Transit Type and Route
Metro Rail is a light rail transit (LRT) system as characterized by the American Public Transportation Association although it shares many characteristics with "heavy rail" metro systems.
Along 80 percent of its track(5.2 miles (8.4 km)), it operates in a high-speed underground subway environment with high-level platforms. This section has 7 stations that are spaced fairly widely apart, comparable to many subway stations elsewhere. The line from Allen/Medical Campus to Utica uses cut-and-cover subway construction, while the remainder of the underground portion from Delavan/Canisius College to University on the University of Buffalo South Campus is in deep-bored tunnels. At some of the deep bore stations, such as Delavan/Canisius College and University, the track platform level is deep enough that escalators are used to reach the surface.
The remaining 20 percent of the alignment (1.2 miles (1.9 km)) is on the surface in a dedicated outdoors transit mall on Main Street in downtown Buffalo, separated from automobile traffic. This section has 8 closely spaced stations with primarily low-level platforms. Because the trains are all high-level, passengers exit and enter trains using retractable staircases that extend by rotating out from pockets underneath each door of the train. In addition, each downtown station has an approximately 12-foot-long mini-high level platform (connected to wheelchair ramps and stairs) that aligns with the first door of each train to provide handicapped access. This first door has retractable stairs like all the other doors, but the stairs of this first door fit underneath the mini-platforms when extended at these surface stations. The northbound and southbound portions of these downtown stations (and their respective mini-platforms) appear to be staggered when served by 2-car trains (the normal service) because they are designed to align correctly when accommodating trains 4 cars long (the maximum length in this system). Trains in this downtown transit mall do interact with automobile traffic at cross streets, where movements are governed by non-vital traffic signals. This surface section has catenary poles every 130 feet to support the overhead electrical lines.
Metro Rail operates electric multiple-unit light rail vehicles (LRVs) in two-to-four car trains with power drawn from an overhead catenary system. Three-car trains are limited to rush hour and special events, and four-car trains to special events. The Buffalo trains and SEPTA in Philadelphia are the only modern rigid-body (non-articulated) LRVs operating in North America.
Read more about this topic: Buffalo Metro Rail
Famous quotes containing the words transit, type and/or route:
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“But however the forms of family life have changed and the number expanded, the role of the family has remained constant and it continues to be the major institution through which children pass en route to adulthood.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)