Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line

[kermit]

10 minutes ago, Blue_Devil said:

I mean is that incompetence or a manufacturer issue that is playing havoc with our system

perhaps both. I suspect (without any real information) that the electrical system on the BLE is spikey or noisy which is problematic for the control systems in the vehicles. This electrical noise could be the cause of train 'rebooting' (which I have seen less of recently) and also (perhaps?) the signal problems on N Tryon.

Just a theory. I am neither an electrical engineer nor train-poohbah.

Edited February 19, 2020 by kermit

[elrodvt]

Good question. You'd think they would be blaming whatever they can on the mfg upfront though.

Given the price you would think major components would be warrantied and recalled if failing prematurely?

[Blue_Devil]

9 minutes ago, elrodvt said:

Good question. You'd think they would be blaming whatever they can on the mfg upfront though.

Given the price you would think major components would be warrantied and recalled if failing prematurely?

In my experience heavy equipment warranties are for what ever you pay for after the first year (this experience is limited to elevators, generators, AHUs, and Chillers).

[Madison Parkitect]

4 minutes ago, Blue_Devil said:

In my experience heavy equipment warranties are for what ever you pay for after the first year (this experience is limited to elevators, generators, AHUs, and Chillers).

Is it really possible that light rail cars come with only A YEAR warranty?

[kermit]

While it could be the vehicles, these Siemens units are currently in use in many places in very similar conditions. There has been no indication (that I have seen) in the transit trade press that they are unreliable. Also everything appeared to be functioning well before the BLE opened.

[Blue_Devil]

25 minutes ago, kermit said:

While it could be the vehicles, these Siemens units are currently in use in many places in very similar conditions. There has been no indication (that I have seen) in the transit trade press that they are unreliable. Also everything appeared to be functioning well before the BLE opened.

It is interesting that the 100 models are fine and the 300 are having issues though. 
 

 While it is speculative, it seems to point to a specific issue

[Matthew.Brendan]

News anchor and cameraman onboard the northbound this afternoon around 4:30. 
 

Seemed to film brief blips here and there. Not close enough to overhear. 

[davidclt]

2 hours ago, kermit said:

While it could be the vehicles, these Siemens units are currently in use in many places in very similar conditions. There has been no indication (that I have seen) in the transit trade press that they are unreliable. Also everything appeared to be functioning well before the BLE opened.

Other successful transit systems are adopting the Siemens S70 vehicles - Seattle is acquiring 122 of them in addition to their existing rolling stock of 62 cars from Kinkisharyo-Mitsui. They built their platforms to support four car trains. I know why we didn't acquire more in round 1 and 1.5 (the 4 200 series cars), $$$. We could have done better than we did with our  42 cars (16 (101-116), +4 (201-204 aka 117-120 - look closely in the driver's window as a 200 series train approaches the station), +22 (301-322)). We really value engineered the crap out of our light rail system. It's frustrating.

[Blue_Devil]

Cost per car is about 8m with spare parts and some sort of continuing pm plan. Though I assume the cost per car goes down for each extra car ordered. 

[Nick2]

I'm honestly surprised we don't have more incidents considering the number of at grade crossings the blue line has. Hoping that they make a fast recovery.

[Hushpuppy321]

I nearly saw four people hit crossing the Tracks at the New Bern Station last Saturday about 8pm.  They crossed while arms were still down because SB Train had left but they were talking and texting and didn’t realize the NB Train was coming.  I yelled at them to watch out, the Train began heavy braking and horns - they all would’ve been hit had they not run out of the way in the last seconds (lady was wear heels and  twisted ankle running).

Man that was close - Not sure how more folks aren’t killed... but we all need to wait until the Crossing Arms are completely up before crossing.

[KJHburg]

Unfortunately distracted walking can be just as dangerous as distracted driving.  I have seen people on bikes or walking with ear buds on and they are not paying attention to their surroundings including around train tracks.  Just wait to the streetcar opens  do a google search on Houston Metro crash videos.   Same thing will happen here with distracted drivers and walkers and bikers too.  These trains do not stop on a dime.  

[JoshuaDrown]

2 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

Unfortunately distracted walking can be just as dangerous as distracted driving.  I have seen people on bikes or walking with ear buds on and they are not paying attention to their surroundings including around train tracks.  Just wait to the streetcar opens  do a google search on Houston Metro crash videos.   Same thing will happen here with distracted drivers and walkers and bikers too.  These trains do not stop on a dime.  

Yeah, we are becoming a constantly distracted society... distracted pedestrians mostly just hurt themselves, it’s distracted drivers that hurt hurt and kill others. 

[Windsurfer]

10 hours ago, Hushpuppy321 said:

I nearly saw four people hit crossing the Tracks at the New Bern Station last Saturday about 8pm.  They crossed while arms were still down because SB Train had left but they were talking and texting and didn’t realize the NB Train was coming.  I yelled at them to watch out, the Train began heavy braking and horns - they all would’ve been hit had they not run out of the way in the last seconds (lady was wear heels and  twisted ankle running).

Man that was close - Not sure how more folks aren’t killed... but we all need to wait until the Crossing Arms are completely up before crossing.

Hmmmmm. Monorail. ;-)

[videtur quam contuor]

When I was running car 85 the figure was 200 feet to stop from 20 mph, lightly loaded. A full load was much farther and the trolley handled as if a different vehicle completely. A half to full load light rail double vehicle would be more than that I suspect. In other words it will not stop in time. The pedestrian or vehicle must clear the stop or be struck, in other words.

Edited February 27, 2020 by tarhoosier

[kermit]

Blue Line ridership is up 20.1% YTD (to 29,344 weekday average) and up 16.4% YOY. Pretty impressive considering reliability issues and the capacity crunch (although still significantly below the 33,500 daily riders that CATS had projected at opening).

(according to the latest quarterly report)

Edited March 9, 2020 by kermit

[Hushpuppy321]

I knew something had to be up with both the morning & evening rush hours at crush capacity.  I wish they could find a way to speed up funding & construction of the SilverLine.

[Matthew.Brendan]

Increased frequency. 
 

More cars to account for maintenance without having to impact capacity. 
 

Complete all stations for 3 cars. 
 

Who can code me a twitter bot to spam cats every day?
 

 

[tozmervo]

11 minutes ago, Matthew.Brendan said:

Increased frequency. 
More cars to account for maintenance without having to impact capacity. 
Complete all stations for 3 cars. 
Who can code me a twitter bot to spam cats every day?

Spam city council & meck commission. They hold the purse strings.

[XRZ.ME]

https://charlottenc.gov/cats/about/boards/MTC Agendas/MTC_Agenda_Summary_200226.pdf

 

Feb MTC meeting has some explanation for BL rolling stock issue.

Long running time means CATS has less spares cars. 

And combined with maintenance issue. That lead to current 9 minute headway.

[southslider]

Fewer spare LRVs is true. That being the cause of longer headways is false. The truth is CATS wasn't prepared to run an extension with so many street crossing gates.  Run times ended up longer than planned. Motorist disruptions occur much more frequently.  But sure, let's blame it on a mid-life crisis.

[grodney]

When I saw the news of the increase to 9 minutes a few weeks ago, it didn't even occur to me how that would make the rush-hour crowding even worse.  Ugh.  So glad I beat the rush both ways.  

[kermit]

Nice piece on the NoDa development boom and the BLE at the CBJ: https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2020/03/12/how-nodas-light-rail-connection-is-creating-a-new.html

Quote

“The lot sizes on North Davidson are so small,” Dewey said. “I don’t think the neighborhood wants to densify North Davidson and 36th ... I think the density is going to occur along the west side of the rail station.” [the opportunity zone]

Quote

Industrious NoDa’s private offices were 40% pre-leased before it opened, said Melissa Bessler, Southeast area manager at Industrious. The company is seeing wide-ranging tenant interest, including remote workers, real estate and marketing firms, even a company that manufactures drones (the drones are built offsite).

Peri Demestihas, director of real estate at Industrious, said the company looks at many factors before deciding where to open a coworking office. Highly walkable, amenitized neighborhoods are important, as well as connectivity.

And picking NoDa was based at least in part on the likelihood of future office investment in the area, Demestihas said.

“I think there will absolutely be office demand in the market moving forward ... that positions us really well to be the flexible space provider in the market,” Demestihas said.

Quote

A different direction

When South End was first developing, many of the prime blocks were snapped up by apartment developers. In the early 2010s, some of those projects didn’t include ground-floor retail space, now seen as an important feature of development along the line.

Today, land near stations like 36th Street have an opportunity to be built out with a greater mix of uses because there’s already a playbook for transit development and important lessons learned.

“A lot of the creative market office (in South End) went two or three blocks off the light rail,” Kuhn said. “Now that the market has very loudly spoken that that’s the kind of office space the new worker and company wants, (office) can compete with multifamily on premier spots.”

 

Edited March 12, 2020 by kermit

[tozmervo]

On 3/11/2020 at 7:49 AM, grodney said:

When I saw the news of the increase to 9 minutes a few weeks ago, it didn't even occur to me how that would make the rush-hour crowding even worse.  Ugh.  So glad I beat the rush both ways.  

Given that 9 minutes is basically what the trains were already running at, it probably won't change crowding that much. In theory it will go a long way to eliminating service "hiccups" that cause the worst congestion, when a train gets out of place or is several minutes behind. 

[tozmervo]

Learned an interesting tidbit last night:
During BLE design, part of the changes included reducing North Tryon in lane width (in addition to adding bike lanes), which lowered the road speed limit from 45mph to 35mph. NCDOT* has a rule that train vehicles may not go faster than 10mph over the adjacent road speed limit, so they can't exceed 45 when the rail is in the North Tryon median. While this certainly isn't the ONLY thing that's cause the longer-than-expected run time on the BLE, it is a contributing factor.

*North Tryon is an NCDOT road