On 28/1/21 9:59 am, Mal Rowe wrote:
>

>

> The new Sydney system has come from a different perspective, adapting

> a heavy rail philosophy for street running.  There seems a genuine

> anxiety about 'running trains down the street' and a hobbling of their

> performance to minimise risk.

>

Not only that - I've been at a meeting in the early CESLR days where
some one from the audience asked was the project team talking to
Melbourne given their long experience with rapid track construction.

The answer was (from a senior project manager type in TfNSW) 'we have
nothing to learn from Melbourne as they are a tram network and we are
building 'modern light rail'.

I don't remember the exact words used, but that was the idea - Melbourne
has those old fashioned tram things and we in Sydney are building
'modern light rail'. Not the same thing at all apparently.

The same meeting also had a long talk from some on from the 'Asset
Management Authority' who a charged with setting transport standards
(road, rail and light-rail). I forgot the question asked, but the answer
was along the lines 'we don't want to make standards too prescriptive as
we don't want to prevent the market offering 'innovative solutions'. He
was quite hung up on 'market offering innovative solutions' as it was
repeated several times.

At this point the AMA had already issued a quite prescriptive standard
about light rail power supplies (overhead 750v, even specified
substation spacing) - and TfNSW promptly ignored this standard to allow
Alstom to offer their 'innovative solution' of Alimentation Par le Sol
in direct contravention of the issued LR power standards :-)