News & Discussion: Adelaide Metro Trains

[[Shuz]]

Thank you for talking common sense PeFe

[Nowlistencarefully]

First test trains are being run over part of the Gawler Line at Dry Creek tomorrow.

The notification is at https://www.dit.sa.gov.au/__data/assets ... VED_JK.pdf . The wording is similar to what appeared when work on the ARTC line took place at Park Terrace, Salisbury, last year. Quite a lot of work has been occurring at ARTC signal cabinets recently.

Surely we should have a specific date by now for this given it is due to open in April. Or could it be just a "post election" promise.

[rubberman]

So this plan/vision for the Outer Harbor line turns a heavy rail line into 4 light rail lines using the main corridor. Trams to Grange, West Lakes, Semaphore and Outer Harbor.

So how would this work ie frequency of service.....trams every 30 minutes from each destination? Nope not very attractive at all......maybe trams every 15 minutes.....well that puts a tram on the main section of the corridor city-Woodville every 3.75 minutes. There is no passing corridor of course so there will be no express trams. Hope there are no breakdowns.......And where are all these new trams going once they hit the CBD? South Terrace? Botanic Gardens? The Adelaide CBD will be full of empty returning trams.....

And how much would all this cost? Rebuilt main track, rewired, new tram stops/stations, an additional 8-10kms of track, 20 more trams to service this new network.....
1 billion? 1.5 billion?? 2 billion???

So say I am a commuter who lives in Exeter and catches the 8.20am train to get to my CBD job by 9am, how will this affect me?
Well now I probably need to get the 8am tram on Semaphore Rd that will journey through the Port Adelaide CBD (adding another 8 minutes) and then at the other end the tram enters the road system at Bowden and crawls into the CBD (you can add another 12 minutes there)

Meanwhile back in the real world.........

The heavy rail fans in Melbourne also advanced reasons why trams/light rail wouldn't work to St Kilda. Opposed it for years...until it changed and none of those reasons proved to be valid.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the much cheaper capital and running costs of trams plus normal people being quite happy to ride trams vs trains means at some point it has a good chance of happening. At some point the diesel rail cars will need replacement. Then it's the cost of new trams vs new rail cars...winner trams. That's the reality.

[A-Town]

In case you hadn't noticed our trams ARE already run deliberately slow. I mean, 50 minutes to fucking Glenelg is a joke. Even just getting from one side of the city to the other. Multiple people have tried and tested to see if walking is faster and on some occasions it is.

The tram speeds are fine from Brighton Rd to Greenhill Rd. The problem is in the CBD where priority is given to cars, while the speed of the trams is also reduced in the CBD.

Every time someone catches a tram for the first time is shocked at how slow they are in the city. Given nothing has changed in the 15+ years they've been running through the city, I can't see anything changing soon.

[whatstheirnamesmom]

So this plan/vision for the Outer Harbor line turns a heavy rail line into 4 light rail lines using the main corridor. Trams to Grange, West Lakes, Semaphore and Outer Harbor.

So how would this work ie frequency of service.....trams every 30 minutes from each destination? Nope not very attractive at all......maybe trams every 15 minutes.....well that puts a tram on the main section of the corridor city-Woodville every 3.75 minutes. There is no passing corridor of course so there will be no express trams. Hope there are no breakdowns.......And where are all these new trams going once they hit the CBD? South Terrace? Botanic Gardens? The Adelaide CBD will be full of empty returning trams.....

And how much would all this cost? Rebuilt main track, rewired, new tram stops/stations, an additional 8-10kms of track, 20 more trams to service this new network.....
1 billion? 1.5 billion?? 2 billion???

So say I am a commuter who lives in Exeter and catches the 8.20am train to get to my CBD job by 9am, how will this affect me?
Well now I probably need to get the 8am tram on Semaphore Rd that will journey through the Port Adelaide CBD (adding another 8 minutes) and then at the other end the tram enters the road system at Bowden and crawls into the CBD (you can add another 12 minutes there)

Meanwhile back in the real world.........

As rubberman inferred, there is no reason those challenges can't be overcome. At the end of the day, conversion of OH to light rail can provide superior frequency of service and far superior connectivity to the Port and to the CBD than heavy rail can. It would deliver a better and more attractive service for commuters. Far better than a 1-stop spur line to Port Dock would.

[Nort]

So this plan/vision for the Outer Harbor line turns a heavy rail line into 4 light rail lines using the main corridor. Trams to Grange, West Lakes, Semaphore and Outer Harbor.

So how would this work ie frequency of service.....trams every 30 minutes from each destination? Nope not very attractive at all......maybe trams every 15 minutes.....well that puts a tram on the main section of the corridor city-Woodville every 3.75 minutes. There is no passing corridor of course so there will be no express trams. Hope there are no breakdowns.......And where are all these new trams going once they hit the CBD? South Terrace? Botanic Gardens? The Adelaide CBD will be full of empty returning trams.....

And how much would all this cost? Rebuilt main track, rewired, new tram stops/stations, an additional 8-10kms of track, 20 more trams to service this new network.....
1 billion? 1.5 billion?? 2 billion???

So say I am a commuter who lives in Exeter and catches the 8.20am train to get to my CBD job by 9am, how will this affect me?
Well now I probably need to get the 8am tram on Semaphore Rd that will journey through the Port Adelaide CBD (adding another 8 minutes) and then at the other end the tram enters the road system at Bowden and crawls into the CBD (you can add another 12 minutes there)

Meanwhile back in the real world.........

The heavy rail fans in Melbourne also advanced reasons why trams/light rail wouldn't work to St Kilda. Opposed it for years...until it changed and none of those reasons proved to be valid.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the much cheaper capital and running costs of trams plus normal people being quite happy to ride trams vs trains means at some point it has a good chance of happening. At some point the diesel rail cars will need replacement. Then it's the cost of new trams vs new rail cars...winner trams. That's the reality.

Wikipedia lists the St Kilda Tram (Route 109) as having a travel time of around 50 minutes. Is this accurate?

[PD2/20]

Wikipedia lists the St Kilda Tram (Route 109) as having a travel time of around 50 minutes. Is this accurate?

The St Kilda - East Brunswick (Route 96) has total travel time 52 minutes, St Kilda to Swanston/Bourke 31 minutes.

[rev]

So this plan/vision for the Outer Harbor line turns a heavy rail line into 4 light rail lines using the main corridor. Trams to Grange, West Lakes, Semaphore and Outer Harbor.

So how would this work ie frequency of service.....trams every 30 minutes from each destination? Nope not very attractive at all......maybe trams every 15 minutes.....well that puts a tram on the main section of the corridor city-Woodville every 3.75 minutes. There is no passing corridor of course so there will be no express trams. Hope there are no breakdowns.......And where are all these new trams going once they hit the CBD? South Terrace? Botanic Gardens? The Adelaide CBD will be full of empty returning trams.....

And how much would all this cost? Rebuilt main track, rewired, new tram stops/stations, an additional 8-10kms of track, 20 more trams to service this new network.....
1 billion? 1.5 billion?? 2 billion???

So say I am a commuter who lives in Exeter and catches the 8.20am train to get to my CBD job by 9am, how will this affect me?
Well now I probably need to get the 8am tram on Semaphore Rd that will journey through the Port Adelaide CBD (adding another 8 minutes) and then at the other end the tram enters the road system at Bowden and crawls into the CBD (you can add another 12 minutes there)

Meanwhile back in the real world.........

Wouldn't it just be easier to build a tram network/loop that goes from the Port to Semaphore/Largs?
Get off the train, hop on a tram, go to the heart of the Port, or Semaphore...
What's the word they use...intermodal?

[rubberman]

So this plan/vision for the Outer Harbor line turns a heavy rail line into 4 light rail lines using the main corridor. Trams to Grange, West Lakes, Semaphore and Outer Harbor.

So how would this work ie frequency of service.....trams every 30 minutes from each destination? Nope not very attractive at all......maybe trams every 15 minutes.....well that puts a tram on the main section of the corridor city-Woodville every 3.75 minutes. There is no passing corridor of course so there will be no express trams. Hope there are no breakdowns.......And where are all these new trams going once they hit the CBD? South Terrace? Botanic Gardens? The Adelaide CBD will be full of empty returning trams.....

And how much would all this cost? Rebuilt main track, rewired, new tram stops/stations, an additional 8-10kms of track, 20 more trams to service this new network.....
1 billion? 1.5 billion?? 2 billion???

So say I am a commuter who lives in Exeter and catches the 8.20am train to get to my CBD job by 9am, how will this affect me?
Well now I probably need to get the 8am tram on Semaphore Rd that will journey through the Port Adelaide CBD (adding another 8 minutes) and then at the other end the tram enters the road system at Bowden and crawls into the CBD (you can add another 12 minutes there)

Meanwhile back in the real world.........

The heavy rail fans in Melbourne also advanced reasons why trams/light rail wouldn't work to St Kilda. Opposed it for years...until it changed and none of those reasons proved to be valid.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the much cheaper capital and running costs of trams plus normal people being quite happy to ride trams vs trains means at some point it has a good chance of happening. At some point the diesel rail cars will need replacement. Then it's the cost of new trams vs new rail cars...winner trams. That's the reality.

Wikipedia lists the St Kilda Tram (Route 109) as having a travel time of around 50 minutes. Is this accurate?

That is roughly the time from Port Melbourne, through the CBD and out to Balwyn.

[Norman]

The Port Adelaide to Montefiore Bridge line is 11.5km, the St Kilda Line from the Yarra to Fitzroy Street is 4.5km. The scale is very different and I don't see why they should be compared.

[rubberman]

The Port Adelaide to Montefiore Bridge line is 11.5km, the St Kilda Line from the Yarra to Fitzroy Street is 4.5km. The scale is very different and I don't see why they should be compared.

The issue is stop spacings. Heavy rail is superior with greater stop spacing as it allows for the higher possible speeds to come into play.

Trams simply outperform heavy rail at anything under 1km spacing. At 1km spacing, you get roughly equivalent performance, but trams are substantially cheaper.

The Outer Harbor line either needs to lose half its stations and run like a true railway, or keep the existing stations and substitute trams. The present setup is asking heavy rail to do something trams are simply far better at.

Heavy rail should be doing fast limited stops over longer distances, and Adelaide to Outer Harbor isn't long.

[Llessur2002]

My vote is for light rail - Port Road, like many of the other main arterials, has huge potential for medium density residential projects and improved local retail and commercial centres. Light rail would be a big catalyst for this.

The rail corridor is a maximum of 500m away from Port Road at Cheltenham and considerably less between Bowden and Woodville. I think it's a distance that people living in Port Road apartments would be happy to walk to commute by tram over slow buses. Plus as Port Adelaide and surrounding defence industry builds up over the next few decades commuters will be travelling in both directions making it one of the few public transport routes in Adelaide which has a significant retail/commerce/residential/industrial centre at either end. It also travels through or close to multiple new and planned medium/high density residential projects such as Bowden, West Lakes, St Clair, the Bianco site at Kilkenny etc. It feels like it should be receiving far more attention in the long term plan for Adelaide than it currently gets.

However, given that the 3000 class diesels have just been refurbished it seems unlikely that the line will change in the next 20 years or so - and I would almost rather given those circumstances that other planned light rail lines are given priority (City Loop, Prospect and Norwood etc). In the interim the Port Dock spur seems like a sensible interim solution to support more short term growth at Port Adelaide - I'd really like to see it come to fruition (disclaimer: the fact it will give my house a direct rail link to Pirate Life obviously sways my opinion a little on this).

[Nort]

The Port Adelaide to Montefiore Bridge line is 11.5km, the St Kilda Line from the Yarra to Fitzroy Street is 4.5km. The scale is very different and I don't see why they should be compared.

Misread the info, thought they were equivalent distances.

[RetroGamer87]

Wouldn't it just be easier to build a tram network/loop that goes from the Port to Semaphore/Largs?
Get off the train, hop on a tram, go to the heart of the Port, or Semaphore...
What's the word they use...intermodal?

Sure. That's how people get from their train station to Victoria Square. Hop off the train and take the tram down. In a perfect world all public transport journeys could be made using a single vehicle. In the real world, two or more vehicles, such as train then tram is a more realistic option for some journeys.

[RetroGamer87]

Surely we should have a specific date by now for this given it is due to open in April. Or could it be just a "post election" promise.

That's pretty funny in a sick sad way. Here we are in the second half of March and the ETA is "Ahhhhhh, some time in April".