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Charlotte Center City Streetcar Network


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2 hours ago, CharlotteWkndBuzz said:

We should have just made a very intricate system  all over uptown and surrounding areas of these things...no tracks to be laid and we could have a higher frequency.  BTW, this is blue font for the most part but kind of true lol.  Still optimistic the new gold line can be a catalyst for TOD development.  Also, am I the only one that thinks the Gold line should be slightly cheaper than the blue line ticket ($2.20 when they start charging)?  No set schedule, no ROW, you dont go as far, etc...feel like it should be a cheaper ticket.  

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I like how you use San Francisco, when they have a very intricate system of rail in the city. I used to take the N line every day. 

Edited by Blue_Devil
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5 hours ago, Yeahdoug said:

Rode it again. The 20 min wait at sunnyside with the train sitting in the turn around spot is so annoying. Like they are purposely slowing everything down.

 

That's because they are.  The wait times are there so that vehicles don't bunch up.  The Busses have similar wait times at designated stops (end of line and Mid Route) Go sit at the CTC for a bit and you'll see busses just sitting there , similarly there are mid route stops where the bus driver is not allowed to leave before a certain time.  This helps with vehicle spacing which helps with route efficiency and service perception. The Blue line even has these "slowdowns" built in because out drivers haven't been trained by the Japanese (in reality even the Japanese rail systems have these built in even with their to the minute on time performance).  

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9 hours ago, Yeahdoug said:

Rode it again. The 20 min wait at sunnyside with the train sitting in the turn around spot is so annoying. Like they are purposely slowing everything down. I feel like 10 min frequency is not that far away. Maybe only one extra car and going 5 more mph. I doubt we broke 25 mph on our way back at 11 pm.  It was still 50 mins total with the initial wait at sunnyside to go to gateway. 
 

we laughed because there were some runners we caught up to at the Tryon stop and they beat us to CPCC. Lmao 
 

 

I drive trucks and my trainer at my new company described the truck’s low center of gravity as being like they’re “riding on rails.” I couldn’t help but think that he’s probably never ridden the Gold Line.

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19 hours ago, DEnd said:

That's because they are.  The wait times are there so that vehicles don't bunch up.  The Busses have similar wait times at designated stops (end of line and Mid Route) Go sit at the CTC for a bit and you'll see busses just sitting there , similarly there are mid route stops where the bus driver is not allowed to leave before a certain time.  This helps with vehicle spacing which helps with route efficiency and service perception. The Blue line even has these "slowdowns" built in because out drivers haven't been trained by the Japanese (in reality even the Japanese rail systems have these built in even with their to the minute on time performance).  

Add another car and reduce the spacing. 
 

How many cars are running right now at one time? Four? 

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30 minutes ago, Yeahdoug said:

Add another car and reduce the spacing. 
 

How many cars are running right now at one time? Four? 

There has been only one gold line vehicle in the North yard since service began, I don’t think they are storing any at the South yard, but not sure. 
 

Edit: CATS has 6 gold line vehicles so I suspect they are already running 5.

Edited by kermit
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15 minutes ago, kermit said:

There has been only one gold line vehicle in the North yard since service began, I don’t think they are storing any at the South yard, but not sure. 
 

Edit: CATS has 6 gold line vehicles so I suspect they are already running 5.

How many blue line spares are there? You could run all 6 gold line cars and steal a spare blue line if need be short term right? 

 

You can’t commute efficiently with the way they are running it right now. Which defeats a large part of the purpose imo. 

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9 minutes ago, Yeahdoug said:

How many blue line spares are there? You could run all 6 gold line cars and steal a spare blue line if need be short term right? 

 

You can’t commute efficiently with the way they are running it right now. Which defeats a large part of the purpose imo. 

None of the Blue Line cars have battery storage to run off-wire for the section in the heart of uptown, though. 

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I am genuinely ticked that the strip maps in the Blue Line vehicles have not been updated to include the GL.

Do better CATS!

For two days in a row there have been no GL vehicles sitting in the North yard. Not sure if CATS decided to run all 6 vehicles or if they moved the spare to the South yard.

 

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Edited by kermit
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30 minutes ago, RANYC said:

Hilarious.  Charlotte Ledger staged a race between a 39 year old runner and the street car covering the entire length of the Gold Line.

Runner won by 7 minutes.  Article points out that streetcar might have been more competitive with priority at lights.

https://charlotteledger.substack.com/p/transit-time-can-a-runner-beat-the

Fun article/video, but also a kind of pointless. I outran the Blue Line train through uptown (inside the 277 loop until the rail trail diverts around the convention center) and I'm a slower runner than she is. It's not hard when the train is making so many station stops even if it has a dedicated ROW and no lights. 

Edited by TGIBridays
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10 minutes ago, TGIBridays said:

Fun article/video, but also a kind of pointless. I outran the Blue Line train through uptown (inside the 277 loop until the rail trail diverts around the convention center) and I'm a slower runner than she is. It's not hard when the train is making so many station stops even if it has a dedicated ROW and no lights. 

Not necessarily agreeing with it, but I do see a point.  There's definitely a hidden agenda on the part of some at Ledger.  They're giving very critical reviews of the scale of the city's rail/streetcar proposals.

Point: compounding the fact that this thing runs only every 20 minutes, these machines still lag human runners even after you've spent all that time waiting and are actually on one. 

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In the article, they mention that the Gold Line street cars have a top speed of 25 mph.  That seemed low, so I looked it up and according to Siemens that's the max speed. https://assets.new.siemens.com/siemens/assets/api/uuid:251fd5b2-92c9-467a-bcc1-ba6c8064a8f7/low-floor-lrv-literature.pdf

Does anyone know if that is just when the car is running off-wire or is that the top speed regardless?

Reason being, if/when phase 3 gets built out and the street car isn't making as frequent stops, that's going to really limit transit times. Also, I remember reading somewhere that there was talk about transitioning to a dedicated ROW for the Gold Line as it gets further down Central. Doesn't seem to be much of a point to doing that if they can only go 25 mph. 

Edited by TGIBridays
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26 minutes ago, TGIBridays said:

In the article, they mention that the Gold Line street cars have a top speed of 25 mph.  That seemed low, so I looked it up and according to Siemens that's the max speed. https://assets.new.siemens.com/siemens/assets/api/uuid:251fd5b2-92c9-467a-bcc1-ba6c8064a8f7/low-floor-lrv-literature.pdf

Does anyone know if that is just when the car is running off-wire or is that the top speed regardless?

Reason being, if/when phase 3 gets built out and the street car isn't making as frequent stops, that's going to really limit transit times. Also, I remember reading somewhere that there was talk about transitioning to a dedicated ROW for the Gold Line as it gets further down Central. Doesn't seem to be much of a point to doing that if they can only go 25 mph. 

That’s BS. They tested the Gold line cars on the Blue line. I saw them myself running. 

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