Quote:
Originally Posted by sim
From a higher level perspective, there would seem to be pretty substantial trade-offs for disadvantages and advantages in either case. Berlin, for example would love to not have had and not have two different sized U-bahns. The more cost effective constructability for low-floor / Trams is obviously a huge plus.
Your first paragraph seems a bit reactionary though. There are other ways to do things: It's not like the two lines could not be connected in at least one of the two points where they are currently planned to intersect. I conceptualized something on here about 1.5 yrs ago regarding this. Yes, yes, I know, increased capital costs, better to have something built than nothing at all, etc, etc..
My point: There's something to be said for a flexible, robust, adaptable and harmonized system.
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Intersect is a pretty strong term for two lines that pass over top / underneath each other, with 20 feet of concrete and soil between, in the heart of the city. The lines don't intersect any more than the upper deck of the Centre Street Bridge intersects with Memorial Drive.
It would be hundreds of millions of dollars to intersect the Green Line with either of the other lines. All of the touted harmonized fleet benefits (flexibility, combined orders, whatever) are only benefits because they save money. Spending, say, $60 million extra on stations so that we can save $5 million on a hypothetical future LRT order is ridiculous. So is spending $500 million on tunnelling and property ROW for the flexibility to run trains between the Green and Red/Blue lines; we could buy dozens of extra trains to sit around as spares on every line for that price which would give far more flexibility.
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