The one problem with the E class appears to have been that they broke the
golden design rule and piled lots of weight into it and the power supply
proved inadequate. I imagine this is the main reason why they have pulled
the stops on acquiring more and having a fresh look at a new design.
Bulking a road public transport vehicle up with more mass offers no
additional protection against the effects of impact. No additional
passenger lives will be saved and it'll still be off the road either way.
I'm not up with where Bombardier Canada is with their quality control
issues nowadays. One would think that a company like Bombardier would get
on top of that pretty early on - and that's now in Alstom's court.
I would think their operational method is now completely different with
these new trams, like no fare collection by drivers. The bloke who made
that video does seem to have a bit of a pro-Toronto bias, judging by the
previous train video, but nevertheless he seems to have outlined some
significant improvements they have made there. Melbourne has huge problems
apart from the lack of a modern fleet and thus lack of capacity, notably
the lack of action on tram priority. On a four lane street you simply
cannot have tram tracks, road lanes *and* parking. General traffic has to
be removed from the tram lanes and therefore the parking has to go and, to
do that, the planners have to (some years ahead) work up a parking strategy
that relocates the parking. In general, there is still a timescale of years
to get the Melbourne system up to a modern standard and yet there is still
no sign of any significant government initiative other than piecemeal,
which isn't enough.
Nothing wrong with Yarra Trams, they know their stuff, but they can't do it
without the government preparing the ground.
Tony P
On Thursday, 22 April 2021 at 19:52:21 UTC+10andrewh...@... wrote:
> I agree Greg.
>
> I was there a few years ago and it did seem behind Melbourne. I knew there
> was a public transport card dispensing machine at the airport and roughly
> where it was, but I could not find it. We caught the very new train from
> the airport to the city and it stopped for 15 minutes for an air
> conditioning reset, and it needed to. It was very hot. I think it did have
> modern trams of some kind but I was very surprised to see it all pole
> operation. There was a public transport smart card, Presto or something
> like that but on the old trams we caught, we had to pay cash to the driver
> who really did not want to deal with cash and issuing passenger tickets.
> Drivers of the older trams would have been happy for us to not bother him
> with paying. The trams were as slow as Melbourne trams with little
> priority. The weather necessitates trams going underground to connect with
> trains, and that is not a bad thing. The newest trams have been an
> absolute disaster with vehicles suffering from defective workmanship.
> Melbourne's newest E Class trams seem very good, not prone to breaking down
> and quite comfortable.
>
> Andrew.
>
> On Thu, 22 Apr 2021 at 16:35, Greg Sutherland gregsut...@...>
> wrote:
>
>> I would suggest that the Toronto overview is based much more on
>> aspirations than reality.
>>
>> Toronto over the last decade has moved from an exemplary system to one
>> beset with problems, political (google the anti light rail and heavy
>> rail/metro bastardry of the Ford brothers), insufficient funding, failure
>> to maintain technical and operational management capability and inability
>> to adopt to modern LR processes.
>>
>> The introduction of the newest Bombardier cars has been a management and
>> production disaster with deliveries approaching 5 years behind schedule and
>> excessive numbers of cars being returned to Bombardier for reworking and
>> rectification of major defects/failure to meet performance guarantees.
>>
>> The upgrading and replacement of infrastructure is taking forever with
>> works that Melbourne would complete in a minimal number of days/weeks
>> taking 6 months or more and the TTC seeming to have no concern for of the
>> economic damage being created by the disruptions to major city streets etc.
>>
>> In spite of the delays in putting the new LRVs into service withdrawal of
>> the old cars has not been slowed down and as a consequence bustitution of
>> major sections of the trolley system has been undertaken and is continuing
>> to occur.
>>
>> Despite the planned changes to pantograph compatible overhead as
>> anticipated in the ordering of the new LRVs and despite the excessive
>> delays in the delivery of the new LRVs it has been necessary for the TTC to
>> order at extra cost the retrofitting of trolley poles to a significant
>> percentage of the new LRVs. The overhead conversion program is still
>> unfinished.
>>
>> Melbourne may not be perfect but currently it is way ahead of Toronto in
>> system performance and service delivery.
>>
>> Greg
>>
>> who but for COVID would have been in Toronto in August 2020.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 20/04/2021 8:39 am, TP wrote:
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSNp_n_-O04
>>
>> This bloke has previously done a similar video comparing Sydney and
>> Toronto rail systems that some of you may have seen. It's a bit of a
>> revelation to me because I haven't studied Toronto in detail for about a
>> decade and it's obvious that they've been putting a huge amount of effort
>> and money into modernising the system, whereas Melbourne has remained quite
>> stagnant. In particular, Toronto's patronage has soured to being within
>> barking distance of Melbourne's. Once, Toronto would not rate comparison
>> with the great tram systems of the world. Now it's a serious contender
>> right up amongst them.
>>
>> The neglect of the Melbourne tram system is a depressing thing for those
>> of us who would like to see it prosper and the neglect comes from both
>> political sides - but nothing more disappointing that the Andrews
>> government after the expectations raised when the East-West link road was
>> cancelled when they came to government. On top of this, the political
>> alternative is uninspiring. Feel sorry for you guys down there. So much
>> potential but ....
>>
>> In unrelated news, new Paris line T9 has just opened, increasing the
>> route length of the combined Paris lines to 137 km. It's run by Citadis X05
>> trams like Sydney's, but seven-section (45 metres). Almost the entire line
>> is a straight line, so the trams shouldn't be too challenged although it's
>> still a tad slow for the distance.
>>
>>
>> https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/paris-inaugurates-new-tram-line-t9/
>>
>> Tony P
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