Recent content by reaperexpress

Modern trolleybuses also include small batteries for this reason. They can go off route or move around the yard without the need for wires everywhere. And since their usual routes (or at least most of the route) has wires, the batteries can be quite small, cheap and light

Posted by the Mayor today: Deployment of improved TSP on Finch started today, Eglinton to follow. She didn't mention it but several UT members documented that phase rotation had been enabled at Spadina & Dundas a week ago. It has also been activated at Spadina & College and Spadina & King. I...

All these people who dream of eliminating the overhead electrification we already have clearly havent thought through the amount of energy losses involved with charging and discharging batteries (much higher energy loss than just running the train directly off the grid), the infrastructure...

Ah yes perhaps some day we'll see double-ended streetcars on an LRT in Ontario. What a wild speculative idea.

Mostly off-topic but while I was assembling the above map I stumbled upon the 1881 and 1915 railway maps I made a few years ago:

Most of the core bike paths are on old regional lines that are never coming back. The rail line people are talking about is the line from Fredericton York St Station to Fredericton Junction (on the Canadian Pacific mainline that still exists), which was used by Via Rail for its...

The only time the battery needs to be used is under acceleration (i.e. whenever you want more than 2MW of output), which is much less than half the time considering the trains also need to travel at constant speed, decelerate (which charges the battery as well), and stand still at stations. It...

A diesel hybrid train would presumably save fuel for the same reason a Toyota Prius saves fuel even if you never plug it in. Most obviously, it captures braking energy that would otherwise be lost as heat. The other part is that it's more efficient to run an engine consistently at a medium power...

Wow that may be a huge undertaking. In typical Metrolinx fashion the notice explains almost nothing about what they're actually doing or why. It just says: Are they moving all of the cables underground or just some of them? Why are they moving cables underground? What are the other utilities...

Flexible train design and more runs at peak times both require trains to run them. And those trains need to be purchased and maintained. That's what I'm talking about. Whether it's a "subsidy" or "less profit" is not really the question. The question is just what the best balance is between...

The travel demand on the specific peak travel weekends far exceeds the travel demand on a typical weekend. Yes, surplus capacity is good if we can afford it, the question is at what cost. This primarily has to do with the ratio of demand between peak and off-peak periods. The subway runs about...

Predictable pricing and constant pricing are two completely different things. There are certain days that we know will have much higher demand than others. The Friday before a long weekend, for example. Should we purchase twice as many trains so we can run double-length trains that weekend and...

We know which days will be busiest, so it makes sense to price those higher from the moment tickets go on sale, rather than selling the first few tickets at $55 but the last few tickets at $230. Maybe busy days should start around $75 and rise to $125. Rail capacity is what stops Via from...

This all seems to be based on the assumption that TC/FRA regulations produce trains that are safer in collisions than EU regulations, which is not true. In the past couple decades the EU has gotten drastically stricter for crashworthiness, meeting or exceeding the crash safety of US trains...

No, in the US you don't need to meet the antiquated strength tests anymore. You can certify EU trains for US mainline use via Alternative Compliance with minor modifications like thicker windshields. That's how most of the Stadler FLIRT and Stadler KISS trains are certified. It's not like...