Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac Write
Check out this Japan Bus Tunnel with single lane. Would this indeed be cheaper and as efficient as a underground RT/LRT line?
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I doubt it, because 90% or more of the cost of construction is the actual tunnel itself. Once you have the tunnel, then you can run whatever you want through it.
I heard that a subway in an American city was under construction in the late 20s, but had to be abandoned during the depression because the city & contractor went broke. In the 40s and 50s they tried to finish the tunnels for use by trolleys but that too was a failure. Today, the tunnels hold the pipes for the water trunks and the telephone trunk cables that run through the city centre. During the Dot-Com boom, one company wanted to stuff fibre-optic cables in the tunnels to wire up every building in the downtown core, but someone figured out the scam company was proposing to build more fibre-optic cables in the tunnels than existed in all of the rest of North America.
In Seattle, the 3rd Ave tunnel was built about 25 years ago with the intention to have a subway line running under downtown. While the decisions were being made as to the the type of subway to be built, the tunnel and stations were used by hybrid diesel / trolley buses. These special buses ran as diesels on the streets outside the tunnel; at the entrances to the tunnels the buses would stop & turn off the diesel engine & raise the trolley poles so they would operate like an electric trolley bus inside the tunnel; after exiting the tunnel, the poles would be lowered & the diesel engine re-started to continue driving on the surface streets.
Just last year Seattle inaugurated their first LRT system with the downtown section re-using the 3rd Ave tunnels. They had to be shut down for a few years to be rebuilt to handle the large LRT cars and lay the rails, power and signals needed for a subway system.
However, they also rebuilt the tunnels to have a new generation of hybrid buses use the tunnels too. Being driver-operated, the buses and the LRT trains take great care to not bump into each other.
(from the Wikimedia Commons.)
Here's a picture of the University Street Station.
A Bus is just pulling away, and another is stopped at the platform, but note the LRT rails under the bus and the LRT power wire and separate trolley bus power wires overhead.
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