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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

capacity

"Operating on 2 minute headways using traffic signal progression, a well-designed two-track system can handle more than 30 trains per hour,"

This is a picky point but using 2 minute headways you can NOT have more than 30 trains an hour. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.212.89.240 (talk) 16:07, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Such is true, it should say "up to 30 trains per hour per track". I think I'll change it.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 16:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

"20,000 per hour" - needs elaboration.

"20,000 per hour" not a meaningful figure without elaboration. At 30 trains per hour the capacity would have to be 667 per consist but the maximum capacity vehicle cited is the Siemens with only 220 passengers. Since most installed systems operate at well below this maximum it is misleading to the uninitiated that are likely to use Wikipedia as a point of reference. (Also the link to the reference that supports the 20,000 per hour figure is broken).

Since this is a theoretical maximum one would have to say that a freeway lane with 2,000 cars per hour should be taken as potentially having five passengers per vehicle or a theoretical capacity of 10,000 passengers per hour per lane. This could be extended to buses per hour per freeway lane. Likewise comparing the average loading of 1.2 cars should be made against the average loading of LRT. Compare "Apples with apples" I would say. Tjej (talk) 02:35, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

The latest Siemens SD 160NG cars have a crush capacity of 256 passengers, and you can couple them into 4-car trains to carry 1000 pass./train.
From Calgary Transit Technical Information
  • Maximum PRACTICAL single direction capacity at design capacity of 162 pass./car and 2 min. headway:
    • 3-car train (present) 14,580
    • 4-car train (future) 19,440
  • Maximum THEORETICAL single direction capacity (pass./hr/dir) at 256 pass./car and 2 min. headway:
    • 3-car train 23,040
    • 4-car train 30,720
  • Actual peak hour passenger load (pass./hr/dir): a.m. peak 7,255
  • Average number of boarding passengers per day: (2012) 259,000
Calgary LRT is moving over a quarter of a million passengers per day through the middle of its downtown core using a narrow downtown street shared with buses, and is now running at about half its practical capacity with 3-car trains, so they are extending them to 4 cars to ease the crowding. OTOH, Ottawa built a dedicated busway to do the same thing, but it cost almost as much as Calgary's LRT, it hit capacity much sooner than expected, and the noise and diesel fumes from hundreds of buses per hour made it very unpopular with downtown businesses and residents. Ottawa is now adding an LRT system.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 03:53, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

American bias

"the DLR system was at the high end of what Americans considered to be light rail" So what?

There is also a bias in the first sentence "Light rail or light rail transit (LRT) is typically an urban form of public transport using the same rolling stock as a tramway" No one in their right mind would expect a DLR train to run on a tram way, apart from the weight and slow stopping speeds, squishy-squashy there's no driver!

And as it is mentioned that the DLR name is based on the Light Railways Act 1896 (not sure it is) why does the definition section not start with this late Victorian legislation rather than starting with the US Urban Mass Transportation Administration name of 1972?

-- PBS (talk) 22:34, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The Docklands Light Railway is not really a light rail system. From the Wikipedia article,
The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) is an automated light metro system
Light metro redirects to Medium-capacity rail transport system which says,
a medium-capacity system (MCS) is a non-universal term coined to differentiate an intermediate system between light rail and heavy rail.
...and the article has a picture of a DLR train as an example of a MCS system. Notwithstanding that, the DLR rolling stock is based on a German light rail design which is capable of in-street running. The DLR designers just removed the manual driver controls and substituted fully automated controls, which is possible with almost any modern LRT equipment. Most light rail designers now prefer to retain driver control since eliminating the driver doesn't save as much money as designers used to think. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 05:00, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Light railway

The term "light railway" is in many cases interchangeable with "light rail". <<< SOME GADGET GEEK >>> (talk) 16:41, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

  • No, not really. "Light rail" is a modern term describing urban transit systems like tram and light metro systems; "Light railway" is an old term for rail systems with a lighter loading gauge and engineered for lighter traffic, lower costs etc. Also, they were usually found in rural, not urban areas. The terms may (or may not) be synonymous in the US but they certainly aren't in Britain or elsewhere. Moonraker12 (talk) 14:10, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No. The terms are not synonymous in the US. Combining the articles just because the terms sound similar would just cause more confusion. The two articles should cross-ref for disambiguation, and perhaps language could be added to each to clarify the distinction between them. Reify-tech (talk) 14:29, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No Per above the terms have slightly different meanings that should be discussed better in the article --Trödel 16:14, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose Although the two systems have a common history, the modern implication in a post-road transport context is quite different. This is particularly evident in how the two WP articles have developed. Light rail as the term is now applied is a solution of mass transit, rather than for inter-linking small villages. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose – even in the UK the terms have different meanings. Meanwhile, in North America, the term "light railway" is essentially not used at all. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 08:06, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose for all the reasons stated above. The editor proposing this has clearly not edited Wikipedia long enough (only six months) and has clearly not visited enough continents. Please review Wikipedia's article naming guidelines and Wikipedia content policies. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:57, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Fast tram

No distinguishing term - fast trams almost always share the characteristics of light rail transit. <<< SOME GADGET GEEK >>> (talk) 14:12, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

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Not hyphenating the compound modifier "light[-]rail" (something), just because "we don't do that"?

Hey, guys, someone is trying to have me believe that there's a supposed "rule" here at the 'Pedia that says that "we don't" hyphenate compound modifiers just because the writers of source material are too punctuationally inept to realize that they should be doing it. But I can't find this supposed "rule," and ask that he or she points it out to me. If there is no actual rule (read: written in any kind of official WP document), then I propose that we restore the proper hyphenations that had already been made to this article, per MOS:HYPHEN RULE 3, since that for sure is part of the Wikipedia rule book. Is that not obvious? We don't have to write something a certain way just because too many source writers aren't educated enough to do so, do we? There's a difference between accepting information from supposedly reliable sources and accepting their grammatical/punctuation flaws, is there not?

The idea of light rail in general and light-rail equipment specifically (See what I did there?) is that the equipment itself isn't light, and neither are many miles of railing in the system, but that the slower speeds and the higher number of stops than heavy-rail service has makes it a light service. So for example: Is a "light rail car" a car on light rails or a light car on rails? NEITHER! It is a light-rail car because it's a car on the light-rail (one word, one modifier, with the hyphen) system! So can you editors make enough sense of that to agree that we should restore the correct edits that convert "light rail __________" into "light-rail ____________" because in those cases "light-rail" is certainly a compound-word modifier of "system," "vehicle," "car," or "service," etc.?

Thanks if so. And for now I'm 97.117.19.208 (talk) 19:12, 25 August 2017 (UTC), but my IP address is very dynamic, so this could change at any time.

Like a number of other editors a message was left on my talk page by Special:Contributions 97.117.19.208
History of the article:
  • 03:09, 19 August 2017‎ 97.117.37.212(60,791 bytes) (0)‎ . .
  • 11:49, 19 August 2017‎ Oknazevad (60,677 bytes) (-114)‎ . . (Revert incorrect changes. "Light rail" is not hyphenated in any usage.)
  • 10:12, 22 August 2017‎ 174.23.98.59 (60,791 bytes) (+114)‎ . . (Haha, no no no. You don't understand that hyphens are often used to form compound modifiers. For example, from MOS:HYPHEN 3: "a hyphen can help to disambiguate (little-celebrated paintings is not a reference to little paintings)." Rst other edits too.)
  • 14:02, 22 August 2017‎ Oknazevad (60,677 bytes) (-114)‎ . . (Undid revision 796663792 by 174.23.98.59 (talk) If sources don't use it that way, we don't either, even if it's non-standard. Not one source uses the hyphen.)
It seem that an IP editor has used a number of IP addresses (97.117.37.212 cntribtns, 174.23.98.59 cntribtns, and 97.117.19.208 cntribtns) all are from the same place in LA. This is confusing and potentially leads to sock-puppetry. I will not engage in a conversation with the IP user until the editor creates an account, or agrees to edit with just one IP address.
If you are one of the other editors who had a message left on their talk page by the editor using IP addresses please do not respond until that editor creates a user name (or agrees to use just on IP address) as this will reduce the likelihood of confusion. -- PBS (talk) 19:42, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
It's not sock-puppetry if I am telling you that I have a dynamic IP address--which is the usual way to have consumer internet service, in case you're not already aware--and that it changes when it wants to, so there isn't really "agreeing to use only one IP address." I'll always try to make sure you guys know that my replies are from the same person who posted this discussion. So again, it's not sock-puppetry. All of my addresses are either 75..., 97..., or 174....
97.117.19.208 (talk) 20:49, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
The IP is correct, PBS. There will never be a requirement for registration, per the Wikimedia Foundation. Dynamic IPs are just as welcome to edit and discuss as any other user. oknazevad (talk) 22:42, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
The rule is not as strict as you are saying it is. See, for instance, this site: "Rule 10. Many editors do not hyphenate certain well-known expressions. [...] However, other editors prefer hyphenating all compound modifiers, even those with low risk of ambiguity." Both are acceptable. I would never write "ice-cream cone", or "baseball-card collector". Or "light-rail station". With compound nouns like "ice cream" and "light rail", it seems wrong to add a hyphen. Compare with "degree that takes four years" -> "four-year degree". There's no good way to rephrase "light rail station" so that "light" modifies "rail" explicitly. "Station for a rail that is light"? Sounds kinda silly. Just my $0.02. --Fru1tbat (talk) 21:50, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
Fru1tbat, your "light-rail station" example is flawed in that you thought we were trying to modify "rail." We're not, and that's the whole point: the "light" in "light-rail" is not to modify "rail;" it is "light-rail" acting as one word to modify "station:" a light-rail station.
97.117.19.208 (talk) 22:05, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
But "light rail" here is a single two-word noun, much like "ice cream". The analogy of "ice cream cone" is a perfect one; no one writes "ice-cream cone", either, and it would be considered incorrect in all uses. Same thing here. Considering none of the sources used in this article hyphenate the term, even when it's used as a attributive noun, then we shouldn't either. oknazevad (talk) 22:42, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
LOL, "[my] personal grammatical rules" (from your silly summary), okna? What a joke! I don't make up rules and try to apply them to the community. I find the rules that already existed and apply them in the way I understand that they belong.
But who's the supposed "authority" on this? I looked in WP:MOS and didn't find it there. I don't know what other page I'd find it in, so that's why I'm asking you to help me by showing me which rule page it's supposedly on. Shouldn't every supposed "rule" we'd be expected to follow here, other than the most obvious cut-and-dried ones (not misspelling things, etc.)
97.117.19.208 (talk) 00:07, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
Fully concur with User:Oknazevad and User:Fru1tbat on this one. This is a very basic rule of English hyphenation that most native English language speakers acquire somewhere between the ages of 12 and 18. I understood it intuitively by age 12. (I went on to earn a perfect score on the verbal portion of the SAT I, and I write for a living, so I have a fairly good understanding of what I'm talking about.)
Also, I have been fascinated with transportation public policy from a young age---I read my first EIR in hard copy at a public library around age 13, in the pre-Web days---and after having read hundreds of EIRs and FONSIs over the years, I have never seen any self-respecting transportation professional use the term "light-rail." (If you had to look up EIR or FONSI, then you are way out of your depth on this.) Under Wikipedia:Article titles, we go with the commonly used name, and that's "light rail." --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:40, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
I have never personally seen hyphenation being used in regards to light rail, but I did check. Going through 10 pages of search results there was not a single use of hyphenation, no governments, trade bodies, media, not a single use except for Orange County who were hyphenating absolutely everything they wrote: "Seventeen-mile", "Durham-Orange", "Cost-share", "half-cent". WatcherZero (talk) 00:49, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
Uh, "absolutely everything they wrote" is a gross exaggeration, WatcherZero, because if that were the case, they would have a hyphen between every word there.
But all right then, guys, thanks for your participation! I say we celebrate this resolution with a round of ice-cream floats! No, I mean ice cream floats! :-D
97.117.19.208 (talk) 01:16, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

In Europe, however

What does "Europe" mean in this context, Europe, the European continent, the EU? -- PBS (talk) 10:25, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Efficiency

The section called 'Efficiency' is whack. It's mostly a long paragraph and table comparing ideal passenger density, not efficiency, or even real world average passenger density. If you want to talk about efficiency, we need to know real world passenger miles per gallon & type of fuel and have something to compare it to. It should also discuss fuel cost comparisons and fluctuations and costs of infrastructure, overhead, personnel & maintenance for the vehicles and the tracks.172.75.76.157 (talk) 18:09, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

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Contruction costs

There's text in the article that states that construction costs for light rail per passenger-mile are comparable to freeways due to peak carrying capacities of 20k/hour (passengers) and 2k-2200/hr (vehicles). Earlier in the article, there is a reference to the average vehicle occupancy being 1.5, so that's a ratio of 6.06-6.67:1. Also, just beforehand, it states that the average cost for light rail is $35M/mile and for freeway is $2.3M/mile, a ratio of 15:1. That doesn't strike me as comparable. Am I missing something? If not, can I just remove this contradictory conclusion (which has no reference, incidentally)? Mmtmmt (talk) 11:11, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Put another way, that's $1750 per passenger-hour-mile for light rail and $1045-$1150 per vehicle-hour-mile for freeway. Even with all single-occupancy vehicles, that doesn't fall into any reasonable definition of "comparable". Mmtmmt (talk) 19:58, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Cleveland?

In Cleveland, we have two rail systems, referred to as heavy and light. The former is post-war construction; the latter is 1920s construction to support real estate developers (who incidentally bought a controlling interest in the Nickel Plate RR to support their efforts).

Does that qualify? Is it not listed because it's nearly a century old on a fifty year old concept, or just because nobody has bothered? Snile (talk) 11:49, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Added it to the appropriate passage; don't know why it was left off, but Cleveland's Green and Blue Lines totally fit the description of pre-World War II streetcars that were upgraded to modern standards over the years. oknazevad (talk) 14:35, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Lead

[…] tram […] is a form of tramway […] that constitutes a form of tram.

Perhaps we could find a better way to phrase that? Cheers ⌘ hugarheimur 18:32, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

That terrible wording crept in through some bad rewrites in September that plainly ignore that tram (aka streetcar or trolley) has a separate article. I restored the older version of the lead. oknazevad (talk) 21:03, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
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