I like Vera Lynn too but I think these are important discussions in the transport sphere.

Olympic Park achieves 90 second headways because, as you saw in the track diagram I posted, there are two tracks that can be used simultaneously. I used Olympic Park during the Olympic Games and it was heavy going for the trains. The biggest problem was that the double deckers are slow to load and unload and it's difficult to move people away from the doors into the central saloons and therefore to load the carriages to the maximum during the mandated dwell time. The old problem in any mode of having enough doors. The metro trains are going to deal with this much better - also the three-door per car proposed for future Perth trains.

Sydney double decks are in fact not practically able to move 60,000 in an hour on 120 sec headways. Their capacity is about 1,200 per 8 car train, that's 36,000 in an hour. Tests by Railcorp in 2007 found that the absolute maximum capacity of an 8 car decker is 1,750 but only at an event where everybody got on and off at once. Dwell time was't considered (which is a big omission). This is 52,000 in an hour, assuming they can get out of the platform within that 120 seconds. Sydney people are notoriously slow-moving and stubborn to move away from doors (and why should they be otherwise and risk getting stuck on the vehicle?).

So I still don't know how long it takes transport to clear Etihad stadium, but I suspect it's nothing on what Sydney trams achieved at Moore Park and Randwick.

By the way, that aerial photo of Moore Park I posted yesterday focusses on the original 1881 balloon loop - the one with trams parked both sides of it. It was extended with the additon of further loops and sidings in 1906 and later, creating a matrix of several loops within each other serving three different directions. You can see some but not all of them in the photo.

Tony P

---InTramsDownUnder@..., <rodsmith@...> wrote :

Any track in Sydney should clear 60 000 passengers per hour on 120 s headways. Nobody in the world runs 90 s headways.
Of course Melbourne coped: people are leaving on multiple tracks from Melbourne SC: base four, but six possible if using Mon.-Fri. instead of Sat. routing.
Full house at Etihad is routine, not a once-per-year event.
I haven't wasted time looking up the timetable for this group: the acid brigade can do that.
I spent the time watching a wonderful documentary on Dame Vera Lynn turning 100: far more heartwarming, and far more increasing my knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSk42tmTWY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSk42tmTWY (with no fullstop).

Roderick