Quote:
Originally Posted by Aylmer
In terms of cities than run coupled trams at street level, I can think of Munich, Cologne, The Hague, and Berlin off the top of my head. And of course, there's the monster, 56 m Budapest trams which carry upwards of 560 passengers.
Ottawa's BRT performed admirably because, save the downtown portion, it opted for near-total grade separation. Operating at street level with dedicated lanes, BRT to the west of Gatineau would have a much lower capacity ceiling. According to the STO's study, we would hit that effective limit within the first 5 years of operation. BRT is certainly cheaper than rail, but it's not so cheap as to be disposable after that short a time.
Street-level LRT also has a lower capacity ceiling than Metro-LRT. But even the lower ceiling is high enough to satisfy capacity needs for decades to come in this case.
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I don't know Budapest well, but from what I've been reading, their tram is mostly grade separated.
"Most of the routes I have seen are on a dedicated lane or right-of-way, which is at least separated from car traffic by concrete "balls", so cars are unlikely to invade the tram route." Is it really safe to run such long trains through mixed traffic ? Especially considering that Budapest drivers are used to trams, which isn't the case in Gatineau or Ottawa. The whole line would be paralyzed every time there's an accident (or road construction).
It is even possible to run such long trams through mixed traffic ?
Hamilton, ON plans to limit LRT trains length to 28m to not block intersections. If someone is more familiar than me with Gatineau's transit planning, I would like to know if longer trams are possible.
Using 2011 data, the STO already runs
120 buses per direction per hour on Wellington in front of the Parliament without any grade separation. An articulated bus can hold up to
110 passengers. If all there buses were articulated, this means a PPHPD (people per hour per direction) of up to 13200. That's far more than the 3900 for a tram.
Aylmer has the same problem Vanier has : there's very little room for a segregated LRT or BRT.
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