Re: Re: Sydney Metro
  Robert Taaffe

Hello Tony

Are we targeting all double deck trains with the same brush? John Dunn maintained a major part of the problem was the width of the stairs and the second was the poor commuter behaviour.

With regard to the first surely the A sets are a major improvement with wider stairs, but not quite there yet. Part of the problem is people congregating around the doors and also people waiting until the last minute to get out of their seats (after the train has stopped). Several ways to solve the problem include educating passengers to get up earlier, close the doors quickly and let them be over carried (they won’t do that again) or maybe to have a flow system like HK trams, ie get in the front and out the back. Blocking doors is also a problem in London.

When figures for pass/h are published by government my blood boils with the misrepresentation. Assume each DD takes 3 minutes to unload and load, ie 20 trains/hr or capacity in excess of, conservatively, 30000 pass/hr. In reality they can do better. I volunteered during World Youth Day when most trains were S, K or T sets. I was stationed at Pennant Hills and we would load sets in under 45 secs until they were full. These were not commuters but generally people unfamiliar with Sydney practice. A nearby school sends the whole school, about 1000 girls, by train to major events and they are organised on the platform and the train leaves in no time flat. I am assuming that an 8 car sets holds 1500 pass. This capacity estimate is far more than what the government rolls out for DD sets.

If a Metro set holds 1000 people, for example, then you have to run 30 trains/hr to achieve the same capacity with less comfort for the passenger. As the DDs could load faster their more capacity available but there is less extra capacity with the Metro. One has a capacity of 1500 plus and the other around 1000, so if you can get the number of trains approaching the same then the DD has greater line capacity.

The Shore has recently been resignalled to increase capacity but will now be close to an absolute limit. I am told that currently if trains run a little late trains are jammed by Killara. What will happen in May when the Metro starts running?

Sorry, this might be a bit of a ramble, but I think the new DD sets are under-rated and they have the ability to lift capacity to more than the Metro, The solutions lie with management and the passengers behaving and thinking and getting those things out of their ears.

So endth the rant.

Bob T

> On 22 Mar 2019, at 07:50, Prescott lenkaprescott@...> wrote:

>

> Yes I appreciate how good the system was as originally designed Bob, I've read about it previously. I was just making the point that that level of performance hasn't been upheld by the Sydney suburban system into modern times and is now unable to return to that state of performance because of double-deck trains - which is the current problem.

>

> Tony P

>

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