kaitoku wrote:Of course, as this is a PR release, the rhetoric is a bit overblown, but technically the vehicle itself does not emit fumes, though the electricity source likely does, particularly if its generated by burning coal or oil. If you really (really) want to nitpick, you can say that your act of walking to the corner store emits fumes, as the calories burned originates from food you consumed that in turn comes modern industrial farm raised meat, grains and vegetables, which is very petroleum intensive (in fertilizer, pesticides and shipping product to market).
What sort of batteries does this LRV use, how long do they last (relative to the minimum service life of the vehicle)? And note that considerable taxic wast relusts for battery remanufacture and disposal.
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:The loop can go away without compromising operations. They can throw down a switch from the inspection pit track to the outbound side to reverse ends on (at least single units, not sure if it's long enough for doubles) in the event something breaks down. When the extensions are built the north end of the subway will have a maintenance yard for the first time in its history, which also means disabled trains are going to deadhead there (maybe with layover at North Station yard to avoid fouling other trains' schedules) instead of reversing direction and going way out west to Reservoir or Riverside yards. Honestly, if you weigh the cost of perpetually over-customizing car makes vs. need for keeping in service a soon-to-be depreciated 19th century loop...get rid of the loop and let Boylston be the minimum-radius arbiter. If that closes the gap between 42' and 60' and gets you at or close to the halfway point, that's a whole lot fewer mods required to an off-the-shelf model to get it running in Boston. And avoids in-total the kind of ridiculous over-design that made the Bredas such a cost and reliability debacle.
But if you get rid of the loop, you are limited to
bidirectional rolling stock. If you keep it there you may be able to use rolling stock with driver controls at only one end and fixed front facing seats, which will only need doors provided that it does not need to be compadible with (center) island platforms. If the loop is tighter than any of the other curves and you think bidirectional rolling stock is fine that fair enough.
F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:We solved that mystery a few days ago on the MBTA forum. Boylston's currently 81'. The tight ones are Park St. (42'), and Lechmere inner loop (45'). Lechmere yard of course being demolished in 4 years for the Medford extension, so Park will be the one and only constriction. One that'll be pretty irrelevant once they do that crossover construction. I think the T might have some concerns about wear on the trucks and articulated sections with standard-dimension cars rated just inside of that curve's dimensions. But that ship has kind of sailed with them already going 3-truck on the Bredas with an unreliable design that doesn't wear well. If they wanted cars that remained ageless they would've stayed with 2 trucks. The objection to standard dimensions doesn't hold a lot of water when you could argue that well-designed articulation and better-standard parts and service would probably going to perform better under wear than how the Type 8's will be after 20 years of service.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if they scrapped the Bredas in total before their first midlife rebuild, but ordered a second midlife rebuild of the Type 7's with Kinki grafting on a low-floor mini truck of better design in the center. If it comes to the point that the unwieldy Breda trucks are so completely shot they'd have to be totally rebuilt in 2024 or--worse--customized even more insanely to wheeze an overhaul out of them, a proper ADA-modded Type 7 probably washes as the better deal. Those things could last 45 years on a proper maintenance schedule. I'd rather have an all-Kinki fleet with AmeriTrams and "7 sandwich" rehabs when they get first crack at cutting their losses with the Breda fleet.
Perhaps Kinki could improve on their Ameritram with bogies that pivot at least a few degrees, which mind you is quite compadible with 100% low floor, at least on broad and standard gauge track, as on Siemens' Avenio, Alstom's Citadis spirit and X04 and Skoda's ForCity, more on that
here.