Surrey Langley Skytrain - Expo Line Extension | Proposed

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

Regional distinctions apply. The only jurisdictions I know of on earth trying to classify "high floor LRT" and "low floor LRT" as a separate transit mode, with one supposedly faster than the other, and the other able to "integrate with communities" better than the other, are Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta.

For everybody else, it's just a technical distinction with the height of the floors. There are high floor LRTs designed like low floor tramways (Manchester, Stuttgart, Hong Kong-Tuen Mun) and low floor LRVs run on full metros (Seville, Changchun, Ottawa).

I for one think it works to look at "LRT" as more of a surface running urban rail mode, SkyTrain is more of a "light metro" and in many ways closing on heavy metro.

The biggest difference between high floor and low floor LRTs is that low floor LRTs have bulkheads for the wheels, which create pinch points in the car layout. High floor LRTs allow layouts that provide better passenger flow in the cars.