The stations can't handle longer trains, nor can the city blocks downtown. What do they mean by larger trains? Are the Valley line West trains going to be that much heavier?
That’s what I was thinking. The line might be able to handle higher frequency but the entire line is designed for 3 car trains.
Indeed, the trains are limited to the size of block between 99 St and 100 St from what I recall reading.
It doesn't make any sense that West line trains would be heavier. The specs that were tendered would have required they fit within the same loadings as the Bombardier vehicles.
My thought was that increased frequency = more trains on elevated section = strengthen piers. Personally, I think that before we could see a frequency increase, we would need to full blown proper signal system to control train movements, rather than the current (primarily) Line of Sight operation. Maybe with some/ all grade crossing protection, maybe not.
I went to dig up in the project agreement any information on how close headways could be. While I don't think I found what I recall reading before with train spacing, recovery time etc, the traffic signal system is supposed to have a 4 minute countdown before it is available for the next train heading in the same direction, so, I guess theoretically the closest 2 trains could be is 4 minutes apart. I would imagine worst case scenario they would have had to have planned for 4 fully loaded trains on the elevated section at one time, 2 per direction, 2 cars per train for a total of 8 cars moving in 4 trains.
At least I hope worst case scenarios were planned for. I'm guessing they weren't if they're going back to strength more piers, which really leaves me wondering what TransEd was expecting. Granted, TransEd also didn't build enough cars to even allow full 2 car operation from Day 1.