Miami officials plan huge rail expansion
 

http://www.thenextmiami.com/county-p...rapid-transit/

great news, though this bit is a shame:

In total, there will be 82 miles of new rail. The 9-mile Miami to Miami Beach is planned as an elevated metromover route with a cost of $1.2b. All other routes will be at-grade, which will save money but increase gridlock.

level crossings = bogus.

In addition to this, three other expansions of the metromover system (one of America's least recognized but best rail networks) are under study, and they have strong constituencies behind them.
http://www.miamitodaynews.com/2017/0...ns-metromover/

Miami is maybe one of the few places on earth where there is an entire rail network (metro mover) that serves only affluent neighborhoods. The expansions under study sort of remedy that but also may also be just including more wealthy/gentrifying neighborhoods and giving them access to the ballpark.

This is great news. Is Miami expanding its Metro Heavy Rail or is this some different modality?

I like the choice of Metromover for Miami Beach. However, the at grade light rail is very bad, particularly on the East-West Corridor which is a logical extension of the Airport Metrorail line.

Miami is looking ahead to a much bigger future. :cheers:

Yes, I'm actually agree with that. Hopefully they will start construction soon. It won't take long.

I know this article says "at grade" but do we know if this will be extensions of the heavy rail system or a brand new light rail system? The distinction is that a heavy rail system can be at grade but have no crossings with traffic. A light rail system would be incompatible with what Miami currently has. Many times articles get statements confused and I'm wondering if since they heard "at grade," they assumed light rail as opposed to an extension of what Miami already has; which would have to be completely separate from traffic even though it's at grade

I'm sure it will be light rail, 82 miles of heavy rail would likely be 20 to 30 billion.

Exciting plan tho!

Knowing how this city operates, it'll be either a pipe dream or scaled down. But still progress, that city is a mess.

If it is full of grade crossings they might as well not do it at all. Adding rail that is too slow to be useful isn't helping anyone.

I was under the impression that it most of it would be heavy rail. It'd be a terrible decision and a waste of the existing line's potential if they changed their mode of choice to light rail. Otherwise, why even build the initial heavy rail line in the first place if it's not going to be the backbone of a larger system? Choosing to go with light rail will severely limit ridership potential.

The current Miami heavy rail has terrible ridership. They can probably achieve the same ridership with a cheaper, lower capacity system. Hell, they could probably achieve the same ridership with buses, but not a sexy choice.

I expect extensions of the existing lines to be heavy rail, brand new lines in western Miami-Dade County to be light rail, and trains near the FEC line to be commuter rail. I don't think tracks not heading towards downtown Miami will need heavy rail trains.

This is what they are planning....
 

and all are Heavy Rail corridors except for the Northeast corridor which wants to use the Brightline / FEC tracks for commuter rail:

http://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/...pshg4bs77e.jpg
http://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/...pshg4bs77e.jpg

The North Corridor & the South corridor are county owned ROWs that already have had EIS done and were original expansions after the 1/2 cent transit tax was passed in 2002.
The South corridor is now the South Dade Busway (BRT).
http://www.miamidade.gov/transit/sou...ade-busway.asp

^^^ Not the Kendall corridor per the article, which will be light rail or "enhanced bus." Otherwise, appears I was wrong as it won't be light rail (or heavy rail) but essentially commuter rail (maybe DMUs?)

Heavy rail signifies NYC subway system/ DC Metro/ MARTA/ Miami MetroRail type of service which is different than commuter rail which are more like railroads ie VRE/MARC/TriRail/Metrolink/Caltrain etc

That's because there's only one line and the region doesn't have much coverage. The more you build, the more increasing returns you'll have. If you build light rail, you're severely capping the ridership potential of the system.

That doesn't make any sense. Why would per mile ridership be lower if there were one line? If anything, per mile ridership will drop as secondary corridors are developed.

Light rail can carry hundreds of thousands of riders, easy. There's no way in hell Miami is going to have millions of rail riders.

Why? Light rail trains can run in multiple units, so these trains can be as long as heavy rail trains. They are usually just as wide as just as tall, so their capacity could be the same per train.
The only physical attributes that make them different at all is how they pick up their electricity, heavy rail usually using third rail while light rail usually using overhead catenary.
So it's how they are operated that causes system capacity differences. With light rail having stations at grade in central business districts, station platform lengths, and therefore train lengths, are usually limited to city block lengths, 300 to 400 feet. Heavy rail operation off grade, under or above grade, train lengths are not limited to city block sizes. But light rail trains can operate off grade too. So I repeat again, light rail trains can be as long as heavy rail trains, and can have the same system capacity.

It appears that Miami-Dade officials are actually considering the possibility of extending Metrorail at grade. That way they don't need to build new maintenance facilities, train new staff, etc for a totally new light-rail technology.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/loca...120723273.html

Technically, I'm not sure how the details would work... But the heavy-rail vehicles do need to run on their own right-of-way, so for e.g. the North Corridor, Metro would either need to eliminate lanes on NW 27th Ave to create a median, or widen the roadway by about 30 feet and eliminate most left turns. Businesses and residents won't be happy, and this will virtually shut down pedestrian activity along the corridor since you can't cross. Possibly the rail line would include flyovers at busy intersections to avoid congestion.

It's also unclear how officials plan to deal with the hazards of third-rail on the ground, especially in a flood-prone place like Miami. Possibly they will need to build the new sections with overhead wire, but that requires retrofitting the whole train fleet. Or they could add overhead wire to the existing network, but that's also costly and might require the replacement of station canopies.

^^^ interesting, sounds like they have no clue at the moment. The reference to LA's system in the article is off, only the light rail is street running. The heavy rail portion of the system is not street running whatsoever

Even with light rail, even in street medians, grade crossings do not necessarily mean slow. If a rail line gets full signal preemption at all crossings (not just signal priority) than it is just as fast as if it were on an elevated route, with the downside that it is somewhat more disruptive to automotive traffic.

Miami's system doesn't have any tunnels to deal with, so if third rail at ground level for new construction is out of the question, it's entirely possible that trains with dual current collection (pantographs for overhead wire and shoes for third rail) could be considered. Chicago used to have such trains for the Yellow Line.

Signal preemption at grade crossings as mentioned above would be necessary since heavy rail vehicles generally aren't designed to operate in the stop-go manner of standard at-grade (without signal preemption) LRT.