tram is a golf cart or ATV A train is a highway bus
|
| They have different applications and contexts in which
| they operate, even if they have core similarities
| danw1979 wrote:
| Your comment contradicts itself.
|
| The second sentence is partially true: they do have
| different modes of operation.
|
| But no, they don't face entirely the same issues. Trains
| should hopefully never routinely encounter cars sharing
| their track and they don't have to make tight turns to
| follow existing roadways.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Modern European trams are increasingly grade-separated.
| See what Marco Chitti has to say about European road
| design.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| Well then there's no difference between overground and
| underground trains. But it's pretty clear that there are
| different issues facing building new metro lines.
| bardak wrote:
| Unfortunately the Coventry VLRT is all about aesthetics over
| actually transit benefits. If the they were concerned about
| being useful transit the vehicle would have capacity higher
| than an articulated bus. Instead the main benefit of Trams/LRT
| over buses, capacity, is sacrificed leaving no real benefits.
| You can see the same thing with the Obama ere streetcars in the
| USA where most of them proved no real benefits over the buses
| the run alongside them but at least they retained the capacity
| even if it was never needed.
| t_luke wrote:
| London's DLR is a gadgetbahn. For all its obvious limitations
| it's been quite successful. Lots of new stations, lots of
| expansions, decent integration with traditional rail. VLR
| would work similarly.
| tim333 wrote:
| I don't think it's gadgetbahn
|
| >something that claims to be innovative but in fact doesn't
| do anything not thought of before and doesn't solve any
| problems
|
| The DLR was I think about the first decent scale autonomous
| rail system and provides a lot of transport.
|
| I mean things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown
| _Personal_Rapid_Tran... predated it by a decade but is
| dinky in comparison.
| masklinn wrote:
| Kobe's Port Island Line is generally considered the first
| fully automated metro and opened in 1981. Lille Metro is
| about the same scale as the DLR and opened in 1983.
| ehnto wrote:
| Finding the right balance of capacity is a tough problem
| because cities generally intend to grow, and it's expensive
| to to have unused capacity. As well if you actually build for
| that, people will say the project is a failure since
| ridership will seem low.
| ehnto wrote:
| These shelves must be huge!
|
| In Australia, highest cost is buying up required land and
| construction of buildings. We spent ~100mil USD on a single,
| open air platform for a line extension of exactly that one
| station. It was about 5 km of extra track. It is amazing we
| have any trains at all.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > If you want to build a train the best way to save money is to
| build exactly the same as everyone else does: standard off the
| shelf trains, running on standard off the shelf rails, and
| standard off the shelf overhead rail.
|
| You are speaking like a naive person that thinks that most the
| challenge is the physical world
|
| But in UK most of the challenge is archaic and idiosyncratic
| laws, disproportionately powerful NIMBY's and the treasury
| brain.
|
| The treasury brain will approve a project with 1X capex and 10x
| opex instead of one that has 2X capex and 1X opex
|
| The NYMBY is wild and unpredictable, they just killed project
| for a data centre placed on top of a literal dump because it
| would ruin the view of that dump from a motorway (nobody lives
| there)
|
| A project to re-open 3 miles of railway that already exists
| took 5 years to approve and 80,000 pages of environmental
| accessment
|
| But if it's innovate and designed in UK it might just slip
| through
| smcl wrote:
| Have I encountered a fellow Rail Natter enjoyer?
| PLenz wrote:
| Everything old is new again: The Light Railways Act of 1896 also
| propsed rail lines built to less then mainline standards (often
| narrow gauge) to get transport links to otherwise unconnected
| locations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Railways_Act_1896
| comment edited because I fat finger editing the submit button
| Empact wrote:
| As this page notes: https://www.coventry.gov.uk/coventry-light-
| rail/coventry-lig...
|
| They're using "Standard rail components, innovative
| construction" - standard gauge rail, but laid over a foundation
| of slab ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC), which allows
| for the shallower foundation / avoidance of utilities
| relocation.
|
| Using UHPC to rethink infrastructure is the big story here, I
| think.
| andrewl-hn wrote:
| Besancon in France is one of the cheapest conventional tram
| schemes in Europe at EUR17.5m per km and EUR1.81 per tram (132
| passengers). It's a conventional tram track with overhead
| catenary wires: as standard as one can get with those things.
| Presumably in the UK the costs would be somewhat higher: France
| is a modern tram capital, with a lot of relevant talent and
| expertise available locally.
|
| I haven't found the projected figures for Coventry but it would
| be very, very awkward if they can't beat the numbers above with a
| supposedly much cheaper track.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Besan%C3%A7on?wprov=s...
| closewith wrote:
| CVLR is projected to cost PS10 MM per km, but we all know what
| projections are worth.
|
| Still, there's no point comparing build costs between France
| and the UK as they're completely different cultures and
| jurisdictions. Instead, a more reasonable approach is to
| compare to recent similar project in the UK.
|
| Edinburgh's tram covers 18.5 km and cost at least (they're
| still uncovering overruns years later) PS1 BN. That's ~PS50 MM
| or ~EUR60 MM per km. That's what CVLR should and will be
| benchmarked against.
| andrewl-hn wrote:
| Very good point. There's also a potential for future
| upgrades. They may invest into catenary lines at some point,
| get rid of batteries and increase capacity inside vehicles.
| Or, switch to hot-swap batteries and increase vehicle
| turnaround and frequency. Or, they can switch to traditional
| concrete reinforcement for rails for future lines if they
| decide that the rails-on-slabs approach doesn't work out as
| well as they hoped for. Their vehicles while custom-built are
| running on top of standard tram lanes, so they will be able
| to use traditional tram tracks, too.
|
| VLRT seems gimmicky at first but the more I look at it the
| more sense it makes.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > they're completely different cultures and jurisdictions
|
| Separated by huge distance of 20 miles, both have thousands
| of same EU laws )still on the books, share thousands of years
| of history and at one point ruled by the same aristocracy.
| closewith wrote:
| Okay, but still completely unhelpful to judge per km costs
| in one versus the other due to the enormously different
| political and legislative environment.
| OJFord wrote:
| True. And yet, they _are completely different cultures and
| jurisdictions_.
| frereubu wrote:
| There are lots of national laws outside EU laws. For
| example, in France, compulsory purchase of private land by
| the state (to do things like build new railway lines) has
| to be 1.5 times its value, the idea being that this only
| happens when they _really_ want to do it.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Manchester's Metrolink should also be used as a benchmark.
|
| The Airport line extension cost PS368m with 15 stops over
| 14.5km of track (which shakes out at roughly PS25m/km), and
| was completed more than a year ahead of schedule and under
| budget.
| James_K wrote:
| If only there was some sort of mechanism to easily enable
| talent sharing between the UK and the rest of Europe.
| frereubu wrote:
| This is a great look at why UK infrastructure is so expensive:
| https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/britains-infrastructure-is-too...
|
| TLDR: Because they always try to do innovative things rather
| than just copy tried-and-tested methods from other countries.
| tempodox wrote:
| The text display in front seems to be easily overpowered by
| sunlight. They could use a display that's also readable by
| daylight.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I guess they're aiming to handle narrow edge cases in later
| iterations.
| maratc wrote:
| They are designing for Coventry, UK so "sunlight" is an edge
| case.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| If it is battery powered why does it need rails? Why not just use
| an electric bus?
| tmtvl wrote:
| There's various possible reasons. Less pollution from tire wear
| and the possibility to lay tracks across grass to create
| relatively ecological dedicated lines so the carriages don't
| get stuck in traffic are two options that spring to mind
| immediately.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Efficiency -- mainly through lower friction
|
| "Thanks to the very low friction between the steel wheel and
| steel rail, railways can move a load using as little as 15% of
| the energy that road haulage needs."
|
| Gareth Dennis, How Railways will Fix the Future
| (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/761930/how-the-
| rail...)
| wongarsu wrote:
| If overhead wires were the only advantage of light rail, why is
| anyone using light rail instead of trolleybuses?
|
| The answer is of course that rails provide major advantages on
| their own, primarily by allowing vehicles to travel much more
| efficiently thanks to the low friction of running steel wheels
| on steel tracks
| chgs wrote:
| They also provide major disadvantages, like a single obstacle
| or broken down vehicle blocking the entire route.
| erratic_chargi wrote:
| It does make the name kinda ironic, since the batteries will
| make the tram heavier then a normal one that's powered by
| overhead wires, so its not 'very light'
| rsynnott wrote:
| > The vehicle has a capacity of 56, is comfortable and has low
| floors to enable passengers to embark and disembark easily
|
| That's a _very_ small tram, smaller than most buses.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I assume 56 is the capacity that they advertise but people will
| cram in like sardines when it's rush hour
| rsynnott wrote:
| The buses around here advertise a capacity of 90, and the
| trams a capacity of 400.
| JdeBP wrote:
| It's not smaller than most of the buses that run in the
| existing Stagecoach and National Express fleets that go around
| and to and from Coventry, which seat approximately 30 people on
| a single-decker with standing room for about 10 more (in the
| best case, with no push-chairs, trolleys, or wheelchairs).
| JdeBP wrote:
| Since there are going to be a lot of people who don't even know
| England, let alone Coventry:
|
| Coventry is, like many cities in the U.K., burdened with road
| systems that in some places go back to mediaeval times. Yes, the
| Nazis did famously bomb the city centre, but there are some parts
| of the mediaeval city remaining, and much of the outskirts of the
| city is where it has expanded since World War 1 to swallow what
| once were standalone villages like Walsgrave and Stoke that dated
| back to the times of the Domesday Book. Much of the street
| systems are the old country roads through those villages,
| augmented by housing estates built around them. So Coventry does
| not have a wide and regular street system. There is no grid,
| Norteamericanos!
|
| There are only a handful of dual carriageways for major
| arterials. Some of the rest is quite cramped, and the ring-road,
| an early experiment in U.K. post-WW2 reconstruction that
| basically taught the U.K. how _not_ to build inner city ring-
| roads, is a massive barrier to any public transport system. The
| ring-road was some years back significantly re-built just to make
| the railway station better accessible, whose entrance is on the
| ring road.
|
| Coventry is actually fairly well served with bus services, to and
| from nearby Warwickshire and Solihull, and within Coventry
| itself. There is a significant electric bus network already in
| place for some years, and Coventry has been more proactive in
| moving buses from diesel to electric than those other two have,
| although they too are gradually replacing the old diesels. Stand
| at the bus stands on Trinity Street in the city centre, and
| you'll see mostly electric buses go by.
|
| The ironic thing of this project being placed where it is (aside
| from the amusing fact that the tram route is literally a route to
| nowhere, as Queen Victoria Road was blocked off in the mid-20th
| century when the ring road was constructed and is now a dead-end)
| is that to construct it they had to divert many of the bus
| services, since Greyfriars Road is one of the routes to and from
| the main city centre bus terminus.
|
| Coventry has been quite experimental in recent years when it
| comes to transport design. Aside from hacking the ring road
| about, it has experimented with things like converting many of
| the street intersections around Coventry University (not to be
| confused with Warwick University, a partner in the headlined
| project) into shared space intersections.
|
| Would this actually work as a general transport system in
| Coventry as whole? Almost certainly not. A light rail system
| from, say, the Coventry Arena to anywhere useful elsewhere in the
| city would bedevil Jimmy Hill Way. That's why there's a
| commercial centre right next to the Arena in the first place. In
| the outskirts of the city the Hipswell Highway and routes like St
| James Lane/Willenhall Lane and the Holyhead Road are major
| thoroughfares but some are already down to 1 lane wide in places.
| And the idea of running a tramway along Radford Road or the
| Foleshill Road is sheer lunacy to anyone who has seen those
| roads.
|
| The scope of any tram system is almost certainly physically
| confined to the old city, and maybe the A4600 and A428. But the
| old city is actually walkable. The places where public transport
| is needed is the arterials like the Holyhead Road, already well
| served by buses. Cynically I expect that much of this is about
| selling this system to other cities.
|
| And indeed, the partnership with Dudley Council is strongly
| indicative that this is mainly using Coventry as a staging area
| for development that will be, if it takes off, more in the rest
| of the West Midlands than in Coventry itself. There is,
| physically, more scope for this sort of thing in the road systems
| of Walsall, Wolverhampton, Dudley, West Bromwich, Wednesbury,
| Great Barr, et al. than there is in Coventry. I wouldn't be
| surprised if at least one councillor is being sold the line that
| this is really to sell it to other cities around the world.
| JdeBP wrote:
| Addendum: If you watch the latest news video and ignore the
| local politician trying to sell the scheme in the foreground,
| in the background you can see the _actual_ public transport
| services in Coventry, the double-decker buses that run along
| Greyfriars Road, stopped at a temporary set of traffic lights
| put up to accommodate this demonstrator, as Greyfriars is now a
| single lane running half-duplex where it used to be two lanes
| running the buses full-duplex. Many of the bus routes out of
| the city to the south come in to the city centre along this
| road. Yes, this is ironic.
|
| * https://coventry.gov.uk/news/article/5276/first-ride-on-
| vlr-...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Important background: Building the same tram in Britain costs at
| least 2X more than in France, often 3x more.
|
| UK tram track construction typically involves deeper track beds
| compared to France/EU, using concrete slabs of 500-1000mm deep,
| is intended to protect utilities. In contrast, many European
| projects utilize shallower trackbeds, even with grassed areas,
| which are 300-400mm deep
| tmtvl wrote:
| Does the UK have a loose, silty soil which requires the deeper
| track beds or more stringent safety regulations or something?
| pkaodev wrote:
| Not really related, but leaving Coventry has probably been one of
| the best decisions I've made in my life. This makes sense though,
| one of the best things about the city is the good transport links
| for getting out of it.
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