Beyond what David posted, the design specs for Hiawatha lrt sets the
capacity of the electrical substations to be sufficient to run 3-car
trains no closer than 5 minutes apart. And that was the original, I'm
not sure whether it was cut back to save money. That means that even if
there was a special track for the dome, the trains couldn't go anywhere
quickly. Remember that the round trip from the Nicollet Mall was supposed
to take 62 minutes, 75 with layover time. That'll be a few more with the
extension to the warehouse district.
I don't know whether there is going to be a cross-over point between the
dome and the downtown end of the line. The extra cars could come from the
Cedar-Riverside yards, but might have to go all the way to the end of the
line to cross over to the right tracks.
Some cars will be occupied with scheduled runs that departed downtown
before the game, so you would have 2 to 6 cars not available for the
fans' specials, depending on how many cars per sccheduled run.
So, even if you had the trains configured with three cars (meaning 5 to 6
total trains), you could serve around 360 riders per train. A total of
2,160 riders per set of trains with the following schedule for a game that
lets out at 6 pm:
Time Cumulative riders
6:00 360
6:05 720
6:10 1,080
6:15 1,440
6:20 1,800
6:25 2,160
then a wait until the scheduled trains that left before the game come back,
probably no earlier than 7:00. Needs a big waiting area. And the numbers
above only work if you can load 360 people in less than five minutes.
Bruce Gaarder
Highland Park Saint Paul
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
