The first of several runs, taken the early morning hours of April 27th, 2007. The testing location was on Washington St., between 48th and 56th streets. The train reached speeds of 50 m.p.h, although most runs were between 15 -35 mph. Sorry for the mediocre quality, it was taken with my phone.
More pics and clips can be found at http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=130240
The initial 50-vehicle order has been delivered, and all but 11 are assembled.
These are Low-Floor LRV's made by Kinki Sharyo. Seattle Sound Transit is using a similar vehicle.
The initial 20-mile line is scheduled to begin operation on December 27th. This is an at-grade route, with 18 miles running on existing city street right-of-way. The transit guideway is dedicated, and will be separated from existing traffic by curbs. The remaining 2 miles includes a 1500' bridge spanning the Tempe town lake, and a former Union Pacific right-of-way through DT Tempe.
The trains will operate on surface streets using a predictive priority system. The average operating speed for the trains on this initial route will be 22mph (this includes dwell time at the stations). Future route operating speeds will probably be much faster, since some of these routes will use existing freeway right-of-way. Operating hours are initially slated to be 4:30am to 12:30am, but the final decision on this still hasn't been made.
They will run with 2-car trains at 10 minute intervals, from about 6am to 7pm on weekdays. On weekends, trains will run at 15 minute intervals. In the case of special events, such as Tempe's New Year's eve party, the Fiesta Bowl parade, or Diamondback's games, they will go with either 3-car trains, or run the 2-car trains at shorter intervals.
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