kaitoku wrote:will be permitted to operate in rail corridors concurrently with traditionally compliant vehicles
Concurrently? Does that mean no time separation- i.e. concurrent operation, or just meaning sharing the tracks, but with separate designated windows?
First, it means DCTA can mix of Budds (traditionally compliant) and the Stadlers (AVT waivered), permitting a larger, mixed fleet until all the Stadlers have been delivered (at which point the Budds go back to DART). Second, it means ops in general are more flexible ( I believe, "Yes" it *technically* means they could mix freight) but as a practical matter they will continue to maintain temporal separation (running freights at night).
See this article from when the applied for the waiver:
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/pas ... aiver.html
the Denton County Transportation Authority says it will seek an Alternative Vehicle Technology (AVT) waiver so that DCTA can operate new Stadler GTW diesel multiple-unit (DMU) trains without temporal (time-of-day) separation from freight trains.
[...] "What we said from very beginning was that we would run the Stadler vehicles during the day and the freight at night therefore it will be temporal separation," [DCTA VP] Leggett said. "The waiver we're applying for will allow us to run the current [ten Budd RDC] vehicles with the [six] Stadler ones. So we won't have to wait until we receive all [eleven] Stadler vehicles to run them"
According to the article, FRA gave NJT similar waivers for its RiverLINE (diesel) and Newark Light Rail (electric LRT) both of which technically enforce temporal separation, but both of which can operate (as I extrapolate) without as-rigid operational rules.