this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
23 points (96.0% liked)

Fuck Cars

16078 readers
95 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

i've always wondered this

lightrail, streetcars, trams. Why must they be built to be incompatible with heavy rail? why can't heavy rail be built with a bunch of level crossings, street level stations, slow speeds, and function exactly the same as light rail?

if compatible, the rail could act heavy at designated tracks and light at others, removing what would otherwise be an interchange. it would also allow the light rail to have a higher top speed at express areas.

what am i missing?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] eksb@programming.dev 27 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Light rail is typically used in situations where it is fitting the trains into smaller spaces, often sharing space with other modes of transport. Building it to a heavier grade would cost more and offer no benefit. Even if you spend the money to build a light rail line to support a longer, heavier, faster train, you could not run that train anyway, because the spaces is shared, the turns may be too tight, the bridges may be too low, there may be no space for platforms. It is more cost and space effective to have separate lines.

Note, many light rail networks use standard gauges, so they can use standard maintenance equipment.

[–] catalanmercenaries@aussie.zone 1 points 6 months ago

space issue, makes sense