- Ryk Spoor The major problem with Class A is cost, as anyone in rail knows. That's either making a tunnel under the other traffic, or building a bridge over all the other traffic. Both of these are horrifically expensive options. If you can afford to increase the cost of your system by an order of magnitude, Class A is definitely the way to go. But if you're budget limited you have a seriously strong reason to either drop the project, or go with at-grade.
- Alan Petrillo What you save today in construction costs, which likely isn't as much as you might think, you will pay tomorrow in operational and liability costs. Pay now or pay later.
- Alan Petrillo This is also why I'm a big fan or elevated monorail, as that seems to be the least expensive method of getting to an elevated Class A right of way.
- Ryk Spoor Someone else is paying later, after I'm out of office or at least no longer associated with the project, so DEFINITELY save today in construction costs.
And no, it IS as much as I might think, I see the costs for these kind of constructs in rail as part of my job. - Alan Petrillo Good point.
- Ryk Spoor Elevated monorail IS a lot cheaper... than building a new at-level monorail for only one reason: rights of way. You can use the same rights of way for an elevated monorail as you do for existing roads, but if you want to put in a new monorail, you need a massive number of new rights-of-way that must be continuous along lines or gentle curves.
- Alan Petrillo But the issue remains: How much will the operational and liability costs of the system be in 20 years? 40 years?
- Alan Petrillo As far as building a new monorail in an already developed environment, it's been done in a number of areas. Notably, Las Vegas in the US, in which they used abandoned power line right of way, and went right over streets, and in Daegu, South Korea, in which the monorail is above either streets or linear park for its entire length.
- Ryk Spoor Freight rail looks forward about 20-30 years. Power generation does that. Most other groups don't do that seriously, and anything that's involved with political elements heavily can at best make hazy future plans. Anything beyond the next election cycle is negotiable, and there's always a strong pressure to save money in the CURRENT election cycle. Which is why our infrastructure is the way it currently is. It'd have been a lot cheaper in the long run to make sure everything was repaired as things went., but that would have been politically expensive.
- Ryk Spoor Sure, there's a FEW places where you can do it, but most places have the important rights-of-way locked up, and you will pay DEARLY to get them in a continuous path.
- Alan Petrillo As usual, the problem isn't engineering, or finance, but politics.
- Alan Petrillo How about this, Ryk: Since you have the tools and the skill to use them, how about I send you a proposed route, and you evaluate the potential costs of rights of way?
- Ryk Spoor I have the skills to determine the *rough order of magnitude* construction costs -- I'm not a civil engineer, and doing the actual ACCURATE estimate would be a serious bit of work. But the rights of way? Not a chance. That's a "real estate sales and negotiation" question, with you (the buyer) being in a very disadvantaged position because the sellers know that you need *every single piece* of that right of way (rail can't quickly zig-zag, so you can't have "Up" style holdouts). Buying the rights of way could cost you vastly more than construction will.
- Ryk Spoor Plus there's the costs of the impact studies and licensing and zoning and gods only know what all.
- Alan Petrillo There's the thing: Most of the rights of way along the proposed route are over roads. Right Up the middle of 4th St, St. Petersburg, for example.
- Alan Petrillo But, yes, rights of way acquisition was why the Greenlight Pinellas plan would have cost $71M/mile to construct.
- Ryk Spoor Alan Petrillo Well, you'd have to know how the rights of way are currently arranged for those roads. What's the normal traffic like? Minimal clearance over busy roads is going to be at least 16' and more likely over 20'. If the rights are held by the local municipality, then in theory they could grant you the right to build above the road directly. But then you'd have construction practicalities to consider. Are you talking about St. Petersburg Florida? If so, what Google shows me for 4th street is a residential district.
- Alan Petrillo The clearance for straddle-beam monorails is usually 30'. 4th St. is far more than a residential district. Directly on 4th St. is commercial from downtown St. Petersburg all the way to the footing of the Howard Frankland Bridge. It's busy all day, and at peak times it's a traffic choked stoplight jungle. If you want to put the train and the stations where the people are then you couldn't do any better than 4th St. The best way to get the train from St. Petersburg to the proposed transportation hub at Carillon is to take it up 4th St. to Gandy, and then up Roosevelt into the Carillon Center.
- Alan Petrillo If you like, I can send you the proposed route.
- Ryk Spoor I could look at it if you like. But my first reaction is "holy jebus, trying to run an elevated train through a residential neighborhood? The residential resistance alone will slow construction and increase costs by a factor of two or three". Most people who own houses won't want a thirty-foot behemoth of a rail-roadway suddenly towering over their lawns and letting noisy trains rumble their way overhead. (the local resistance to far less high-profile construction has made one proposed mall go literally 10 years longer than planned, and slowed construction of stuff on my road by a factor of two or three)
- Ryk Spoor Now, if it's not going through the residential parts of 4th, that's probably more feasible.
- Alan Petrillo The area of 4th St. we're talking about is either 5 lane, divided 4 lane, or divided 6 lane all the way from downtown to Gandy. It is a major artery, and it is a big road.
- Alan Petrillo As for the noise issue, monorails are actually very quiet. In Las Vegas the monorail is quiet enough that it's almost inaudible over the environmental traffic noise, and most of what noise it does have comes from the air conditioners on top of the cars. I understand that passive-guideway maglev systems, which are similar in construction to the monorail, are even quieter.
- Alan Petrillo The trains won't be towering over anyone's lawns. Most of that length puts it on the other side of a wall of commercial buildings.
When it comes to fixed guideway transportation systems, I am a big fan of Class A right of way.
To define what I mean, Class A right of way is completely separated from vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Class B right of way is separated from vehicle and pedestrian traffic except for a few key intersections. Class C right of way is mixed with vehicle and pedestrian traffic except for a few key intersections. Class D right of way is completely mixed with vehicle and pedestrian traffic.
Class A right of way has two advantages over other classes. It allows the use of completely automated operation, and it is very safe. Which is most important I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
The big advantage to Class A right of way for a fixed guideway transit system is that it allows the operator to use automatic driverless operation in a completely automatic system. The elimination of drivers from the trains reduces the direct operating expense by something like 60%. An automated system, no matter how large, can be operated by a mere handful of people at an operations center, which drastically slashes personnel costs. Lower costs mean lower fares, and lower fares mean more people will use the system. Depending on the operator’s situation, automatic driverless operation with its lower operating costs may be what makes the system feasible at all.
Another big advantage to Class A right of way is safety. Trains, trams, and street cars operating in mixed rights of way are accident prone. Class C and class D rights of way especially so. In Houston the residents refer to theirs as “The Slam Bam Tram”, because it has had so many accidents. This may be a boon to manufacturers, as they get to sell lots of repair parts, but it is a bane to operators who have to cope with the results and expenses and bad publicity. To mitigate this problem operators tend to run their trams at low speed. The average speed of advance of trams is just 14mph. This results in long transit times, inconvenienced passengers, as well as bad publicity, all of which reduce ridership.
The argument I usually hear from proponents of mixed rights of way is “Buses and BRT have the same problem.” They do, but there’s a difference. Buses can steer, and buses can stop short, and trains can do neither. Trains, trams, and street cars ride a fixed track, so they cannot turn to avoid obstacles. In addition to this, steel wheels on steel rails, while they have very low rolling resistance, also have very little traction, which means that trains, even when going slowly, do not stop very effectively. These two operational properties, lack of steering and lack of stopping, mean that they are very prone to hit things that cross their paths unexpectedly. The only way to solve this problem is to use Class A right of way, which keeps things from crossing their paths unexpectedly.
These reasons alone justify the use of Class A rights of way. There are others, but these are the big ones. For these reasons I will always advocate for Class A rights of way wherever possible.
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