CBD & South East Light Rail

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Swift
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Swift »

I can't believe people pay the most expensive real estate prices and living expenses to live in a city with such fourth rate practises and decisions.
There's a certain easily triggered member here who won't hear anything except how "wonderful" it is and goes on the attack to anyone who makes fun of it. Others have since reiterated my comments that it's little more than a travelator and the trams look like street Tangaras not a tram.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Merc1107 wrote: Wed Jun 16, 2021 7:07 pm South Tce/Market St Fremantle, for comparison (looks like a quiet day. Pity there isn't a night video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NsqTQHj4HE
Those with sufficient interest could look up other videos to see what it looks like on a busier day.
Yes, very quiet, the opposite to weekends, holidays and evenings. There are night videos - the nights of Fremantle Dockers wins and they're not so pretty. :lol:

Edit: Watched that route 532 video to the end. Like the Prague trams, it demonstrates the same quality of "movin' along". It's everything I like about Perth PT - you get to places quickly, either mode. It's frustrating that, with those quick journeys and excellent frequencies and connections, Perth PT isn't rewarded with the patronage it deserves. Sydney buses, ferries and particularly the metro also generally "move along" well, but the trams and suburban trains are woeful. There are a lot of complex issues to overcome to improve train performance, but there's little excuse with the trams. They're just bungled in many ways.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Jurassic_Joke »

tonyp wrote: Wed Jun 16, 2021 5:38 pm
Jurassic_Joke wrote: Wed Jun 16, 2021 4:11 pm Have noticed along L2, between Moore Park and Royal Randwick, some (temporary?) speed limit cuts have been implemented (yellow TSR signs, Temporary Speed Restriction), just like all over L1, was wondering why trams have been crawling between these stops. I mean, what gives, is it really the ‘fixed bogies’ aspect of the tram damaging the track I wonder?

Maybe for future projects or tram orders (looking at you, L1 growth trams) they need to bite the bullet and just try trams with pivoting bogies. What about Siemens Avenio, its the successor of the Siemens Combino that is in Melbourne. Last time I was in Europe, and well if we’ll ever be allowed to go there again, I found the Avenio rides very nicely as smooth as a cloud unlike the Combino and otherwise comfortable enough with good lighting and windows and I think that ones pivoting bogies, all that with the same nice engine sound of the Combino. Don’t know why TfNSW seems to restrict themselves to CAF and Alstom at the moment for suppliers, although 100% I’d take Alstom any day over CAF
They will eventually find premature track damage (as they have in the past on IWLR) as a result of using trams with fixed bogies. It's inevitable in the long term, as are temporary speed limits imposed until repairs or replacement are done.

As boronia said, with CSELR they are locked into a contract with the trams and, as the trams have a life of up to 30 years, there's no chance of rectifying design deficiencies until they come up for replacement. Alstom came with the winning consortium, the other contender having withdrawn, so there was no chance of any alternative there. CAF came on the scene back in 2011 when TfNSW knew absolutely nothing about trams, having been basically an anti-tram agency for the previous 50 years. When expressions of interest were called for, CAF very smartly moved in with what seemed to a naive agency like a good offer and it went from there.

Both CAF and Alstom basically specialise in trams for new "light rail" systems which are typically planned with generous lengths of straight track (fitting the grids of a typical planned city layout) and few corners to turn and, where there are, these deliberately have pretty wide radii. Sydney is somewhat different on all three new tram systems, with plenty of twists and turns that slow the trams down and wear the track. The reason for those trams having fixed bogies is because they're cheaper to build, therefore helping them make lower bids and/or greater profit margins. Unlike the CSELR trams, however, with IWLR at least, TfNSW could at some stage stop buying CAF trams and look for a better design. This couldn't happen for a while either as the fleet will no doubt be sufficient once the tail end of the existing order is filled.

The major manufacturers (who dominate much of the European market) apart from Alstom and CAF are the three Ss - Siemens, Skoda and Stadler. All of these manufacture trams with proper swivelling bogies, which is generally the expectation on established systems there. It's this type of tram we should really have in Sydney, but that decision is going to rest with a future generation now.
And the TSR’s that are all over L1 now, (Glebe -> Jubilee Park getting cut from 80km/h to now 50km/h I’m gunna guess will become permanent) and now starting to show up on L2/L3 are absolutely an indictment on what happens when you choose bad design decisions for ordering trams. Cut speed limits in the CBD section on George Street are understandable as more of it is pedestrianised and yep, safety first, but on the dedicated tramway where the tram runs by itself…. Nope, its a bad look.

Yeah regarding TfNSW, it kinda does stink in a way seeing some of the choices made for light rail. I can say as someone that commutes several times a week on the L1, the original CAF Urbos 3’s ordered way back now a decade ago, I don’t say this lightly, but they are ageing like milk, and they aren’t even 10 years old. On the original batch of CAFs, 2112-2118, the seating layout where they tried to copy the Variotram layout featuring more transverse seating, in most units in the second and fourth module where theres supposed to be transverse seating, nowadays, some of these transverse seats are actually missing, creating some very awkward standing room. Whether they fell out or have been deliberately removed to make more standing room, I don’t know I’m going with the former, it is really a terrible look, and we never saw the Variotram seats fall out. Then we come back to the turns around Central Station when going up and down the Belmore Park ramp - that screeching sound you hear from the bogies/wheels doing the turns, even at 15km/h max speed, its horrendous and you can hear it from inside the tram. On the sections of track of the recent Dulwich Hill extension when the tram picks up speed, you can hear a loud whirring sound inside the tram coming from the wheels on the rails . And then we have the whole issues of the doors themselves, they sometimes get jammed when drivers try opening and closing them too quickly, but hey this is what you get I guess when you insist on operating a tram in a way it was clearly not designed to be used (completely disregard manual mode and just fling all doors open at every stop because a vocal minority of Sydneysiders don’t like door buttons). Anyways! I’ve written more than enough, but make no mistake, these CAF trams are ageing horribly - I certainly don’t see them lasting for the full 30 years shelf life. The buck stops with whoever ordered them and specified them as they were. I just cannot believe our state made the mistake of going with the same supplier for not one but two more light rail projects and I do not see anything hugely better about Newcastles’ - have enough reason to be skeptical of Parramatta’s CAFs!

I don’t know if other CAFs around the world or rather more recent models are faring better or if we just got a cheap home-brand generic dud one (Budapest and Utrecht have some very nifty looking recent CAFs and I’d love to give them a go when we can travel to Europe again), but yeah, I’m hopeful that L2/3’s Alstom X05’s will age better than their L1 CAF counterparts. That one is more important to look at, as you and Boronia point out, we’re stuck with the X05’s for their shelf life. L1’s CAFs, as what happened with the Varios, we could always just retire them early and replace them with something better. Maybe sell them to Canberra’s light rail a la Yarra Trams Bumblebee if they need growth trams, as far as I can see, Canberra just lazily cut and paste our CAF tram specification so it would definitely fit. There has still been nothing announced about L1’s growth trams, no press release from either the Gov or CAF and you’d expect them to boast about it, so another supplier is still in the game, I’ll be checking in the upcoming state budget to see if that reveals anything.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by grog »

Honestly, the focus on the CBD section is overblown - focus on cutting 5 minutes from the suburban branches into Central and your end-to-end times are better than any other mode, with a trip under 30m.

Current 19 minute journey is an average speed of 17km/h, bringing it down to 14 minutes would bring it up to 23km/h which should be entirely achievable.
Last edited by grog on Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
tonyp
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

grog wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 6:28 am Honestly, the focus on the CBD section is overblown - focus on cutting 5 minutes from the suburban branches into Central and your end-to-end times are better than any other mode, with a trip under 30m.

Current 19 minute journey is an average speed of 17km/h, bringing it dow to 14 minutes would bring it up to 23km/h which should be entirely achievable.
I too believe that too much is made of the CBD section. The former trams would have run at little more than 20 km/h through the city. There are other reasons why they performed better and achieved a higher average speed - and it's average speed that's the critical issue. It's the same on the outer sections where, as you say, really substantial gains could be made (without increasing maximum speeds) if they put an effort into it.

Re trams, I think it likely that the CAFs and Citadis won't last more than 20 years. In Europe they tend to invest in updating electronics but here I imagine there'll be pressure by the manufacturers to replace the trams (more money for them) and TfNSW will be uncritical of that. As for track wear, the operators will badger TfNSW into repairing that, otherwise the speed restrictions will stay and the services will eventually become slower. So much ignorance of the issues by TfNSW.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Nugget »

tonyp wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:15 am Re trams, I think it likely that the CAFs and Citadis won't last more than 20 years. In Europe they tend to invest in updating electronics but here I imagine there'll be pressure by the manufacturers to replace the trams (more money for them) and TfNSW will be uncritical of that.
CSELR is done pursuant to a PPP so it will depend what the contract says about rolling stock replacement. The bigger issue is going to be whether the PPP survives and what happens when it's handed back to the government.

It is interesting that they use the term light rail and run it much more like light rail in North America which tends to be more of a metro light concept rather than the European tram operation. Longer points between stops, totally off grade running and usually higher speeds.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Geo101 »

grog wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 6:28 am Honestly, the focus on the CBD section is overblown
I agree.

Surely once the "Central Walk" is up and running, passengers will be able to easily transfer from the Chalmers St stop and take either:

* The new metro to Pitt St (2 minutes) / Martin Place (4 minutes) / Barangaroo (6 minutes), or

* The existing heavy rail to Town Hall (2 minutes) / Wynyard (5 minutes) / Circular Quay (8 minutes), or

* The existing heavy rail to Museum (2 minutes) / St James (4 minutes) / Circular Quay (8 minutes)

or just stay on the light rail to Haymarket (3 minutes) / China Town (5 minutes) / Town Hall (7 minutes)

All the above options will have services every few minutes. Why would you bother trying to break world records down the new George Street Mall?
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Passenger 57 »

You're ignoring the time it takes to transfer to and from underground services and of course waiting time. That would erode most if not all of the gains from the faster modes so you'd only transfer from a tram if that was a faster option than walking from the nearest tram stop to your destination. Transferring to a bus (or staying on one from the CSELR catchment) is a good option for some destinations depending on time of day. I suspect that moving into the future, in the absence of more route diversity in the city, more and more L2 & L3 services will terminate at central, and perhaps ultimately the line partitioned at that point, so that Central to CQ does not exceed the approved maximum frequency. With a forced tram transfer, transferring to other modes becomes a less worse option.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Nugget wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 11:44 am
It is interesting that they use the term light rail and run it much more like light rail in North America which tends to be more of a metro light concept rather than the European tram operation. Longer points between stops, totally off grade running and usually higher speeds.
"Light rail" is simply the fashionable term for a modern tramway. It only really has a technical meaning in North America where light rail is a grade-separated tramway (like a railway). CSELR is really a street tramway. IWLR is light rail west of Darling Drive, a street tramway east of it. Everything else varies according the local conditions. A street tramway commonly has an average stop spacing of about 500 metres. Older tramways had closer stops and Melbourne still carries this legacy, to its pain. IWLR has an average stop spacing of about 550 metres, CSELR about 600-650 metres. In my opinion, CSELR is a bit short of stops but you wouldn't want to try to rectify that while it's so slow. The other examples I've cited show that if two additional stops were added where they should be, around King St in the CBD and between Bourke and South Dowling, the trip could still be done in 25 minutes with proper performance.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Nugget »

The street tramway for Sydney is not really the same street tramway that exists in Melbourne and a lot of Europe. It may be at grade but is more separated. Which is why it is kind of a hybrid operation with what appears to be the "best" of both worlds. Slower speeds and longer distances between stops.

It's also not really well integrated, which can be said for a lot of the node stops as highlighted in the post above. There is not clear signage, unclear integration and long routes between the modes.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Nugget wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:08 pm The street tramway for Sydney is not really the same street tramway that exists in Melbourne and a lot of Europe. It may be at grade but is more separated. Which is why it is kind of a hybrid operation with what appears to be the "best" of both worlds. Slower speeds and longer distances between stops.

It's also not really well integrated, which can be said for a lot of the node stops as highlighted in the post above. There is not clear signage, unclear integration and long routes between the modes.
Melbourne is hopelessly out of date, however they're starting to rectify that by extending separation as limited money becomes available. Many European tramways are now like CSELR with tram lanes completely separated from general traffic, even closures of streets to general traffic if they're too narrow to carry both. The lines between a traditional tramway and a newbuild tramway are now very blurred. One day, the difference will disappear and "modern light rail" will be identified only by its slowness and fixed bogie trams. :lol:

I agree with you about integration. Walking a significant distance in the open, especially waiting for breaks in traffic to cross streets on the way, is not what I call integrated interchange.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Geo101 »

Passenger 57 wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:44 am You're ignoring the time it takes to transfer to and from underground services and of course waiting time. That would erode most if not all of the gains from the faster modes so you'd only transfer from a tram if that was a faster option than walking from the nearest tram stop to your destination.
I didn't put that in my post, and it's also why I didn't include the LR stops past Town Hall, that's when anyone in a rush would likely contemplate a transfer to the options which will become available when the Central Walk is completed.

Obviously, there will be both a transfer and wait time (variable), but I was more trying to relate to the scenario when the Central Walk is completed.

My "guess" would be perhaps 2 minutes to the target platform, then 0-4 minutes for the variable time of waiting for the next service. (Peak hour frequencies)

For the case of Town Hall in peak, that time saving wouldn't lure too many, but most certainly the other destinations north in the CBD would be more attractive.

Obviously without saying, outside of peak, the variable wait time would be less attractive?
Last edited by Geo101 on Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Geo101 »

tonyp wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:22 pm
I agree with you about integration. Walking a significant distance in the open, especially waiting for breaks in traffic to cross streets on the way, is not what I call integrated interchange.
I was initially frustrated that the routes 480/483 didn't terminate at the new Haymarket tram stop!!!

But soon realised that my trip planner was indeed right, and walking from the bus stop just around the corner takes less than a minute to achieve...
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Transport Buff »

https://transportnsw.info/alerts/details#/6062981

Service changes due to Police Operation
Today 14:00 - 15:00

Light rail services may be impacted while a Police operation is underway and road closures are in place at Town Hall for a planned march on Sunday 20 June.

Between 2pm and 3pm approximately, L2 Randwick Line and L3 Kingsford Line services may be temporarily held while the march is underway. Impact and times may change at the direction of NSW Police.

Please check indicator screens, listen to announcements and follow the direction of staff and Police on site.

The L1 Dulwich Hill Line will continue to run as normal.

Allow extra travel time and use the Trip Planner for alternative transport options.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Swift »

One of the vagaries of routing the tramway there is the amount of protests by left leaning idiots with no way to bypass them, much like with politics in general!
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

In view of the number of "events" which occur in front of the TH and block tram services, It's a shame the crossovers weren't a bit further south of Bathurst St, giving the opportunity to terminate services at Chinatown, then run the trams empty up the hill to reverse.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Nugget »

Does it really need a crossover though, you could have single track running on both tracks like some other cities do.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

I don't think that would work too well with a 4-5 min frequency in each direction. Chalmers St - Chinatown - Chalmers St would take about 15 minutes.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Swift »

Why don't they disrupt Macquarie Street instead. That's where their political foes are at the moment.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by Nugget »

boronia wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 12:50 pm I don't think that would work too well with a 4-5 min frequency in each direction. Chalmers St - Chinatown - Chalmers St would take about 15 minutes.
That's the thing though, think outside the box, doesn't have to be the same frequency but at least run it further than Central. They could also run part of the line down to CQ as well.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Nugget wrote: Tue Jun 22, 2021 11:02 am
That's the thing though, think outside the box, doesn't have to be the same frequency but at least run it further than Central. They could also run part of the line down to CQ as well.
Modern light rail operations don't tend to be as flexible as traditional systems. It's too "easy" for them to call in the buses.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

Sydney Tramway Museum has been uploading its "Shooting Through" history video to Youtube. This episode covers the Sydney south-eastern lines, including the lines now reinstated for CSELR. Note, by comparison, the general pace of the trams, including cornering speeds, and contemplate that the previous system had quicker journeys over the same routes than CSELR, in spite of stopping at far more stops and carrying many more passengers.

Also consider the capacity crisis that was created after the trams were withdrawn in 1961 when each of these 120 passenger vehicles (or 240 passengers in a coupled set) was replaced by a 70 passenger bus (some of which can be seen in the video) on a one for one basis. The result was that people were forced off public transport into driving themselves.

Those advocating extending L2 to Coogee Beach might contemplate how today's operation would go, up and down that tortuous terrain!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNJxLr-lwk
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by boronia »

The old Coogee line was designed for steam trams, so I don't imagine modern electrics would have any problems over the same route. The grade sections might pose a problem for DDA compliant stops.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by tonyp »

boronia wrote: Fri Jun 25, 2021 10:19 pm The old Coogee line was designed for steam trams, so I don't imagine modern electrics would have any problems over the same route. The grade sections might pose a problem for DDA compliant stops.
At 6% maximum, the Citadis would be right on the cusp of a need to upgrade to all-powered bogies, both for ascent and braking. I'm thinking also how they would crawl painfully around all those curves. I agree that platform grades at accessible stops could be an issue.
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Re: CBD & South East Light Rail

Post by STMPainter2018 »

tonyp wrote: Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:31 pm Sydney Tramway Museum has been uploading its "Shooting Through" history video to Youtube. This episode covers the Sydney south-eastern lines, including the lines now reinstated for CSELR. Note, by comparison, the general pace of the trams, including cornering speeds, and contemplate that the previous system had quicker journeys over the same routes than CSELR, in spite of stopping at far more stops and carrying many more passengers.
Tony what do you hope to achieve by pointing this out?
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