Thor K.

Me bowing down to the Gillig Bar

All Hail the Gillig Bar Miles in Transit

ALL HAIL THE GILLIG BAR

an East Pakenham bound HCMT train arriving at the rather dreary Albion station, set to be rebuilt in the next few years

A Sunbury bound HCMT train arriving at Albion with one of the glorious red brick 1920s substations in the background that powered the electrification of Melbourne's railways

happy first day of full time metro tunnel services to all who celebrate

I always thought the Circulator made a lot of sense as a lower capacity supplement to Metrorail, especially on tangential routes that connected different rail corridors or allowed you to avoid going out of your way and transferring. But the frequency was too low to make it useful for that purpose.

One of the things living on a college campus has done is make me an ardent supporter of mechanized sidewalk snow removal. Its efficacy is basically unmatched, especially in icy conditions like what’s seen now, and on DC’s uneven sidewalks which catch the shovel unexpectedly.

Tyson's might be large, but downtown DC is much larger
ggwash.org/view/92018/g...

I suspect that would make overcrowding worse by concentrating it, and each campus is large enough to justify multiple stops with conventional stop spacing for an urban area. This would also probably make the "musical chairs" that happens when buses lay over much more frequent.

Was that the proposal to have only one stop on each campus?

Further up the thread is my piece about this in the Targum. Broadly speaking our network hasn’t changed much in the past several decades and isn’t consistent with modern best practices that most transit now follows. A redesign could do a lot for us though.

You’d need to run lots of short turns within the confines of NB. But assuming this is built as light rail/interurban, if you kept a subset of the fleet with a higher density seating layout captive to that service it would likely have the needed capacity.

I suspect some form of light metro would work really well, the closest local example would probably be the JFK Airtrain. The transportation patterns at a large university aren’t dissimilar to a large airport, and the ridership isn’t dissimilar either.

I suspect a lot of that has to do with bike storage. If you live on campus I don’t think there are a lot of places you could store a bike indoors.

Ahh I’d forgotten all those had existed. I never found any maps of them so I didn’t know much of anything about them.

They cut stops post Covid but no routes. However I do think you could redesign the network with 5 routes, down from (as of next week) 11.

bsky.app/profile/thor...

I’m convinced that Rutgers buses don’t have to suck though. We just need to treat them like serious transit.

Correction: the D60LFRs will be from London, ON.

Maybe not for much longer. I’ve heard we’re getting D60LFRs from Windsor, ON possibly later this year. I’m a bit dismayed they’re not new though, after all the effort in bringing new Gilligs (including 5 electrics) into service.

The technology to carry more passengers was sadly lost to time

A large crowd of people stands between a bus and a snowbank, facing the doors of the bus. Another person is stepping off the bus.

A typical scene at Rutgers. This is approx. 1/4th of the crowd trying to board this bus that’s supposed to run every 5 minutes. There were 20-30 people behind me who couldn’t get on.

A Budd car with a clerestory! It’s amazing how much it actually looks like that, and serves pretty much the same function.

These headlight modules are actually a standardized component on Polish equipment of this era, and retrofitted to a lot of older equipment. The googly eyes are the tail/marker lights integrated into the headlight lens.

Demand-based fares actually help people who are inflexible by rewarding flexibility. If a rail service has a fixed capacity, encouraging those who can travel at less busy times to do so prevents people who can’t finding themselves unable to travel at all.

Exterior view of Gillig rear plug door. The door leaves do not fully clear the doorway when open, though the doorway is much wider than standard inward or outward opening doors.

Interior view of Gillig rear plug door. The door has large actuating arms attaching it to interior poles that rotate to open the door. These mechanisms take up space just inside of the door.

For a while now it’s been possible to option a Gillig with with this plug door. It’s wider than a standard door, but the door leaves don’t fully clear the doorway when open. They also have actuating arms that encroach on the interior unlike many contemporary EU bus models.

These actually make a lot of sense for Rutgers. I had wondered when Circulator stopped if we would get these, since they have a high density interior layout similar to the rest of the fleet. I don't know if the Newark buses get crush loads to the extent NB does, but if so, this is good.

My YouTube channel is called Technology Connections because my brain needs to know how things work so I can make connections between different concepts.

I honestly don't think it's the news sources I follow that matter, it's just being inquisitive and piecing puzzles together.

Fun door chime on car 1775

"The old Portal Bridge is notorious for getting stuck after it is opened for marine traffic and refusing to close all the way until work crews “persuade” it with sledgehammers."
Will not be necessary with the new Portal Bridge, which is a high, fixed span. End of an era really...

Finally put all of my microblogged thoughts into one place! Why groceries in NYC are so expensive and low-quality, and what can be done to fix it...

This type of station entrance is actually more practical today than when WMATA was built, since we now have reliable inclined elevators that negate the need for separate accessible and non-accessible entrances.

The runway direction in use depends on wind direction. Relative wind speed affects ground speed for a given airspeed, so landing with a tailwind increases the length of runway you need. Most airports are biased towards one direction, but change if the wind direction and speed change enough.

The geometry and techniques used in this build are incredibly impressive. I’d love to know how the doors and roof were built.