Tram lane Confusion

BrianD

It seems that everytime it rains we have traffic light failures. I am always amazed that there are no penalties imposed on the suppliers of traffic signals that clearly are not up to the job in Ireland.

As for Tuesday, I doubt if you can pin the blame even if they were over zealous on the over ride button. In Dublin, rain = more cares and more congestion. DCC have a traffic system so fragile that even the slightest spanner in the work will bring it down. The negative publicity that Luas has got from the media has also made it possible to blame anything on the Luas. I was actually on a bus on harcourt st on the morning in question. The traffic was heavy on Harcourt St. and Stephens Green South. I don't usually use the bus so I don't know what the norm is. While q'ing on Stephens Green, I saw one tram go through the lights.

seamus

Originally posted by Victor
No problem I imagine, if they are satallite photos that they are licenced on a per copy basis and not readily available unless you want to pay. Maybe they were testing it, maybe they thought they weren't working and they pressed them again, too often. Ever have windows lock on you and you press [return] or [backspace] too much? Then windows catches up with itself and goes into hyperdrive and does thigns you don't want it to do?

Heh, possibly. If it is, it's essentially a bug that needs to be caught.

What about location though? Was the traffic worse than usual because of the rain say on the northside?

Well, I don't know about the northside , but traffic was just as bad well away from the LUAS. Lucan, for example. Anyone who works in town will tell you that once it even smells like it's going to rain, traffic gets bad. If the rain is constant, everyone panics and takes their cars. LUAS isn't even a factor.

Victor

Originally posted by seamus
Heh, possibly. If it is, it's essentially a bug that needs to be caught.

It's a maybe.

Töpher

Just to drag up the old comment on what happens if a tram breaks down, I witnessed a tram being towed by another tram about a week ago, up Harcourt St, at 2 in the morning, I find it hard to believe they were testing the LUAS at 2am, so the question is how long did it take to actually sort that out? THe trams appear to have towbar fuctions fitted At least they half prepared for it!

BrianD

I think you have answered your own question! Provided the tram hasn't derailed another unit can tow it to the depot. I understand that they also have an independent vehicle for doing this as well. It's quite possible that they may have left the disabled tram at Stephens Green until the end of the working day before bringing it back to the depot.

Töpher

My point was, why did it take until 2am to move it It hadn't been left at Stephens Green, as fair as I could see, as the trams appeared to only be coupling together in the middle of Harcourt St.
What I saw was not an independent unit, but 2 trams coupling together, to remove the 1 that was broken down.

Steve Conway

I've made some enquiries on this.

Apparently as part of the safety and operational spec they have to do some simulated breakdown/recovery drills, but as the testing is intensive, they are doing these after hours in order to cause no disruption to the "shadow schedule".

sliabh

If this is the same tram I saw getting towed past Miltown about 1:30am on a Friday night a few weeks ago then there was something else wrong. The tram doing the towing had a piece of metal hanging down at the front dragging on the ground so its speed seemed to be limited by the racket it was making. And there were three other trams behind the pair being towed. Not what you would expect where a test is being performed.

BrianD

Maybe they were simulating a breakdown or maybe it did breakdown. If it wasn't at Stephens Green it must have been on Harcourt St. for a long time! Lets face it, these are machines and there will be a tram failure sooner or later (no doubt it will give the media a good story for a week).

As regard to the timing, at this stage before the line is open they can do what they like when they like.

I wonder if the dangling piece was the people catcher. Apparently if a person/cyclist collides with the front of the tram the people catcher drops down and pushes the casualty to one side. Kind of snow plough style.

I was saying that they also have an independent unit to tow a tram if necessary.