afransen
Senior Member
This popped up in my feed recently and thought I would share:
Trackless trams may be the best alternative to light rail
The idea being to provide a very rail-like user experience in terms of ride quality and boarding (and higher capacity than BRT with 300-500 passenger vehicles) with lower infrastructure costs. One interesting idea with this that you can't do with LRT (or not easily) is have a mixture of services sharing a corridor, perhaps mixing express and local service with the ability to overtake at stations, etc. Most seem to be optically guided which might not be ideal in climates that see a lot of snow but I'm guessing other techniques could be used such as magnetic tags in the roadway. Might be something to consider for the suburban LRT/BRT lines in development in the region, without overcommitting to surface rail investment. Once volumes start reaching 10k passengers per hour or greater true grade separated rapid transit (elevated or underground) might be considered.
Trackless trams may be the best alternative to light rail
The idea being to provide a very rail-like user experience in terms of ride quality and boarding (and higher capacity than BRT with 300-500 passenger vehicles) with lower infrastructure costs. One interesting idea with this that you can't do with LRT (or not easily) is have a mixture of services sharing a corridor, perhaps mixing express and local service with the ability to overtake at stations, etc. Most seem to be optically guided which might not be ideal in climates that see a lot of snow but I'm guessing other techniques could be used such as magnetic tags in the roadway. Might be something to consider for the suburban LRT/BRT lines in development in the region, without overcommitting to surface rail investment. Once volumes start reaching 10k passengers per hour or greater true grade separated rapid transit (elevated or underground) might be considered.