18 ms·

Why BART uses a nonstandard broad gauge

345 points by runarberg 4y ago

texaslonghorn5 4y ago
It is a nice article. Summary is they wanted lighter cars so accel/decel would require less power and the gas/brake system would be lighter/smaller. So then the wider gauge is helpful to increase lateral stability (to prevent tipping over) since the cars are so light. In my opinion these kinds of historical mechanical/civil engineering stories are quite interesting. Would love to see more.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > So then the wider gauge is helpful to increase lateral stability (to prevent tipping over) since the cars are so light. If they didn't wanted to reinvent the wheel, they could have adopted another standard railway track gauge: the Iberian gauge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian-gauge_railways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian-gauge_railways There's a fun story about BART: the US decided to go with a blank slate approach to railway design by hiring not railway engineers but aerospace engineers, and consequently the project relied heavily on reinventing the wheel. This track gauge thing happens to be one of many examples. As BART decided to forego any standard way of doing mundane railway tracks, they had to endure decade-long delays and huge budget overruns to cover up their loss. Otherwise there would be nothing to talk about a mundane rapid transit system which already covers pretty much the whole Europe.
- phnofive 4y ago
  Anti-tipping was also an important consideration due to the intense Bay Area winds against the sides of the cars.
  - Redoubts 4y ago
    Only for the route to Marin, which Marin didn’t want and was never built.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      That's not what the article says: "On aerial trackways during high wind events – which the engineers knew were not uncommon in places such as Contra Costa County -- the light BART cars could potentially tip over, the engineers hypothesized."
      - bastawhiz 4y ago
        It does say later that it was also a consideration for running BART on the lower deck of the golden gate bridge.
        wpietri 4y ago
        Yes, I was objecting to the false "only".
    - mjg59 4y ago
      Marin /did/ want it, but after the Golden Gate Bridge authority insisted that the bridge couldn't support the extra deck needed for BART there was a risk that if Marin were part of BART they'd be on the hook for the money without ever receiving service. That, unsurprisingly, reduced enthusiasm - and if a reduction in the Marin vote had dropped the overall bond vote below the required 60 percent, none of the system would have been built, so Marin was kicked out.
  - nerfhammer 4y ago
    > intense Bay Area winds the Bay area has intense winds?
    - WWLink 4y ago
      Some parts of the east bay are really friggin windy. I used to live on top of a hill near the carquinez strait and during windy season they'd easily exceed 60mph during a storm. Like once every other year a bunch of fences would get demolished lol.
    - 0xB31B1B 4y ago
      Yes, thermal winds in the afternoons in summer and fall.
    - phlakaton 4y ago
      Not hurricane force or anything, but gusts of 50 mph (45 knots) or more are not uncommon during Diablo wind events or storms. Gusts up to 70 mph (60 knots) have been recorded at times. Just this winter we had 90+ mph winds recorded in Sonoma (wouldn't have affected the current BART system, but still).
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Would love to see more. There's the Toronto gauge, the Japanese high speed rail gauge (which is standard, 1435mm, for the world but wider than what was used before in Japan, 1000mm and less) and the Spanish high speed rail gauge (which is also standard, 1435mm, even though they usually use Iberian gauge which is wider - and on this, they have some interesting train designs that are capable of automatically switching between the two).
  - gpvos 4y ago
    I recently read that although the Spanish high speed lines don't have many passenger trains (the recent Perpignan-Figueres tunnel only has two per day, although that's partly because of corona), they also carry through freight traffic from France because there's no break-of-gauge. A bit unusual for a high speed line, but why not.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      That really interesting. I wonder how much that impacts maintenance if at all. They definitely couldn't do that if timing on passenger rail was increased, but while there's sufficient gaps then as you said, why not.
    - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
      >(the recent Perpignan-Figueres tunnel only has two per day, although that's partly because of corona) It was four per day in each direction pre-Covid.
    - martinald 4y ago
      Yes I was shocked at this too. Even the flagship Madrid Barcelona line only has 1 train per hour. This seems ridiculously low given HS2 in the UK is planned to have 18tph on the core line (to various destinations, but still). To make matters worse the spainish high speed lines have mandatory reservations so once the train has sold out you are not allowed to board - unlike the UK where you can still board but may have to stand for some of the journey - which is not ideal but at least you don't have to stand around for another hour waiting for the next train anyway.
- knolan 4y ago
  There’s also the 1600mm Irish gauge which historically was down to picking a compromise between two standards used in lines built in the 19th Century. Some Irish rail engineers brought it with them to places like Australia and Brazil.
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  There's a small gauge (I think 2 feet) used mainly for moving pineapples and sugar cane around on plantations. The rail is readily available so it's used for other purposes too. I saw it used for material handling in rail shops in Canada, and it was always called "pineapple gauge".
- nimbius 4y ago
  another reason they're nonstandard is to keep freight rail companies from demanding to use them. part of the reason rail on the us is so slow is freight companies have had a 150 year monopoly on the right of way.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    another reason they're nonstandard is to keep freight rail companies from demanding to use them. part of the reason rail on the us is so slow is freight companies have had a 150 year monopoly on the right of way. You're confusing two different topics. Freight railroads cannot "demand" to use rail lines owned by passenger railroads. Passenger railroads can, if they choose, allow freight lines to use their tracks, and vice-versa. You can see examples of both in Chicago. CTA, a passenger railroad, used to carry freight traffic, but chooses not to do so anymore. Meanwhile, the local freight railroad companies choose to allow Metra, another passenger railroad, to use their tracks and rights-of-way. It's not anywhere close to the black-and-white situation you present. Where passenger railroads own their tracks, they get to decide what runs on them. The problem is that passenger railroads in the United States own very little actual track, and rely too heavily on using freight-owned tracks. There's lots of railroad magazines that write about this ongoing problem every month.
    - IIAOPSW 4y ago
      No, CTA cannot do that. If they did, CTA would have to take a bunch of expensive steps to make their stuff complaint with FRA regs. And no, the local freight railroads aren't "choosing" to let Metra be. They pretty much have to. That was part of the agreement when the regulators allowed the railroads to drop passenger services (which they were previously legally obliged to keep). There's a process, which hasn't been put into practice for a while but is still on the books, for Amtrak to demand the right to use certain tracks (the exact scenario where this happens escapes me).
      - reaperducer 4y ago
        No, CTA cannot do that You should tell the CTA. It will be news to them.
mc32 4y ago
Good to know it was for steadiness against the wind given its light construction and the original intent to have if go on (under?) the GGB deck. I’d like to know why the tracks are flat and not angled and require regular grinding down to even out the washboard effect this causes… which results in that high pitched sound whenever it enters a curve due to slippage.
- Trouble_007 4y ago
  search: >'train-track grinding/profiling'< @DDG : <https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='train-track grinding/profiling' https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='train-track grinding/pr...>
  - mc32 4y ago
    Most rail profiles are like: |\ /| _| |_ _| |_ But BARTD's are more like: _ _ | | | | _| |_ _| |_ Correction: the rails are flat, it's the wheels that are also flat. So pretend the above are the upper half of the wheel profiles. End result is more surface contact = more noise/squealing, also less self-centering of the wheels on the tracks, so the lips also brush against the rails. I think this also exacerbates the washboarding of the rails.
    - xnx 4y ago
      Are you sure about that? I thought it was most common to have flat tracks and conical wheels. That's what I see on Google Image Search too.
      - phs2501 4y ago
        BART had regular rail profile and non-tapered wheels, so flange squeal (and wear) was apparently a real issue. I'm not sure why they decided on this, since it runs counter to normal railway practice. This article has a story but I wonder if it wasn't just more NIH. https://sf.streetsblog.org/2018/06/08/bart-makes-headway-against-headache-inducing-howl/ https://sf.streetsblog.org/2018/06/08/bart-makes-headway-aga...
amacneil 4y ago
Basically - NIH syndrome from the 60s. Some more historical research here: https://www.kalw.org/show/crosscurrents/2016-07-05/hey-area-how-the-width-of-bart-tracks-affects-your-commute https://www.kalw.org/show/crosscurrents/2016-07-05/hey-area-... Seems highly likely that keeping freight trains off the tracks also factored into the decision. Huge shame that they didn't consider the ongoing maintenance cost of using a non-standard gauge.
- apsurd 4y ago
  I have to be honest, I frequently find myself with NIH syndrome. I just don't understand how we can make progress if we defer to "everything is a solved problem!" Truly, help me understand how to better navigate when to defer and when to have the courage to invent here.
  - syntheweave 4y ago
    The secret lies in the difference between addressing the problem and solving the problem. Society is full of problems that are addressed with "solutions" that don't work, or don't work in the way we think they do. Arguments like "the best code is no code" basically allude to the idea of defining the problem in a way that allows a solution without addressing it through some complex technical dependency. In transportation there is a lot of popular discussion based around different modalities like car, train, bike. Each one has its enthusiasts arguing for a mode being a solution. This is a very engaging topic because it creates the grounds for an ideology: "everything will be great once we eliminate x and build more y". A great way of addressing transport issues while not discussing the overall problem in terms of land use, tripmaking needs, accessibility, safety, etc. The path to the actual solution is through studying all those other things to identify what key metrics are in play and then specifying your solution in terms of "must meet this metric". That's where the meat of any problem lies, because the person who lays down the finishing touches is building on all that preparatory work - supply chains, scientific principles, engineering tolerances and so on. And, of course, there's another path into addressing without solving by selecting unrealistic metrics that don't suggest how to move forward. Before you even have the metrics you need good critical thinking skills, ability to collect and analyze data, and some resulting media that communicates the findings like a document. That's a whole job in itself, and then selling and marketing it is another. And then maybe we get to actually implementing something. It takes a lot, in all. It's almost imperceptible how we progress on big issues. And the whole way through someone is trying to steal credit for some part of it.
deltaonefour 4y ago
Just coming from Hong Kong or Tokyo I don't understand how someone can write an article like this without feeling completely embarrassed. Bart is a symbol of American incompetence. It's like, ok, unique decision on the broad gauge. But the Bart is a piece of shit. So why should I care? A real topical blog post would be one comparing Bart to say the train systems in China; but instead they ignore the obvious and focus on this irrelevant detail.
- chx 4y ago
  Hong Kong has a population density of 6,659 people per square kilometer. Similarly, Tokyo has 6,158 persons per square kilometer The SF Bay Area has a density of 431 people per square kilometer. Obviously it's easier and much more efficient to build rapid transit when you are serving areas fifteen times more populated.
  - solresol 4y ago
    A better comparison would be with Greater Sydney (442 people per square kilometre).
  - asiachick 4y ago
    I don't think it's that simple https://youtu.be/MnyeRlMsTgI?t=50 https://youtu.be/MnyeRlMsTgI?t=50 And just because the bay area average is 431 there are plenty of cities in the bay area with much higher densities and there are comparable cities else where that manage to have great public transportation.
  - deltaonefour 4y ago
  - lstamour 4y ago
    I’m seeing a density of 2,419 per sq km for SF urban core at https://www.newgeography.com/content/007367-toronto-solidifies-highest-density-ranking-north-america https://www.newgeography.com/content/007367-toronto-solidifi... and that beats New York at 2,054 people per sq km. Probably has something to do with how the urban core is defined and NYC sprawl, but still interesting…
jelling 4y ago
Now explain why they put carpet in a train.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- happyopossum 4y ago
  Because in the 60s it was unthinkable that someone would urinate on a public transit?
  - Gibbon1 4y ago
    I remember the 1960's, at least the last half and yeah. If you took a piss on public transit the bus driver would beat the living fuck out of you.
- telchior 4y ago
  Not just carpet, but padded wool seats -- those were replaced with padded water-repellant vinyl a decade ago, which sounds like a long time until you realize that it had cloth seats for 40 years before that. Absorbent wool was, as you might imagine, unbelievably nasty. Among other things I saw on BART, I once saw a guy with severe flesh necrosis on his foot sit with said foot, bandages taken off, pressed against the seat. Of course, minor issues like diarrhea and vomit stains were more typical. As why carpets and wool, the answer is actually just about as interesting as the linked article. Back in the 60s / 70s when BART started operating, it was one of the first metro subways. Its creators envisioned it as a futuristic luxury ride, whisking businesspeople and tourists in and out of far-flung suburbs to the glimmering high-rises of San Francisco. Everyone would be wearing a suit or a nice dress, and they would sigh in relief each time they daintily sat down in these airline-style seats. The actual future turned out to be a bit more disappointing...
  - notyourwork 4y ago
    No one imagines homeless and drug addicts riding their transportation.
potiuper 4y ago
Looking at the chart on the bottom left on pg 12 https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/BART%20Stability%20Study%20Compressed_0.pdf https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/BART%20Stabili... 6 ft+ gauge rail looks to be required just to get the 0 margin of stability to withstand the 100 mph+ wind speeds San Francisco has seen https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/23-years-ago-strong-storm-bay-area/200744/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/23-years-ago-strong-st... Although, it would make more sense to stop running the trains in 67 mph+ winds due to the average individual being pushed adversely by the wind such as at a station.
- hadlock 4y ago
  Dallas runs trains slower, and at certain temps, stops them completely above ~104 sustained for ~>4 hours because the rail can/will buckle due to expansion. I think they also do a stop travel when the temp gets below a certain temp as well. It's not unheard of, and not a bad idea when it comes to public safety and potentially derailing a commuter train in downtown or whatever your worst case scenario is.
  - andbberger 4y ago
    this happened in the bay like 3 weeks ago. caltrain just kind of turned the trains off as they like to do, BART derailed due to buckling
mmanfrin 4y ago
So why would they build the Antioch extension with a different gauge?
- andbberger 4y ago
  to save money, although it ended up not being significantly cheaper than extending mainline BART
- runarberg 4y ago
  Didn’t they modify an existing Union Pacific right of way to accommodate BART for that extension? Changing the gauge would have probably be an excessive cost on top of that (although maybe it would have been worth it in the long run). I think they plan on doing something similar with the Valley Link project between Dublin/Pleasanton to Lathorp in the San Joaquin Valley.
wsh 4y ago
Despite the District’s claim, I still wonder if the Southern Pacific had a hand in the choice of a non-standard gauge, to help make sure they’d never be ordered to take over BART and bear its operating losses. That risk might seem slight today, but it would have been more of a concern in that era, years before Amtrak, when railroads were being required by their regulators (ICC and CPUC) to operate other unprofitable passenger services. As the posting concedes, “The pamphlet does not specify why only the wide gauge of five-feet-six inches was tested and not others.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  Well that and to prevent the forced addition of a third rail to their existing trackage in any future expansion.
- flomo 4y ago
  This probably goes both ways, where BART wanted a computerized control system and not have to deal with legacy rail systems.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  There was little if any cooperation like that. The BART engineers were there own little tribe and let people know from up on high how things would go. This wasn't just the choice of gauge, it was everything about the design. In particular the collision avoidance system was conceived with very little input and took many years to sort out. The idea that BART engineers took input from Southern Pacific or anyone else has no supporting evidence and is counter to what is known about how they operated.
MAGZine 4y ago
I feel like people always approach this question from a cost perspective. Ive actually literally had people insinuate that if they used standard guage, they could somehow just repurpose existing trains or existing parts. I do wonder how much that plays a role. I suspect not much. Bombardier or Kawasaki or whoever is going to mill everything from scratch. And deck heights whatnot would probably make repurposing very expensive. Build for what makes sense.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  To some degree, there is sharing of parts and carbodies. Most of the subway systems built around the era of the DC Metro have compatible specifications, most new systems today (and soon Caltrain) use a lot of slightly modified Stadler European rolling stock, etc. And even if not the entire car can just be taken, a lot of the pieces are also modular, but BART doesn't really benefit from any of that. The bigger issue is that they can't use existing railroad rights of way without expensively converting the gauge or building a whole new set of tracks. A bunch of proposed/new extensions are just regular standard gauge rail to deal with that issue.
  - m0llusk 4y ago
    If your goal is to make cars that are 38% lighter than other rolling stock then you are not going to want to make use of the parts from the heavier cars.
    - gsnedders 4y ago
      Okay, but for example Stadler's Metro can be configured such that it's lighter than the original BART stock. (I don't believe there's currently any in operation in the US; most of what's in the US is FLIRT/KISS based, which are decidedly heavier stock designed for non-rapid-transit usage.)
      - bobthepanda 4y ago
        Atlanta just ordered some.
asiachick 4y ago
I've used public transportation all over the world (Japan, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Barcelona, Brussels, Antwerp, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam). Of those, SF's is by far the worst. SF might be #3? in the USA (NYC->Chicago->SF) but it's still arguably crap compared to all those others. The Muni effectively has no schedule. Just show up and pray. There's no way to plan your trip except to go 30 minutes early. The Bart rarely comes since there's effectively one bottleneck track so you have to wait 20-30 minutes for the correct train. The muni actually has the same problem. The Bart is also so loud that I suspect it breaks pretty much every 1st world country's occupational safety hazard rules and is effectively ruining commuter's ears. It's a horrible experience.
- apsurd 4y ago
  In the United States, being the 3rd best city in public transportation is infinitely better than having literally zero reliable public transport because everything is car first. suburbia is quite a miserable experience and it's tragically justified because we don't know what we don't know. i haven't traveled the world and experienced the worlds best public transit. rather, i've grown up in Los Angeles where we can't conceive that a public transit system could possibly be of any value. "what poor lowly miserable soul can't afford a car? SHAME SHAME on you poor soul" Anything is better than the suburban denial that is the concrete jungle. I love Bart.
  - presentation 4y ago
    It’s hilarious that LA is building out a ton of track but they put all the stations in highway medians, guaranteeing that it will never be a useful mode of transportation ever.
    - asiachick 4y ago
      It's particularly sad in LA because LA used to have the best public transportation in the world. https://www.amazon.com/This-Pacific-Electric-Stephanie-Edwards/dp/B01KBFJHFC https://www.amazon.com/This-Pacific-Electric-Stephanie-Edwar...
legitster 4y ago
I love broad gauge rails. But it also brings to mind buying a house with an unusual roof. It ended up giving us tons of problems and costing a ton of money to fix and replace because it required a ton of specialist work. The roof guy left me with some good advice: "you want a roof that looks like all the other roofs around you".
- booi 4y ago
  What kind of roof did you have that was unusual? Unusual like material or unusual like shape?
toolslive 4y ago
In the 19th century, two competitors set out to build railways in England. Brunel in the south, Stephenson in the north. Stephenson used what's now called the standard gauge because the axon length was already in use for horse chariots and therefor easily available. Brunel however, set out to find the optimal gauge and settled on a wider one (around 2m). He also invented the black box as a side effect to prove his gauge was better and provided more stable rides. When it became time to connect the two railway systems, they settled on Stephenson's preference for political reasons.
- jabl 4y ago
  I thought Stephenson gauge was chosen because there were a lot more rail miles and rolling stock using that gauge than Brunel gauge. In the end, it seems it's good enough. Both high speed trains as well as the heaviest freight trains ever work fine with standard gauge.
  - toolslive 4y ago
    From wikipedia: Stephenson's gauge was chosen on the grounds that existing lines of this gauge were eight times longer than those of the rival 7 ft or 2,134 mm (later 7 ft 1⁄4 in or 2,140 mm) gauge adopted principally by the Great Western Railway
  - calpaterson 4y ago
    > I thought Stephenson gauge was chosen because there were a lot more rail miles and rolling stock using that gauge than Brunel gauge. That was key reason. The other was that 7ft gauge limits how tight your corners can be versus standard gauge. There are other minor disadvantages, such as that because trains are bigger, tunnels need to be wider. The 7ft gauge trains were probably a lot more smooth though. And that extra ~3ft would make them feel much more spacious. Luxury was a big prestige element on the Great Western.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      None of those reasons are political though, they're all very reasonable technical and logistical reasons.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bagels 4y ago
Why does Bart make that horrible squealing noise all the time though?
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  I think its wheels are designed flat, where normally rail wheels are angled. This means they're always in full contact and have to slip when going around a bend because trains don't have differentials. Not sure why they designed them flat.
bell-cot 4y ago
> A wider gauge, the pamphlet notes, would also increase “riding comfort” by enabling the use of wider trains with more room for passengers. But from some web searches, it looks like BART actually uses standard-width cars, and their hard construction standards (tunnel clearances, etc.) do not allow for more. So - why did BART go broad-gauge, but chicken out on the width? Wider tunnels obviously cost more...but so the longer sidings, longer station platforms, etc. that long-and-skinny trains need.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  Standard width cars are nine and a half feet wide and bart cars are ten and a half feet wide. https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/resources/equipment/railroad-equipment/ https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/resources/equipment/... https://www.bart.gov/about/history/facts https://www.bart.gov/about/history/facts
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    Amtrack's (standard gauge) Superliner passenger cars were 10'2" outside width - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliner_%28railcar%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliner_%28railcar%29 The 9'6" width in the CSX data is inside widths on freight cars.
kjeetgill 4y ago
> the use of the broad gauge “goes back to when BART was planned to go across the lower deck of the Golden Gate Bridge,” he told BART recently. The Golden Gate Bridge has a lower deck? edit: Looks like it was only planned but never came to together https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Golden-Gate-Bridge-lower-deck-Images-from-all-8902589.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Golden-Gate-Bridge-lo...
funstuff007 4y ago
I thought it was to protect the progressive residents of San Francisco from invasion by centrist marauders.
Barrera 4y ago
In a nutshell, for added stability back when it was thought that BART tracks would follow the lower deck of the Golden Gate Bridge: > Michael Healy, a BART historian and the former BART Director of Public Affairs, believes the use of the broad gauge “goes back to when BART was planned to go across the lower deck of the Golden Gate Bridge,” he told BART recently. > “High winds coming through the gate would have required more stability for the aluminum-shelled cars. Thus, the wide gauge, as I recall,” he said. Why that particular gauge (five-feet-six-inches) and not the more widely-used standard ( four-feet-and-eight-and-a-half inches)? > The pamphlet does not specify why only the wide gauge of five-feet-six inches was tested and not others. One possibility is that the broad gauge was among the more widely used gauges in other countries. Another theory is that complex calculations were required, thus limiting alternatives that could be practically evaluated at the time.
- dheera 4y ago
  I mean, if your train car has a width W, why not also make the track gauge also W? That would maximize stability, and you already need the footprint of W cleared and leveled anyway so you might as well just set it at W and not risk anything.
  - scraptor 4y ago
    Because there's a only slightly smaller standard track gauge that's well understood and has evolved over 150 years, has suppliers available for your every need, and can interoperate with standard rolling stock. Seeing how BART turned out they would have done well to stick to more standard approaches instead of badly reinventing the basics.
    - ant6n 4y ago
      But that’s where the idea comes from that BART is somewhat of a consultant fee driven conspiracy. If u design a bunch of unnecessary engineering from scratch, it’s easier to create more costs and funnel the spending to your friends.
  - samtho 4y ago
ece 4y ago
Even India has three gauges with local/intercity trains. Narrow gauge, which is mostly used for mountainous terrain (2% of the total Indian rail network), and meter gauge (3.5% of total network) which is being converted into broad gauge (5' 6"). It's interesting that the the new Marin train[1] is standard gauge, and the connector train in Pittsburg[2] too. Amtrak in the bay area is standard guage, as is Caltrain. Bart is coming to the south bay, but I wonder if more expansions wouldn't be better off going with standard gauge. Bart transfers aren't too bad. [1] https://www.sonomamarintrain.org/ https://www.sonomamarintrain.org/ [2] https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/ecc https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/ecc
theandrewbailey 4y ago
Good article. It might be the same reason why my local light rail system uses a broad gauge (5 foot 2 1/2 or 1,588 mm). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Light_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Light_Rail
exabrial 4y ago
I don't buy it... my guess is they didn't want interference from commercial rail or some other existential threat and used this to create a fiefdom.

345 points by runarberg 4y ago

It is a nice article. Summary is they wanted lighter cars so accel/decel would require less power and the gas/brake system would be lighter/smaller. So then the wider gauge is helpful to increase lateral stability (to prevent tipping over) since the cars are so light. In my opinion these kinds of historical mechanical/civil engineering stories are quite interesting. Would love to see more.

arinlen 4y ago
> So then the wider gauge is helpful to increase lateral stability (to prevent tipping over) since the cars are so light. If they didn't wanted to reinvent the wheel, they could have adopted another standard railway track gauge: the Iberian gauge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian-gauge_railways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian-gauge_railways There's a fun story about BART: the US decided to go with a blank slate approach to railway design by hiring not railway engineers but aerospace engineers, and consequently the project relied heavily on reinventing the wheel. This track gauge thing happens to be one of many examples. As BART decided to forego any standard way of doing mundane railway tracks, they had to endure decade-long delays and huge budget overruns to cover up their loss. Otherwise there would be nothing to talk about a mundane rapid transit system which already covers pretty much the whole Europe.
phnofive 4y ago
Anti-tipping was also an important consideration due to the intense Bay Area winds against the sides of the cars.
- Redoubts 4y ago
  Only for the route to Marin, which Marin didn’t want and was never built.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    That's not what the article says: "On aerial trackways during high wind events – which the engineers knew were not uncommon in places such as Contra Costa County -- the light BART cars could potentially tip over, the engineers hypothesized."
    - bastawhiz 4y ago
      It does say later that it was also a consideration for running BART on the lower deck of the golden gate bridge.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        Yes, I was objecting to the false "only".
  - mjg59 4y ago
    Marin /did/ want it, but after the Golden Gate Bridge authority insisted that the bridge couldn't support the extra deck needed for BART there was a risk that if Marin were part of BART they'd be on the hook for the money without ever receiving service. That, unsurprisingly, reduced enthusiasm - and if a reduction in the Marin vote had dropped the overall bond vote below the required 60 percent, none of the system would have been built, so Marin was kicked out.
- nerfhammer 4y ago
  > intense Bay Area winds the Bay area has intense winds?
  - WWLink 4y ago
    Some parts of the east bay are really friggin windy. I used to live on top of a hill near the carquinez strait and during windy season they'd easily exceed 60mph during a storm. Like once every other year a bunch of fences would get demolished lol.
  - 0xB31B1B 4y ago
    Yes, thermal winds in the afternoons in summer and fall.
  - phlakaton 4y ago
    Not hurricane force or anything, but gusts of 50 mph (45 knots) or more are not uncommon during Diablo wind events or storms. Gusts up to 70 mph (60 knots) have been recorded at times. Just this winter we had 90+ mph winds recorded in Sonoma (wouldn't have affected the current BART system, but still).
sofixa 4y ago
> Would love to see more. There's the Toronto gauge, the Japanese high speed rail gauge (which is standard, 1435mm, for the world but wider than what was used before in Japan, 1000mm and less) and the Spanish high speed rail gauge (which is also standard, 1435mm, even though they usually use Iberian gauge which is wider - and on this, they have some interesting train designs that are capable of automatically switching between the two).
- gpvos 4y ago
  I recently read that although the Spanish high speed lines don't have many passenger trains (the recent Perpignan-Figueres tunnel only has two per day, although that's partly because of corona), they also carry through freight traffic from France because there's no break-of-gauge. A bit unusual for a high speed line, but why not.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    That really interesting. I wonder how much that impacts maintenance if at all. They definitely couldn't do that if timing on passenger rail was increased, but while there's sufficient gaps then as you said, why not.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    >(the recent Perpignan-Figueres tunnel only has two per day, although that's partly because of corona) It was four per day in each direction pre-Covid.
  - martinald 4y ago
    Yes I was shocked at this too. Even the flagship Madrid Barcelona line only has 1 train per hour. This seems ridiculously low given HS2 in the UK is planned to have 18tph on the core line (to various destinations, but still). To make matters worse the spainish high speed lines have mandatory reservations so once the train has sold out you are not allowed to board - unlike the UK where you can still board but may have to stand for some of the journey - which is not ideal but at least you don't have to stand around for another hour waiting for the next train anyway.
knolan 4y ago
There’s also the 1600mm Irish gauge which historically was down to picking a compromise between two standards used in lines built in the 19th Century. Some Irish rail engineers brought it with them to places like Australia and Brazil.
johnwalkr 4y ago
There's a small gauge (I think 2 feet) used mainly for moving pineapples and sugar cane around on plantations. The rail is readily available so it's used for other purposes too. I saw it used for material handling in rail shops in Canada, and it was always called "pineapple gauge".
nimbius 4y ago
another reason they're nonstandard is to keep freight rail companies from demanding to use them. part of the reason rail on the us is so slow is freight companies have had a 150 year monopoly on the right of way.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  another reason they're nonstandard is to keep freight rail companies from demanding to use them. part of the reason rail on the us is so slow is freight companies have had a 150 year monopoly on the right of way. You're confusing two different topics. Freight railroads cannot "demand" to use rail lines owned by passenger railroads. Passenger railroads can, if they choose, allow freight lines to use their tracks, and vice-versa. You can see examples of both in Chicago. CTA, a passenger railroad, used to carry freight traffic, but chooses not to do so anymore. Meanwhile, the local freight railroad companies choose to allow Metra, another passenger railroad, to use their tracks and rights-of-way. It's not anywhere close to the black-and-white situation you present. Where passenger railroads own their tracks, they get to decide what runs on them. The problem is that passenger railroads in the United States own very little actual track, and rely too heavily on using freight-owned tracks. There's lots of railroad magazines that write about this ongoing problem every month.
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    No, CTA cannot do that. If they did, CTA would have to take a bunch of expensive steps to make their stuff complaint with FRA regs. And no, the local freight railroads aren't "choosing" to let Metra be. They pretty much have to. That was part of the agreement when the regulators allowed the railroads to drop passenger services (which they were previously legally obliged to keep). There's a process, which hasn't been put into practice for a while but is still on the books, for Amtrak to demand the right to use certain tracks (the exact scenario where this happens escapes me).
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      No, CTA cannot do that You should tell the CTA. It will be news to them.

mc32 4y ago

Good to know it was for steadiness against the wind given its light construction and the original intent to have if go on (under?) the GGB deck. I’d like to know why the tracks are flat and not angled and require regular grinding down to even out the washboard effect this causes… which results in that high pitched sound whenever it enters a curve due to slippage.

Trouble_007 4y ago
search: >'train-track grinding/profiling'< @DDG : <https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='train-track grinding/profiling' https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='train-track grinding/pr...>
- mc32 4y ago
  Most rail profiles are like: |\ /| _| |_ _| |_ But BARTD's are more like: _ _ | | | | _| |_ _| |_ Correction: the rails are flat, it's the wheels that are also flat. So pretend the above are the upper half of the wheel profiles. End result is more surface contact = more noise/squealing, also less self-centering of the wheels on the tracks, so the lips also brush against the rails. I think this also exacerbates the washboarding of the rails.
  - xnx 4y ago
    Are you sure about that? I thought it was most common to have flat tracks and conical wheels. That's what I see on Google Image Search too.
    - phs2501 4y ago
      BART had regular rail profile and non-tapered wheels, so flange squeal (and wear) was apparently a real issue. I'm not sure why they decided on this, since it runs counter to normal railway practice. This article has a story but I wonder if it wasn't just more NIH. https://sf.streetsblog.org/2018/06/08/bart-makes-headway-against-headache-inducing-howl/ https://sf.streetsblog.org/2018/06/08/bart-makes-headway-aga...

amacneil 4y ago

Basically - NIH syndrome from the 60s. Some more historical research here: https://www.kalw.org/show/crosscurrents/2016-07-05/hey-area-how-the-width-of-bart-tracks-affects-your-commute https://www.kalw.org/show/crosscurrents/2016-07-05/hey-area-... Seems highly likely that keeping freight trains off the tracks also factored into the decision. Huge shame that they didn't consider the ongoing maintenance cost of using a non-standard gauge.

apsurd 4y ago
I have to be honest, I frequently find myself with NIH syndrome. I just don't understand how we can make progress if we defer to "everything is a solved problem!" Truly, help me understand how to better navigate when to defer and when to have the courage to invent here.
- syntheweave 4y ago
  The secret lies in the difference between addressing the problem and solving the problem. Society is full of problems that are addressed with "solutions" that don't work, or don't work in the way we think they do. Arguments like "the best code is no code" basically allude to the idea of defining the problem in a way that allows a solution without addressing it through some complex technical dependency. In transportation there is a lot of popular discussion based around different modalities like car, train, bike. Each one has its enthusiasts arguing for a mode being a solution. This is a very engaging topic because it creates the grounds for an ideology: "everything will be great once we eliminate x and build more y". A great way of addressing transport issues while not discussing the overall problem in terms of land use, tripmaking needs, accessibility, safety, etc. The path to the actual solution is through studying all those other things to identify what key metrics are in play and then specifying your solution in terms of "must meet this metric". That's where the meat of any problem lies, because the person who lays down the finishing touches is building on all that preparatory work - supply chains, scientific principles, engineering tolerances and so on. And, of course, there's another path into addressing without solving by selecting unrealistic metrics that don't suggest how to move forward. Before you even have the metrics you need good critical thinking skills, ability to collect and analyze data, and some resulting media that communicates the findings like a document. That's a whole job in itself, and then selling and marketing it is another. And then maybe we get to actually implementing something. It takes a lot, in all. It's almost imperceptible how we progress on big issues. And the whole way through someone is trying to steal credit for some part of it.

deltaonefour 4y ago

Just coming from Hong Kong or Tokyo I don't understand how someone can write an article like this without feeling completely embarrassed. Bart is a symbol of American incompetence. It's like, ok, unique decision on the broad gauge. But the Bart is a piece of shit. So why should I care? A real topical blog post would be one comparing Bart to say the train systems in China; but instead they ignore the obvious and focus on this irrelevant detail.

chx 4y ago
Hong Kong has a population density of 6,659 people per square kilometer. Similarly, Tokyo has 6,158 persons per square kilometer The SF Bay Area has a density of 431 people per square kilometer. Obviously it's easier and much more efficient to build rapid transit when you are serving areas fifteen times more populated.
- solresol 4y ago
  A better comparison would be with Greater Sydney (442 people per square kilometre).
- asiachick 4y ago
  I don't think it's that simple https://youtu.be/MnyeRlMsTgI?t=50 https://youtu.be/MnyeRlMsTgI?t=50 And just because the bay area average is 431 there are plenty of cities in the bay area with much higher densities and there are comparable cities else where that manage to have great public transportation.
- deltaonefour 4y ago
- lstamour 4y ago
  I’m seeing a density of 2,419 per sq km for SF urban core at https://www.newgeography.com/content/007367-toronto-solidifies-highest-density-ranking-north-america https://www.newgeography.com/content/007367-toronto-solidifi... and that beats New York at 2,054 people per sq km. Probably has something to do with how the urban core is defined and NYC sprawl, but still interesting…

jelling 4y ago

Now explain why they put carpet in a train.

deleted 4y ago
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happyopossum 4y ago
Because in the 60s it was unthinkable that someone would urinate on a public transit?
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  I remember the 1960's, at least the last half and yeah. If you took a piss on public transit the bus driver would beat the living fuck out of you.
telchior 4y ago
Not just carpet, but padded wool seats -- those were replaced with padded water-repellant vinyl a decade ago, which sounds like a long time until you realize that it had cloth seats for 40 years before that. Absorbent wool was, as you might imagine, unbelievably nasty. Among other things I saw on BART, I once saw a guy with severe flesh necrosis on his foot sit with said foot, bandages taken off, pressed against the seat. Of course, minor issues like diarrhea and vomit stains were more typical. As why carpets and wool, the answer is actually just about as interesting as the linked article. Back in the 60s / 70s when BART started operating, it was one of the first metro subways. Its creators envisioned it as a futuristic luxury ride, whisking businesspeople and tourists in and out of far-flung suburbs to the glimmering high-rises of San Francisco. Everyone would be wearing a suit or a nice dress, and they would sigh in relief each time they daintily sat down in these airline-style seats. The actual future turned out to be a bit more disappointing...
- notyourwork 4y ago
  No one imagines homeless and drug addicts riding their transportation.

potiuper 4y ago

Looking at the chart on the bottom left on pg 12 https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/BART%20Stability%20Study%20Compressed_0.pdf https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/BART%20Stabili... 6 ft+ gauge rail looks to be required just to get the 0 margin of stability to withstand the 100 mph+ wind speeds San Francisco has seen https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/23-years-ago-strong-storm-bay-area/200744/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/23-years-ago-strong-st... Although, it would make more sense to stop running the trains in 67 mph+ winds due to the average individual being pushed adversely by the wind such as at a station.

hadlock 4y ago
Dallas runs trains slower, and at certain temps, stops them completely above ~104 sustained for ~>4 hours because the rail can/will buckle due to expansion. I think they also do a stop travel when the temp gets below a certain temp as well. It's not unheard of, and not a bad idea when it comes to public safety and potentially derailing a commuter train in downtown or whatever your worst case scenario is.
- andbberger 4y ago
  this happened in the bay like 3 weeks ago. caltrain just kind of turned the trains off as they like to do, BART derailed due to buckling

mmanfrin 4y ago

So why would they build the Antioch extension with a different gauge?

andbberger 4y ago
to save money, although it ended up not being significantly cheaper than extending mainline BART
runarberg 4y ago
Didn’t they modify an existing Union Pacific right of way to accommodate BART for that extension? Changing the gauge would have probably be an excessive cost on top of that (although maybe it would have been worth it in the long run). I think they plan on doing something similar with the Valley Link project between Dublin/Pleasanton to Lathorp in the San Joaquin Valley.

wsh 4y ago

Despite the District’s claim, I still wonder if the Southern Pacific had a hand in the choice of a non-standard gauge, to help make sure they’d never be ordered to take over BART and bear its operating losses. That risk might seem slight today, but it would have been more of a concern in that era, years before Amtrak, when railroads were being required by their regulators (ICC and CPUC) to operate other unprofitable passenger services. As the posting concedes, “The pamphlet does not specify why only the wide gauge of five-feet-six inches was tested and not others.”

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RC_ITR 4y ago
Well that and to prevent the forced addition of a third rail to their existing trackage in any future expansion.
flomo 4y ago
This probably goes both ways, where BART wanted a computerized control system and not have to deal with legacy rail systems.
m0llusk 4y ago
There was little if any cooperation like that. The BART engineers were there own little tribe and let people know from up on high how things would go. This wasn't just the choice of gauge, it was everything about the design. In particular the collision avoidance system was conceived with very little input and took many years to sort out. The idea that BART engineers took input from Southern Pacific or anyone else has no supporting evidence and is counter to what is known about how they operated.

MAGZine 4y ago

I feel like people always approach this question from a cost perspective. Ive actually literally had people insinuate that if they used standard guage, they could somehow just repurpose existing trains or existing parts. I do wonder how much that plays a role. I suspect not much. Bombardier or Kawasaki or whoever is going to mill everything from scratch. And deck heights whatnot would probably make repurposing very expensive. Build for what makes sense.

bobthepanda 4y ago
To some degree, there is sharing of parts and carbodies. Most of the subway systems built around the era of the DC Metro have compatible specifications, most new systems today (and soon Caltrain) use a lot of slightly modified Stadler European rolling stock, etc. And even if not the entire car can just be taken, a lot of the pieces are also modular, but BART doesn't really benefit from any of that. The bigger issue is that they can't use existing railroad rights of way without expensively converting the gauge or building a whole new set of tracks. A bunch of proposed/new extensions are just regular standard gauge rail to deal with that issue.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  If your goal is to make cars that are 38% lighter than other rolling stock then you are not going to want to make use of the parts from the heavier cars.
  - gsnedders 4y ago
    Okay, but for example Stadler's Metro can be configured such that it's lighter than the original BART stock. (I don't believe there's currently any in operation in the US; most of what's in the US is FLIRT/KISS based, which are decidedly heavier stock designed for non-rapid-transit usage.)
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Atlanta just ordered some.

asiachick 4y ago

I've used public transportation all over the world (Japan, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Barcelona, Brussels, Antwerp, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam). Of those, SF's is by far the worst. SF might be #3? in the USA (NYC->Chicago->SF) but it's still arguably crap compared to all those others. The Muni effectively has no schedule. Just show up and pray. There's no way to plan your trip except to go 30 minutes early. The Bart rarely comes since there's effectively one bottleneck track so you have to wait 20-30 minutes for the correct train. The muni actually has the same problem. The Bart is also so loud that I suspect it breaks pretty much every 1st world country's occupational safety hazard rules and is effectively ruining commuter's ears. It's a horrible experience.

apsurd 4y ago
In the United States, being the 3rd best city in public transportation is infinitely better than having literally zero reliable public transport because everything is car first. suburbia is quite a miserable experience and it's tragically justified because we don't know what we don't know. i haven't traveled the world and experienced the worlds best public transit. rather, i've grown up in Los Angeles where we can't conceive that a public transit system could possibly be of any value. "what poor lowly miserable soul can't afford a car? SHAME SHAME on you poor soul" Anything is better than the suburban denial that is the concrete jungle. I love Bart.
- presentation 4y ago
  It’s hilarious that LA is building out a ton of track but they put all the stations in highway medians, guaranteeing that it will never be a useful mode of transportation ever.
  - asiachick 4y ago
    It's particularly sad in LA because LA used to have the best public transportation in the world. https://www.amazon.com/This-Pacific-Electric-Stephanie-Edwards/dp/B01KBFJHFC https://www.amazon.com/This-Pacific-Electric-Stephanie-Edwar...

legitster 4y ago

I love broad gauge rails. But it also brings to mind buying a house with an unusual roof. It ended up giving us tons of problems and costing a ton of money to fix and replace because it required a ton of specialist work. The roof guy left me with some good advice: "you want a roof that looks like all the other roofs around you".

booi 4y ago
What kind of roof did you have that was unusual? Unusual like material or unusual like shape?

toolslive 4y ago

In the 19th century, two competitors set out to build railways in England. Brunel in the south, Stephenson in the north. Stephenson used what's now called the standard gauge because the axon length was already in use for horse chariots and therefor easily available. Brunel however, set out to find the optimal gauge and settled on a wider one (around 2m). He also invented the black box as a side effect to prove his gauge was better and provided more stable rides. When it became time to connect the two railway systems, they settled on Stephenson's preference for political reasons.

jabl 4y ago
I thought Stephenson gauge was chosen because there were a lot more rail miles and rolling stock using that gauge than Brunel gauge. In the end, it seems it's good enough. Both high speed trains as well as the heaviest freight trains ever work fine with standard gauge.
- toolslive 4y ago
  From wikipedia: Stephenson's gauge was chosen on the grounds that existing lines of this gauge were eight times longer than those of the rival 7 ft or 2,134 mm (later 7 ft 1⁄4 in or 2,140 mm) gauge adopted principally by the Great Western Railway
- calpaterson 4y ago
  > I thought Stephenson gauge was chosen because there were a lot more rail miles and rolling stock using that gauge than Brunel gauge. That was key reason. The other was that 7ft gauge limits how tight your corners can be versus standard gauge. There are other minor disadvantages, such as that because trains are bigger, tunnels need to be wider. The 7ft gauge trains were probably a lot more smooth though. And that extra ~3ft would make them feel much more spacious. Luxury was a big prestige element on the Great Western.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    None of those reasons are political though, they're all very reasonable technical and logistical reasons.

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bagels 4y ago

Why does Bart make that horrible squealing noise all the time though?

chrisseaton 4y ago
I think its wheels are designed flat, where normally rail wheels are angled. This means they're always in full contact and have to slip when going around a bend because trains don't have differentials. Not sure why they designed them flat.

bell-cot 4y ago

> A wider gauge, the pamphlet notes, would also increase “riding comfort” by enabling the use of wider trains with more room for passengers. But from some web searches, it looks like BART actually uses standard-width cars, and their hard construction standards (tunnel clearances, etc.) do not allow for more. So - why did BART go broad-gauge, but chicken out on the width? Wider tunnels obviously cost more...but so the longer sidings, longer station platforms, etc. that long-and-skinny trains need.

m0llusk 4y ago
Standard width cars are nine and a half feet wide and bart cars are ten and a half feet wide. https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/resources/equipment/railroad-equipment/ https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/resources/equipment/... https://www.bart.gov/about/history/facts https://www.bart.gov/about/history/facts
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Amtrack's (standard gauge) Superliner passenger cars were 10'2" outside width - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliner_%28railcar%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliner_%28railcar%29 The 9'6" width in the CSX data is inside widths on freight cars.

kjeetgill 4y ago

> the use of the broad gauge “goes back to when BART was planned to go across the lower deck of the Golden Gate Bridge,” he told BART recently. The Golden Gate Bridge has a lower deck? edit: Looks like it was only planned but never came to together https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Golden-Gate-Bridge-lower-deck-Images-from-all-8902589.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Golden-Gate-Bridge-lo...

funstuff007 4y ago

I thought it was to protect the progressive residents of San Francisco from invasion by centrist marauders.

Barrera 4y ago

In a nutshell, for added stability back when it was thought that BART tracks would follow the lower deck of the Golden Gate Bridge: > Michael Healy, a BART historian and the former BART Director of Public Affairs, believes the use of the broad gauge “goes back to when BART was planned to go across the lower deck of the Golden Gate Bridge,” he told BART recently. > “High winds coming through the gate would have required more stability for the aluminum-shelled cars. Thus, the wide gauge, as I recall,” he said. Why that particular gauge (five-feet-six-inches) and not the more widely-used standard ( four-feet-and-eight-and-a-half inches)? > The pamphlet does not specify why only the wide gauge of five-feet-six inches was tested and not others. One possibility is that the broad gauge was among the more widely used gauges in other countries. Another theory is that complex calculations were required, thus limiting alternatives that could be practically evaluated at the time.

dheera 4y ago
I mean, if your train car has a width W, why not also make the track gauge also W? That would maximize stability, and you already need the footprint of W cleared and leveled anyway so you might as well just set it at W and not risk anything.
- scraptor 4y ago
  Because there's a only slightly smaller standard track gauge that's well understood and has evolved over 150 years, has suppliers available for your every need, and can interoperate with standard rolling stock. Seeing how BART turned out they would have done well to stick to more standard approaches instead of badly reinventing the basics.
  - ant6n 4y ago
    But that’s where the idea comes from that BART is somewhat of a consultant fee driven conspiracy. If u design a bunch of unnecessary engineering from scratch, it’s easier to create more costs and funnel the spending to your friends.
- samtho 4y ago

ece 4y ago

Even India has three gauges with local/intercity trains. Narrow gauge, which is mostly used for mountainous terrain (2% of the total Indian rail network), and meter gauge (3.5% of total network) which is being converted into broad gauge (5' 6"). It's interesting that the the new Marin train[1] is standard gauge, and the connector train in Pittsburg[2] too. Amtrak in the bay area is standard guage, as is Caltrain. Bart is coming to the south bay, but I wonder if more expansions wouldn't be better off going with standard gauge. Bart transfers aren't too bad. [1] https://www.sonomamarintrain.org/ https://www.sonomamarintrain.org/ [2] https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/ecc https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/ecc

theandrewbailey 4y ago

Good article. It might be the same reason why my local light rail system uses a broad gauge (5 foot 2 1/2 or 1,588 mm). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Light_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Light_Rail

exabrial 4y ago

I don't buy it... my guess is they didn't want interference from commercial rail or some other existential threat and used this to create a fiefdom.