BIKE: Re: Rail Issues (4)

[Nawdry]

At 10/28/2004 23:02 , Patrick Goetz <pgoetz> wrote:

>you conveniently ignored my pointing out that much of the Frankfurt
>system is a subway (U-bahn)


I don't know where Patrick "pointed this out" but let me point out that the 
Frankfurt "U-bahn" is actually the city's LRT system running in subway in 
part of the Frankfurt CBD.  This was a 1960s-70s upgrade in capacity from 
the previous all-surface LRT system - illustrating one of the most flexible 
aspects of LRT (the variety of possible alignments and level of investment, 
and the ability to readily upgrade from one to the other).  Incidentally, 
Frankfurt also continues to use surface LRT accessing other parts of its 
CBD.  And more incidentally, Frankfurt's "U-bahn" light rail vehicles 
(LRVs) - originally, the U2 model - are exactly the original model which 
has served as the prototype of the first LRV fleets for Edmonton, Calgary, 
San Diego, Sacramento, St. Louis, Denver, and Salt Lake City.

This deployment of LRT as the primary urban rail mode - subway in the CBD, 
surface elsewhere - is used in a number of other European cities.  Cologne, 
Bonn, Duesseldorf, Hannover, and Essen all come to mind.  Newcastle in the 
UK also implements this deployment of LRT.  In North America, this 
subway-surface application of LRT as the primary urban rail mode is also 
used in Newark, Edmonton, and St. Louis (all of which have short subway 
sections).

But Patrick just "conveniently" ignores my point that, for many moderately 
large, medium, and small cities, all-surface LRT is more prevalent, and it 
works extremely effectively.  This is the case in a number of the cities I 
previously noted.  Quite a few French cities, such as Nantes, Grenoble, 
Strasbourg, Orleans, Montpelier, and Rouen, have followed this pattern, and 
more are on the way - St.Etienne, Nice, and Le Mans come to mind.  As I 
also noted, other French cities already have metros (or "mini-metros") and 
are adding or upgrading LRT, such as Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, and Lille.

Other all-surface LRT "metros" are widespread in European cities like 
Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bremen, 
Bielefeld, Leipzig, Dresden, Kassel, Dortmund, Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, 
Saarbruecken, Mannhaim, Den Haag, Antwerp, Graz, Inssbruck, Linz, Salzburg, 
Belgrade, Bratislava, Zagreb, Ostrava, Krakow .... and many, many, many 
more (the ones I've listed are just the city names I thought would be most 
recognizable).  Likewise, of course, most new LRT installations in North 
America are surface railways - San Diego, Calgary, Portland, San Jose, 
Sacramento, Denver, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis.  And of course the 
new Charlotte and Phoenix will be all-surface systems.  (I should mention 
that Portland, Dallas, and Minneapolis have short outlying tunnel sections, 
with stations;  Seattle's new LRT line will use the city's existing 
downtown transit tunnel and a tunnel under a hill.)

Bottom line:  Urban surface railways are widespread, and they work well - 
evidenced particularly by the fact that existing ones are being vigorously 
expanded.  For medium and smaller cities in Europe, they appear to be the 
primary urban rail mode of choice.  As grade separation becomes necessary - 
in CBDs or elsewhere - this can be and is being accomplished incrementally 
and affordably.  Meanwhile, these cities have benefited from decades of 
high-quality urban rail transit, building up their ridership base and 
helping shape their developing communities.

LH