Equipment
Kinkisharyo-Mitsui was chosen to design and manufacture low-floor light rail vehicles (LRVs) and provide additional equipment and support. Thirty-five light rail cars were delivered between November 2006 and September 2008. Each vehicle is 95 ft (29.0 m) long, 8.7 ft (2.7 m) wide, accommodate 200 people each (74 seated), and double-ended to allow travel in either direction. Two-car trains will be used initially, but as ridership increases, trains can be up to four cars long. Until University Link construction is completed, only three-car trains can be used, due to the length of the stub tracks at the north end interlocking. The maximum speed of the light rail vehicle is 65 mph (105 km/h).
An additional 27 LRVs have been delivered to Sound Transit by Kinkisharyo at a rate of one a month, beginning in August 2010. The current plan is for 180 total units for the system by 2030.
The overhead catenary that supplies electricity to the LRVs is fed (from substations) at 1,500 Volts DC, a departure from the normal voltage for U.S. light rail systems, 750V, with Central Link being the first light rail system in North America to use 1,500V. Sound Transit's other light rail line, the 2003-opened Tacoma Link, uses 750V.
Read more about this topic: Central Link
Famous quotes containing the word equipment:
“Why not draft executive and management brains to prepare and produce the equipment the $21-a-month draftee must use and forget this dollar-a-year tommyrot? Would we send an army into the field under a dollar-a-year General who had to be home Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.”
—Betty Rollin (b. 1936)
“Dr. Scofield’s equipment, which you have just seen, radiated waves direct to Professor Houghland’s laboratory. When these waves came in contact with those the professor’s equipment was radiating, they created the interstellar frequency, which is the death ray.”
—Joseph O’Donnell, and Clifford Sanforth. Arthur Perry (Bela Lugosi)