Photos of some repair teams repositioning the train onto the tracks and one of an LRV towing the damaged to the service depot. A very costly procedure to do some very costly repairs. They'll also have to do some very costly track, electrical line and pantograph inspection. Then do a very costly repair on the train. And then a very costly investigation at all levels: GRT, RoW, Keolis, WRPS and so on. Eventually, the added up cost of all these collisions over the years will have cost the same as tunnels or elevated sections.
We can blame the cars all we want - and indeed they're at fault - but guess what? The LRT is basically a very expensive, very slow car because it is forced to share the same infrastructure they do. Wouldn't have had this issue if there was more investment or even just better planning. I.e. don't build it so long at first if the budget was the issue. Scrap the fantasy Cambridge line for now. Build the rest in phases. And start small.
Let's take the Edmonton LRT for example. The Capital Line started off in 1978 with 5 stations in the downtown area: 2 underground, 3 on the surface. In 1981 they expanded it with an additional surface station. In 1983 they expanded again with 3 more underground stations. 1982 and 1992 saw more underground expansion. By the 2000s they could warrant further expansion of the Capital Line. The slow but steady evolution of their rapid transit system meant they could build a much better system in increments, expanding as needed as well as capitalizing on the various economic and political changes that time brought (allowing them to get more funding from the governments). It also allowed them to prove to the public that it was worth the investment. Now they're at the point where they're expanding the Capital and Metro lines, building the new Valley Line and proposing 2 additional lines for the future and have a pretty great rapid transit system now.
Why couldn't we have done that here? Obviously, I understand they wanted to use this to spark off transit-oriented development and it did do a good job at it, but the system itself is still pretty weak. It's not like we absolutely needed to have Block Line Station or Northfield Station and similar low traffic stations right away. We could have built it to go from Borden to UW or something and then expand it as the years go by and likely not have spend more than we need...maybe an extra 250 million to build some easily constructed tunnels or elevated sections. We give the cops nearly that much each year so they can overpay officers and buy fancy toys...so we can't be that worried about how we spend money.
![[Image: w2ab1j7.png]](https://i.imgur.com/w2ab1j7.png)
![[Image: EP6sJJ5.png]](https://i.imgur.com/EP6sJJ5.png)
![[Image: XrJdSdF.png]](https://i.imgur.com/XrJdSdF.png)
Photo credit goes to platonacci23 and wanTron_Soup.
We can blame the cars all we want - and indeed they're at fault - but guess what? The LRT is basically a very expensive, very slow car because it is forced to share the same infrastructure they do. Wouldn't have had this issue if there was more investment or even just better planning. I.e. don't build it so long at first if the budget was the issue. Scrap the fantasy Cambridge line for now. Build the rest in phases. And start small.
Let's take the Edmonton LRT for example. The Capital Line started off in 1978 with 5 stations in the downtown area: 2 underground, 3 on the surface. In 1981 they expanded it with an additional surface station. In 1983 they expanded again with 3 more underground stations. 1982 and 1992 saw more underground expansion. By the 2000s they could warrant further expansion of the Capital Line. The slow but steady evolution of their rapid transit system meant they could build a much better system in increments, expanding as needed as well as capitalizing on the various economic and political changes that time brought (allowing them to get more funding from the governments). It also allowed them to prove to the public that it was worth the investment. Now they're at the point where they're expanding the Capital and Metro lines, building the new Valley Line and proposing 2 additional lines for the future and have a pretty great rapid transit system now.
Why couldn't we have done that here? Obviously, I understand they wanted to use this to spark off transit-oriented development and it did do a good job at it, but the system itself is still pretty weak. It's not like we absolutely needed to have Block Line Station or Northfield Station and similar low traffic stations right away. We could have built it to go from Borden to UW or something and then expand it as the years go by and likely not have spend more than we need...maybe an extra 250 million to build some easily constructed tunnels or elevated sections. We give the cops nearly that much each year so they can overpay officers and buy fancy toys...so we can't be that worried about how we spend money.
Photo credit goes to platonacci23 and wanTron_Soup.