I was reading some documents published by WMATA (which runs the Washington Metro) about their subway train fleet, and I learned an interesting fact: 15% of maintenance downtime is due to carpet replacements. I suspect this is slightly less bad for BART, but it's still pretty significant. No wonder both systems are looking for ways to get rid of carpets and save themselves money and maintenance headaches.
Another interesting fact is that 20% of in-service delays related to equipment failure are due to the ATC system. So maybe there's some advantage after all to having a nice simple mechanical train-stop system like NYC does: it's very, very reliable, and most light rail systems can get by just fine with no train-stop at all, just plain old block signals, again with much higher reliability since there's no carborne equipment to fail.
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2 comments:
Whatever happened to linoleum?
Carpets look nicer for the suburbanites who are supposed to be lured out of their cars at the park-and-ride. And apparently WMATA has never heard of snow.
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