Inner West Light Rail observations

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
Stu
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by Stu »

The decision to discontinue the 2L1 must have been only recent as it was published on Transport NSW Info on Wednesday 16/3/2022.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by Aurora »

I would suggest the current light rail service would sufficiently handle the patronage that may still have been using the 2L1. I doubt there would be many still using it since the light rail has resumed. A light rail vehicle or train will always be more popular than a bus.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by boronia »

I noticed on the L3 platform alerts tonight that the L1 will be closed over an upcoming weekend between Taverners Hill and Dulwich Hill for "track maintenance".

Are the Citadis destroying the track already?
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

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INQUIRY - REMINDER
The NSW Legislative Council Inquiry into Light Rail Services has a closing date for submissions tomorrow week - Thursday 31.3.22. The on-line submission form is at -

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/J5WBG7P

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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by Swift »

Get rid of all those anally retentive speed limit signs in the Moore Park tunnel!!
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by tonyp »

Swift wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 12:12 pm Get rid of all those anally retentive speed limit signs in the Moore Park tunnel!!
There's a reason for them - so that the Citadis don't chew up the tracks on the curve. A reason why they should have bought swivelling bogie trams.
Last edited by tonyp on Wed Mar 23, 2022 4:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by Swift »

tonyp wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 12:24 pm
Swift wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 12:12 pm Get rid of all those anally retentive speed limit signs in the Moore Park tunnel!!
There's a reason for them - so that the Citadis don't chew up the tracks on the curve. A reason why they should have bought swivelling bogue trams.
$3.1 billion dollars for a tramway inferior to the old trams closed down sixty one years ago.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

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lunchbox wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 10:49 am INQUIRY - REMINDER
The NSW Legislative Council Inquiry into Light Rail Services has a closing date for submissions tomorrow week - Thursday 31.3.22. The on-line submission form is at -

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/J5WBG7P

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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by boronia »

L1 services are currently running only to Taverners Hill, with connecting buses to Dulwich Hill.

From the train today, I noticed a lot of new wiring troughing alongside the down line around the Lewisham substation.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

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Certainly not covered by the alert for next week
https://transportnsw.info/alerts/details#/ems-4146
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

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The current situation was notified, I think it was for Weds-Fri only.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by Jurassic_Joke »

I wonder around when would the first Urbos trams be put back into service? I thought the original time frame was two trams repaired per month from February onwards? L1 has been fully run by Citadis trams meanwhile for two months now, you’d kinda wonder if Transport is getting comfortable with it and might want to look into running them permanently on the line (alongside the Urbos when they eventually come back)
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

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At Central, they now use semi-portable barriers to encourage waiting passengers to queue at each doorway, rather than stampede along the length of the tram. The door layouts are different on the two types, so this could cause problems with mixed sets.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by tonyp »

boronia wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 3:47 pm At Central, they now use semi-portable barriers to encourage waiting passengers to queue at each doorway, rather than stampede along the length of the tram. The door layouts are different on the two types, so this could cause problems with mixed sets.
The barriers were only considered necessary because they deleted doors from the CAF specification (bus mentality), otherwise they would have the same number of doors as the Citadis. With six doors, the Citadis don't need channeling of passengers.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by Stu »

Fleet Lists wrote: Fri Apr 08, 2022 8:05 pm Certainly not covered by the alert for next week
https://transportnsw.info/alerts/details#/ems-4146
There was emergency infrastructure repairs on Friday afternoon, this was published on TfNSW info. The event lasted for about 1 x hour.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by gilberations »

I’ve heard speculation that they may be purchasing additional Urbos to replace the CAFs and have a single fleet
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by boxythingy »

replace the CAFs
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by moa999 »


tonyp wrote: because they deleted doors from the CAF specification.
You keep saying that - but it doesn't make it true.
The CAF catalogue has specifications for double or single end car doors and double or single door articulated section, and doors on one side or both.

While double door is more common, other CAF cities including Kaoshing, Cagliari, Mauritius, Canberra and Edinburgh (though it's a longer tram with a central double) (and of course Newcastle) have similar designs.

Like on rail it's a trade off between number of seats and provision for wheelchair room, and dwell times.

L1 having doors on both sides, off-tram ticket validation, limited number of busy turnover stops enroute (really only Star and Fish Markets), long journey times - starts to push you towards favouring more seats.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by tonyp »

moa999 wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 9:47 am
You keep saying that - but it doesn't make it true.
The CAF catalogue has specifications for double or single end car doors and double or single door articulated section, and doors on one side or both.

While double door is more common, other CAF cities including Kaoshing, Cagliari, Mauritius, Canberra and Edinburgh (though it's a longer tram with a central double) (and of course Newcastle) have similar designs.

Like on rail it's a trade off between number of seats and provision for wheelchair room, and dwell times.

L1 having doors on both sides, off-tram ticket validation, limited number of busy turnover stops enroute (really only Star and Fish Markets), long journey times - starts to push you towards favouring more seats.
The accepted design standard for a 30 metre tram in Europe is 5 to 6 doors, typically double leaf, though the end ones may often be single leaf. This is the standard design industry wide. However, certainly manufacturers provide, at an adjusted cost, for bespoke variations from this if requested by the customer and this is what has happened in Sydney and the other cities you mention.

The underlying issue with L1 is that, ten years ago, TfNSW greatly under estimated the future demand on the service. The single track terminus at Dulwich Hill is another example of that mistake. As we know, when the line was completed and integrated into the whole transport system (including fares), demand soared about 200% and the system was left with inadequate resources to cope with it, at least at times of peak demand.

The next point is that you shouldn't choose vehicle designs on the basis of low demand when the service also has high demand. You design it to handle the greatest demand on it. Look at the problems we have with our buses and double deck trains (both designed for long journeys only) processing passengers in high demand situations.

Many public transport routes through busy sectors run out to areas where there is low demand, but of course in those cases the vehicle has emptied out enough for everybody to get a seat or, in the other direction, they have no problem getting a seat from the start in the other direction. I didn't see anybody advocating deleting a door per car on the metro trains on the basis that there's less demand out Rouse Hill way. It would have been considered madness. In Perth, they're actually adding an extra door into their next series of trains. This is all pretty basic stuff, but in Australia since the 1950s the rule has often been ignored (particularly for buses) and now that we have been moving back to an ongoing and doubtless permanent period of high demand, existing designs are found wanting.

Note that TfNSW has already made a modification to the seating in the CAFs due to the crowding issue and it will be interesting to see if they have ordered the final batch of CAFs with more doors.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by moa999 »

The ideal design would be a cab at one end with loops, and doors on one side which maximise internal seating and efficiency, as is used in many Euro cities.

But compromises caused by route and construction costs in many cities including Sydney means this often isn't the case.

You'll note I didn't say that the L1 CAF tram was imo the right choice, but more that the line has certain features which might lead you to make that choice, so I can't say it was a horrible decision.
Personally I'd always prefer journey time over seating or comfort, but I'm not in a wheelchair or someone who struggles to stand.

The same choice on L2/L3 would have a far worse impact on journey times, as it would in Parramatta.

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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

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moa999 wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 12:21 pm The ideal design would be a cab at one end with loops, and doors on one side which maximise internal seating and efficiency, as is used in many Euro cities.

But compromises caused by route and construction costs in many cities including Sydney means this often isn't the case.

You'll note I didn't say that the L1 CAF tram was imo the right choice, but more that the line has certain features which might lead you to make that choice, so I can't say it was a horrible decision.
Personally I'd always prefer journey time over seating or comfort, but I'm not in a wheelchair or someone who struggles to stand.

The same choice on L2/L3 would have a far worse impact on journey times, as it would in Parramatta.
There is scope for a loop at Dulwich Hill too, but the vision of the planners didn't extend that far. So we have a terminus at Central that could handle 60 trams an hour if it needed to and a terminus at Dulwich Hill that could only handle about 15 trams per hour at the extreme. The best compromise outcome in the circumstances now would be a double track terminus at Dulwich Hill which would close the gap a bit. Single ended trams with loops would naturally be the ultimate, but now you're moving well beyond the universe of the average NSW transport planner.

Journey time is certainly the key to considering seating, not distance. The quicker the journey time, the more scope for a lower seating allocation, thus enabling greater total capacity. If L1 was run by one of the experienced European legacy operators (who also had a say in the tram specification), there is absolutely no doubt the journey could be brought down to 30 minutes. I noted at the time, a few years back, that they were doing early morning runs of 30 minutes, but the running time varied during the day according to loads - a classic sign that the tram isn't doing its job properly due to lack of doors. Now the service is buried under a consistent running time of 39 minutes, partly because of the Citadis I guess, but also a reversion to the lowest common denominator of its poorest performance under load. A common feature I noted in Europe is that trams had the same running time whether peak or off peak. This would be down to a combination of traffic priority and adequate doors on the trams for processing crowds.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by moa999 »

A loop at DH would put a platform further away from a rail transfer, probably by 100+m, as would a dual platform.
And undo the massive benefit in distance and waiting time that will come from the new Metro trains and concourse.

That said I still think 15tph will be more than enough and very omnidirectional peak centric.
With a spare driver you could easily improve that with the existing setup.

But the demand has always been on the Central-Star-Fish Markets end and could be solved by turning around some trams using existing crossovers.

Think the timetable has fallen more due to continued speed reductions over various sections, which I suspect is a combination of tracj maintenance and the fleet issues.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by Jurassic_Joke »

gilberations wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 2:46 am I’ve heard speculation that they may be purchasing additional Urbos to replace the CAFs and have a single fleet
Did you mean to say purchase more Citadis to replace the Urbos and have a single fleet?

A nice idea but don’t forget they’ve last year already ordered four additional Urbos. Unless they were somehow able to cancel that contract. It’s also worth noting they originally said the Urbos would be repaired two trams every two months or something since February - it’s almost been three months since February now and we haven’t heard any progress about repairs.

There was an article in the herald a month ago or so where they reported the government is floating the idea of Citadis trams running permanently on L1 to make operations more flexible but is it really sustainable to keep six trams of the CSELR fleet on the IWLR permanently?
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

Post by Swift »

Make six single sets on the L2-3 slug rail. I'm sure it'll cope.
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Re: Inner West Light Rail observations

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Jurassic_Joke wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 12:44 am There was an article in the herald a month ago or so where they reported the government is floating the idea of Citadis trams running permanently on L1 to make operations more flexible but is it really sustainable to keep six trams of the CSELR fleet on the IWLR permanently?
Those 6 trams are providing a reduced service. It would need at least 8 to get back to 10 minutes frequency, I think they had 8 minutes in the peaks?
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