I won't for a moment suggest the line shouldn't have been built, or be ripped up, but what you report here makes me wonder - would buses 'run properly' (i.e. low-floor, all-door boarding, good priority measures) perform better than the technology currently used on the Newcastle light rail?tonyp wrote:There's a hell of a long way between doors on the trams. I haven't been on IWLR in the big crowds that are common as I understand, but the lack of doors must make these CAFs as dysfunctional as a Sydney bus. Truly dumb decision to delete doors.
I was riding uncrowded Saturday afternoon services but it was still popular. Dwells were in the range of 5 to 15 seconds and recharge time was as expected in the range 40 to 55 seconds, so the recharges added about two to 2.5 minutes to each journey over and above the passenger exchange time. Really dumb technology.
Traffic light priority is excellent. The trams are slow but not a great issue on this service. You wouldn't want to be rushing for a train, between this slowness and the recharges, you'd have apoplexy - but let's face it, no worse than our buses are run.
Presumably the dwells for recharging leave a lot of people wondering why on earth nobody is boarding or alighting, and yet they're still waiting around... If this sort of delay caused you to just miss a train you'd likely be infuriated with what seems like pointless waiting about. Perhaps in time newer technology will alleviate this problem.