03-01-2017, 01:41 PM
(03-01-2017, 06:08 AM)Canard Wrote: 19 or 37 km wouldn't touch Chongqing, with almost 100 km. There, there absolutely was no alternative - no other technology could handle the topology. Maybe back in 2011, 37 km would have put us at second longest? Osaka has 28 km and IIRC it was the longest before Chongqing.
Whenever I look down Charles from the Benton St. parking garage, I shake my head. The OCS/Catenary is so thick and dense. It's really about as ugly as you could possibly get. And yet,people throw up their arms about a single, slender, smooth concrete beam. I'll never get it (and don't want to)!
I might have remembered wrong. Maybe Conestoga to Fairview was “long”, and all the way to Cambridge was 2nd longest in the entire world. But indeed, as you point out, there are a number of quite extensive systems now going in, so ours would only be a moderately large one now. Also I should have said “China and Malaysia”.
I have to admit being a little disappointed with the OCS system appearance. I was imagining something more like the Toronto streetcar system, which often just has span wires supporting the contact wires, and not much else. It leads to a bit of a spider web at intersections, but in straight sections it’s very unobtrusive. Ours by contrast seems to have an extraordinary amount of “extra” stuff up there, even more so where one segment gives way to the next. By the way, do you happen to know why they need multiple apparently redundant jumpers between the wires? In some places they really lead to a messy appearance. The system looks like a high-speed catenary, not urban transit.
At the same time I still wonder about anti-transit people who complain about the overhead. Where have they been all these years while Waterloo North Hydro installs above-ground instead of buried lines? Although I think my favourite was somebody who complained about the cost of the system, then said it should be elevated!