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Old Posted Feb 16, 2022, 1:25 AM
IrvineNative IrvineNative is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
No, a heavy capacity train usually has lower frequencies, because there's more capacity. This is especially true for commuter rail, and most of BART is functionally commuter rail. Light rail isn't commuter rail.

When a light rail line replaces a bus line, the frequency usually drops, because the light rail service usually has higher capacity.

And commuter rail service, around the planet, has lower frequencies than bus and light rail. Even A+ systems like the Paris RER have much lower frequencies than major Paris bus/light rail routes. This makes sense because you're comparing a train moving 2,000 people to a bus/light rail moving 50-100 people.
The Toronto Subway has higher capacity trains than most US LRT systems. Yet the Toronto Subway has trains every 2-3 min. during peak hours vs 15 minutes for US LRT.

I agree that it's natural for commuter rail to have bigger trains and lower frequency than LRT. But subways/urban metros have bigger trains than LRT AND have higher frequencies.

The BART is a urban metro. A metro-commuter rail hybrid, I'll give you that, but still more of an urban metro, and still needs higher frequencies compared to the San Diego Trolley (especially since Downtown SF is far bigger and denser than Downtown SD).

Even compared with another US subway-commuter rail hybrid (the DC Metro) the BART has inferior frequencies, because it has only one transbay tube. The DC Metro at least has two, rather than one, crossing over the Potomac, as well as a line (the red line) that is not interlined at all with any other line, whereas all BART's lines interline with another line for at least part of their length.
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