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| Study Re: Here comes Staten Is. Light Rail (268157) | |||
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Study Re: Here comes Staten Is. Light Rail |
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Posted by WillD on Sat Jun 17 14:25:21 2006, in response to Here comes Staten Is. Light Rail, posted by UWS Greg on Sat Jun 17 02:25:53 2006. A while back a subchatter passed around a copy of a North Shore Right of Way transit feasibility study performed by URS engineers. The whole zipped folder is 40 megabytes and includes proposed station designs, and alignment drawings, but I can't get it to upload at the moment. If somebody would like all this stuff I can email it, the largest singe portion is just shy of 10 megabytes. Here is the 1.55 MB pdf study summary:http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~wld25/NSLRTAssessmentreport.pdf It's interesting that the study, in particular page 25, seems to concludes that the Light Rail alternative is the prefered alternative. According to the study the Heavy Rail alternative would suffer from higher headways than the other modes resulting in it carrying about 2000 fewer passengers per day than the other modes. With the higher capital costs and higher operating costs of heavy rail when both numbers are compared per daily ridership the Heavy rail alternative is nearly 125% as expensive to build and twice as expensive to operate as the light rail alternative. Bus Rapid Transit, despite attracting perhaps 2000 more riders than the other modes, would be 10% cheaper than an LRT to build for the same number of riders, but would be 150% more expensive to operate. Page 52 of the study has the following about BRT's prospects: The most significant drawback to BRT might be its high ridership. Projections indicate that BRT vehicles would be near capacity by 2015, even with a peak frequency of some 20 trips per hour. The resulting operations costs are high relative to the LRT, DMU and streetcar alternatives, and terminal operations would be difficult to time consistently given the required frequency of service. BRT would also require an impervious pavement surface throughout its entire length that would increase the area and infrastructure required for stormwater treatment.It seems clear that if this project is going to actually go forward then light rail is definitely the way to go. The light rail alternative includes the possibility of ATC, cab signalling, and other systems similar to those NJT has included on their light rail lines, so compatibility could certainly be maintained. |
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