Oslo Updates Coming Soon
On Sunday, I am heading to Oslo on business for next week.
Oslo is a good example of how a system can work well with both single-ended and double-ended vehicles. Some of Oslo’s routes have terminals with only cross-overs and are operated only with the double-ended cars. One route operates with some scheduled short turn operations to a stop where there is a loop, allowing the use of single-ended cars for those runs. Interestingly, the different vehicle types on this route makes it possible to tell how far it is going before one can read the destination sign.
Their single-ended trams are 22 metres long and not low floor, while their double-ended trams are 33 metres long and low floor near door areas (not 100% low floor). There is some tight track geometry in Oslo (at Majorstuen) that poses some problems for the longer vehicles, and routes operating there (11, 12, and 19) only use the shorter single-ended vehicles.
We may see similar operations in Toronto. We may shortly see that it might be unreasonable to specify a new, low floor vehicle to be able to handle all of the constraints of our legacy network. A full review may reveal that some of the most restrictive parts of the system could continue to be operated with CLRVs and ALRVs for their remaining days until upgrades can fix the restrictions, while other less-restrictive parts of the network will see newer LRVs operating as they become available.
With more daylight hours, and an entire Saturday, I will be adding a significant number of photos to the Oslo page. I will likely be updating it incrementally over the next week.