Quote:
Originally Posted by Socguy
|
I'm far more positive on low floor than a lot of folks on this board, but I think each technology is dependent on the use case.
The SE leg of the Greenline makes far more sense to be using high floor given 100% of the line will be dedicated right of way and that it will be ultimately acting as commuter rail for the vast majority of riders. In an ideal world, the SE Greenline probably should be a spur line of the existing Red line.
I think you can make a case for low floor - if for example, you want to replace the 16th Avenue North Max BRT or 17th Avenue SE BRT with a tramway down the road. It would be much cheaper to deploy onto the existing road network and far less disruptive to the surrounding communities. Low floor also makes sense if ridership or car/bus traffic is low enough on some portion of the line that you want to support shared use.
The more puzzling question for North American city transportation planners is why they are so resistant to not cannibalizing existing road capacity for shared use with tramways or transition to dedicated right-of-ways for BRT or Low/High floor LRTs.
European cities and towns have plenty examples of both shared use and dedicated right-of-ways.
Threaded Mode