22 Facts About Light rail

Light rail transit is a form of passenger urban rail transit characterized by a combination of tram and rapid transit features.

Basic concepts of light rail were put forward by H Dean Quinby in 1962 in an article in Traffic Quarterly called "Major Urban Corridor Facilities: A New Concept".

Term light rail transit was introduced in North America in 1972 to describe this new concept of rail transportation.

Term light rail was coined in 1972 by the U S Urban Mass Transportation Administration to describe new streetcar transformations that were taking place in Europe and the United States.

Light rail is a generic international English phrase for these types of rail systems, which means more or less the same thing throughout the English-speaking world.

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Use of the generic term light rail avoids some serious incompatibilities between British and American English.

Opposite phrase heavy Light rail, used for higher-capacity, higher-speed systems, avoids some incompatibilities in terminology between British and American English, for instance in comparing the London Underground and the New York City Subway.

Conventional Light rail technologies including high-speed, freight, commuter, and rapid transit urban transit systems are considered "heavy Light rail".

MonoLight rail is a separate technology that has been more successful in specialized services than in a commuter transit role.

In Europe and Asia, the term light rail is increasingly used to describe any rapid transit system with a fairly low frequency or short trains compared to heavier mass rapid systems such as the London Underground or Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit.

Hong Kong's Light Rail is an example of this, although it is called "light rail" because it is a lower-scale system than the rest of the MTR.

Reference speed from major light rail systems, including station stop time, is shown below.

Los Angeles Metro light rail vehicles have higher top and average speeds than Montreal Metro or New York City Subway trains.

However, the requirement for saying that a Light rail line is "separated" can be quite low—sometimes just with concrete "buttons" to discourage automobile drivers from getting onto the tracks.

Older standard-gauge vehicles could not negotiate sharp turns as easily as narrow-gauge ones, but modern light rail systems achieve tighter turning radii by using articulated cars.

However, the Manila light rail system has full grade separation and as a result, has many of the operating characteristics of a metro system rather than a light rail system.

However, freeways are frequently built in suburbs or rural areas, whereas light rail tends to be concentrated in urban areas, where right of way and property acquisition is expensive.

For example, in Boston and San Francisco, light rail lines carry 9, 600 and 13, 100 passengers per hour, respectively, in the peak direction during rush hour.

Notable exceptions in the US are the NJ Transit River Line from Camden to Trenton and Austin's Capital MetroRail, which have received exemptions to the provision that light rail operations occur only during daytime hours and Conrail freight service only at night, with several hours separating one operation from the other.

The third Light rail is placed in the middle of the track and divided into eight-metre sections, each of which is powered only while it is completely covered by a tram.

The challenge in designing light rail systems is to realize the potential of LRT to provide fast, comfortable service while avoiding the tendency to overdesign that results in excessive capital costs beyond what is necessary to meet the public's needs.

Light rail trains are very sturdily built for passenger safety, and to reduce damage from impacts with cars.