The Meta AI suggestion “what are operating costs” is bleak. I doubt it suggests that when someone praises a motorway.
“Is this profitable though? What about the shareholders?!?”
Now that’s a nice tram!
Honestly real jealous of how nice the track is, we got something like this instead. Really over engineered tbh with the overhead cables, poles, and fences.
Still does the same job at the end of the day, but…
I think this comparison is not fair. AFAICT your picture shows a steep slope, which requires some more engineering for rail-bound vehicles:
- you need some “climbing gear” for the heavy vehicles that run bare metal-on-metal. without this, you cannot climb such steep hills with tracked vehicles. they choose a common approach by using a cogwheel railway here, which does not really allow embedded tracks like in OP’s picture (notice the concrete layer between the tracks, which would cover the cog wheels here and looks “more clean”)
- suspended ropes are difficult to force into a prescribed curve, and even more so if they must follow a slope. that’s why you see so much cables: all cables are needed to support the one or two power lines. note that they cannot simply add cables until the power lines fit good enough: they have to account for length changes due to temperature changes. the power lines have to be tightened enough so that they do not hang too low. on the other hand, they must not be too rigid because the Pantographs of each train must be pressed against the power lines without damaging them.
- adding to the second point: spanning ropes needs a lot of force. even more so on such a slope, and this seems to be a curved slope as well? you either need supporting structures left and right (like adjacent houses, which are not available here. see, adding more poles left and right would be even more ugly) or really strong poles in the middle.
- the last point is speculation from my side: the fences seem to be there not because of the railway itself, but to protect the cogwheel stuff from vehicles. regular tram tracks can be significantly damaged when driving heavier vehicles over them. if driving on them is expected, you embed the tracks in concrete. but as I mentioned above, this is not possible here. so you have to protect the expensive and not easily repairable cogwheel part from rouge drivers
edit: added missing not in last bullet point
No climbing gear along the whole route, and the whole route even the flat areas all look the same. Fences in many flatter areas as well.
Few more photos of the same over-engineered feeling in other sections of the same line.
I stand corrected, that looks really a lot more cluttered than I expected. WTF
God sake my eyes have a wider FOV than your camera
What’s this inbetween the rails? You don’t just put gravel there?Also, this seems to be two differen’t usecases. OP’s is in the street (we call that Tram here, often in cities) while yours is beside it (light train).
Edit: right, a gear train, yet another usecase. Answers the question about gravel.
OP’s is in the street (we call that Tram here, often in cities) while yours is beside it (light train).
Unless you’re New South Wales government, in which case you call your Sydney trams “light rail” because you don’t want to admit that Melbourne was right all along to keep its trams instead of ripping up all the tracks because “everyone has cars now”. Sydney used to have one of the biggest tram networks in the world until 1961. That was over two decades before I was born but I’m still mad about it.
Our city calls them LRTs (light rail trains), the public still calls them “streetcars”, but what ever they are called they are still fundamentally trams IMO.
The one I am showing is a new line in our city that goes both above ground and underground in certain locations. The above ground sections run in the center of the street with stations along the center as well.
This track does indeed have inclines in certain locations, but none of the areas along the route require gears. All of the sections above ground look exactly the same in design, only difference is in some locations we have grass between the tracks, and concrete in others.
Ah right, the screws looked like a gear rack to me.
No wait, it’s not?
lived on the GC and caught the Tram regularly.
there was intense push back against this, but it’s so heavily used. The Green’s also pushed back for alternate reasons, they wanted the heavy rail extended because the next section goes straight through the national park and lots of luggage (from the airport) on this Tram is a pain (and its slow), it should go from Burleigh through ti the train station (giving two links the other up at Helensvale). and heavy rail to Collonongatta IMO
Gold Coast is full of oldies who are overwhelming car brained and super conservative and vote LNP exclusively.
regardless, the stupid LNP have shit canned this and are putting in diesel buses
Never EVER would I have thought that Coolie would appear anywhere
Send Light Rail South are awesome. Their primary raison d’être is to encourage the government to continue extending the Gold Coast’s light rail all the way to the airport, instead of its current ludicrous plan of making it a two-vehicle trip where you have to swap from a tram to a bus partway.
But I’ve also seen them commenting on an issue 100 km further north near me, where my state MP (and the Shadow Minister for Transport) from the centrist Labor Party keeps criticising the right-wing LNP government for not fast-tracking an expensive car toll tunnel that takes you all the way from the CBD to the edge of the city’s outer boundaries. Send Light Rail South joined in a very loud chorus of people saying it would be much better to put light rail (or at least BRT) along the congested major eight-lane surface road corridor, rather than wasting money and effort on this traffic inducing white elephant.
Extending it to Coolangatta/Tweed mall is so painfully fucking obvious since it would serve the airport and at least for the last bit would just slot cleanly into old railway ROW.
The varsity lakes line should be extended to the airport as well, for that matter.
The community meets on the train and interact with each other?
