Green Line Type 10 Procurement

Seeing how long these type 10 cars are got me thinking about a question Ive had recently. What is the theoretical limit to how long individual light rail cars can be made? For instance in the case of seattle where they are hooking 4 light rail cars together, could they theoretically make one train that is the same length? Theres a lot of wasted space here with all of the redundant cab cars, couplers, dead space between cars..etc.

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Each car is made up of two cab cars and 1 knuckle, which is the standard light rail car layout. They are hooking 4 of these together.
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Whereas the type 10 is designed to essentially combine the length of 2 cars into 1 by having 2 cab cars and 5 knuckles.

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So since the extra long cars allow much more people to be carried per given length of train is the next iteration of this in the future going to be to have light rail trains with instead of 5 knuckles say 10 knuckles? It seems like eventually it would make sense to get these light rail trains as long as possible to where you end up only needing one train at a time like you do with a subway. Is this the future of light rail or is there a reason why this will not work? It seems like with the pass through car design if you could get it to the point where each line is just using individual super long trains you would be able to move a pretty substantial amount of people for a light rail/tram line. Is this what the train manufacturers are going to be pushing for into the future or are there reasons why this is not a good idea?
 
stick n move said:
Seeing how long these type 10 cars are got me thinking about a question Ive had recently. What is the theoretical limit to how long individual light rail cars can be made? For instance in the case of seattle where they are hooking 4 light rail cars together, could they theoretically make one train that is the same length? Theres a lot of wasted space here with all of the redundant cab cars, couplers, dead space between cars..etc.

View attachment 57392

Each car is made up of two cab cars and 1 knuckle, which is the standard light rail car layout. They are hooking 4 of these together.
link-light-rail-testing-1500x1000.webp


Whereas the type 10 is designed to essentially combine the length of 2 cars into 1 by having 2 cab cars and 5 knuckles.

View attachment 57393

So since the extra long cars allow much more people to be carried per given length of train is the next iteration of this in the future going to be to have light rail trains with instead of 5 knuckles say 10 knuckles? It seems like eventually it would make sense to get these light rail trains as long as possible to where you end up only needing one train at a time like you do with a subway. Is this the future of light rail or is there a reason why this will not work? It seems like with the pass through car design if you could get it to the point where each line is just using individual super long trains you would be able to move a pretty substantial amount of people for a light rail/tram line. Is this what the train manufacturers are going to be pushing for into the future or are there reasons why this is not a good idea?
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There's a few 60m trams on the market now, but low-floor vehicles reduce capacity even more than the dead-space, so unless you're working with a subway-surface arrangement with a lot of branches like Boston, Philly, or San Francisco you should aim for high-floor vehicles and higher frequencies first, and only then start pushing length.

Seattle made a big mistake by going with low-floor trams going to keep paying for it for a long time. Link Light Rail trains are 40ft shorter than Red Line trains, but can hold 40% fewer people. Not using high-floor vehicles and just accepting that the street stations would be bigger was unbelievably stupid, and any savings on low platforms have certainly been erased by the need for longer trains. Or they could have just used an elevated viaduct, like they did for a big chunk of the rest of the line, instead of street running which would have opened up the possibility for much higher headways and better reliability.

Anyways, Boston probably needs low-floor vehicles due to the extensive street segments and stations designed around having track crossings. Could Boston eventually see 60m vehicles? Maybe someday, but right now most trains don't need that kind of length, so it doesn't really make sense to order a bunch of trains entirely dedicated to it. Single Type 10s will be plenty for the C branch or potentially even the B or E for the foreseeable future, so you'd be just wasting space with fixing the minimum train length to be longer than that.
 
TheRatmeister said:
There's a few 60m trams on the market now, but low-floor vehicles reduce capacity even more than the dead-space, so unless you're working with a subway-surface arrangement with a lot of branches like Boston, Philly, or San Francisco you should aim for high-floor vehicles and higher frequencies first, and only then start pushing length.

Seattle made a big mistake by going with low-floor trams going to keep paying for it for a long time. Link Light Rail trains are 40ft shorter than Red Line trains, but can hold 40% fewer people. Not using high-floor vehicles and just accepting that the street stations would be bigger was unbelievably stupid, and any savings on low platforms have certainly been erased by the need for longer trains. Or they could have just used an elevated viaduct, like they did for a big chunk of the rest of the line, instead of street running which would have opened up the possibility for much higher headways and better reliability.

Anyways, Boston probably needs low-floor vehicles due to the extensive street segments and stations designed around having track crossings. Could Boston eventually see 60m vehicles? Maybe someday, but right now most trains don't need that kind of length, so it doesn't really make sense to order a bunch of trains entirely dedicated to it. Single Type 10s will be plenty for the C branch or potentially even the B or E for the foreseeable future, so you'd be just wasting space with fixing the minimum train length to be longer than that.
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At some point in GLR-land I think it makes sense to have two different fleets with some cars that can't handle the Park Inner/Brattle/Kenmore loops but have higher capacity.
 
737900er said:
At some point in GLR-land I think it makes sense to have two different fleets with some cars that can't handle the Park Inner/Brattle/Kenmore loops but have higher capacity.
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It's a somewhat common scheme over on the Design a Better Boston subforum. You basically have two different systems at that point. A streetcar system fed from Kenmore and a light rail system fed by the outer tracks at Boylston that connect to some new subway to the south. That way you reduce interlining and increase resiliency across the whole system.
 
737900er said:
At some point in GLR-land I think it makes sense to have two different fleets with some cars that can't handle the Park Inner/Brattle/Kenmore loops but have higher capacity.
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The problem is that you can't evenly split the system into grade-separated/street operations. GLX to Boylston is easy, convert the outer tracks and turn all A/B/C trains at Park St. But then what? That would leave trains to Riverside and Needham via Huntington, but also any lines to Nubian and Mattapan, Design Center, or Arborway.
 
ulrichomega said:
That aisle looks awfully narrow. Which section is that?
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I noticed that too. It's one of the sections with wheels, so the seats are pushed to the inside in order to make room for them. Someone who apparently works in disability access was complaining that those sections were too narrow for a wheelchair or even a stroller, and that disability access doesn't mean restricting people to just certain sections of the train. I don't know that there's a way around that other than switching to a wider track gauge, which is obviously a non-starter.
 
I just came back home from viewing the mockup. Yes, the seats are hard plastic, but they feel so small, like there's only enough room for your butt!!! The backs are ok, but where there is floor space with them on each side, the floor looks narrow. One of the employees working for the T, says that they may be tweaked to give some more room. Other that those few discrepencies, everything else looks ok.
 
ceo said:
I noticed that too. It's one of the sections with wheels, so the seats are pushed to the inside in order to make room for them. Someone who apparently works in disability access was complaining that those sections were too narrow for a wheelchair or even a stroller, and that disability access doesn't mean restricting people to just certain sections of the train. I don't know that there's a way around that other than switching to a wider track gauge, which is obviously a non-starter.
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Eng was there, I talked to him and he said the only way to allow a wider passage is to change the seating to forward backward seating but that would loose 6 seats.
 
Here's more. The little boy playing with the accelerater was getting a kick out of it!! Hah!!!

 
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Jahvon09 said:
I just came back home from viewing the mockup. Yes, the seats are hard plastic, but they feel so small, like there's only enough room for your butt!!! The backs are ok, but where there is floor space with them on each side, the floor looks narrow.
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I hope the seats themselves at least aren’t the final version.
 
nortor said:
I hope the seats themselves at least aren’t the final version.
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A T employee said that they may be tweaked. Even though the exterior will more than likely stay the same, some refinements will probably take place indoors, such as the seats, floor space & whatever else have you. If you just happen to be riding on a Type 9, youll see some of those refinements that are already in place. The seats feel a little bigger & they feature the yellow hand rails. :)
 
Stlin said:
My personal assumption is as follows:

Stock Urbos 3 = CAF as OEM maintains and makes available an inventory of Urbos specific frameless windows for repairs, since they're the same across the worldwide fleet of 1000+ vehicles.

Non-stock/bespoke type 10 = inability to integrate existing molded windows, leading to framed windows cut out of flat glass/polycarbonate and standard gaskets that both CAF and the T can manufacture simply and enable in-house replacements. Same logic extends to the type 9s, Houston and MTA Purple Line's non-Urbos CAF LRVs, though admittedly for the latter two their black painted window bands largely masks it.
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I asked a T employee about this at the mockup event today, he told me the windows are designed this way so that they're easier to replace. There's nothing prohibiting them from using the larger exterior glass panels, but he cited this style of window requiring less disassembly of the interior during replacement and that it's beneficial for maintenance staff that the replacement process will be about the same across MBTA vehicles.

I do think the larger exterior glass looks a bit better, but if this design helps cut down on maintenance costs I'm not going to complain much.
 
cubbe8 said:
Eng was there, I talked to him and he said the only way to allow a wider passage is to change the seating to forward backward seating but that would loose 6 seats.
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I saw a few people with strollers and motorized wheelchairs in the mockup today. They could fit through the narrower sections when the seats were empty, but there definitely wouldn't have been enough room if people were sitting down. It really doesn't seem like there's more room to work with though, unless they reduced seating like you mentioned. All things considered I'm pretty impressed with what they came up with.
 
FahrradFahren said:
I asked a T employee about this at the mockup event today, he told me the windows are designed this way so that they're easier to replace. There's nothing prohibiting them from using the larger exterior glass panels, but he cited this style of window requiring less disassembly of the interior during replacement and that it's beneficial for maintenance staff that the replacement process will be about the same across MBTA vehicles.

I do think the larger exterior glass looks a bit better, but if this design helps cut down on maintenance costs I'm not going to complain much.
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That was my hunch. I do wish the T was a little more open to less utilitarian fit and finish.

I remember talking with someone who worked at one of the bus garages about their fondness for the RTS buses from a maintenance perspective. They could hack together fixes to get a bus back on the road much easier than the more recent ones.
 
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Am I misremembering or something, but I thought the dark grey paint scheme had won out? The mockup was silver. I think the mockup looked great so hopefully it represents what were going to get, I just could have swore that the darker paint scheme had won.
 
Thinking a little more about the maintenance rationale for the window design: Do other transit systems with the more stock Urbos design not suffer from window issues at the same rate as the T? How do they handle the maintenance? Why can’t the T handle newer window systems like the Urbos?
 
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