3 ms·
Funny enough, SF Muni's trains were built by AnsaldoBreda and they're huge piles of shit too. They are over the design weight and have shoddy brakes so they're
by xenadu02 10y ago
Funny enough, SF Muni's trains were built by AnsaldoBreda and they're huge piles of shit too.
They are over the design weight and have shoddy brakes so they're downrated from their specified top speed. The increased weight makes them much harsher on the tracks and transmits way more vibration to neighboring houses. The doors have overly complex mechanisms prone to jamming. So do the rising stairs. The air conditioners leak condensation. Overall they get far fewer miles between maintenance windows than they should - by less than half - resulting in a lot more cars stuck in the maintenance yard reducing an already over-stretched capacity.
They also can't be coupled more than two cars at a time (where I'm calling a car the joined halves with the flexible part in the middle). Even if Muni had enough cars they couldn't run three-car trains with the Breda units.
SF finally learned its lesson; Siemens is making the new cars. The first ones should start running end of this year. They can be coupled into 3-4 car trains, have good German engineering, working brakes, etc. Muni will also end up with more of them (~120 in the current fleet, vs 240 in the new one) so there will be a lot more capacity.
- technofiend 10y agoFor whatever reason Siemens was unable to fix the axle counters they put in Houston's light rail system. They're being replaced with Frauscher. http://www.rtands.com/index.php/passenger/rapid-transit-light-rail/houston-metro-contractor-to-replace-axle-counters.html http://www.rtands.com/index.php/passenger/rapid-transit-ligh...
- asjo 10y agoThe Copenhagen metro runs trains built by AnsaldoBreda, and they work well enough - so they are able to build usable rolling stock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Metro#Trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Metro#Trains