Residents get sneak peek at new cars
While transit takers eagerly anticipating completion of the new Valley Line LRT still have at least another year to wait, the city provided an opportunity last weekend to step inside one of the new train cars that will eventually run along the route.
The new design is a significant departure from that of the existing Capital and Metro Lines. Dean Heuman, the stakeholder relations manager for Transed — the group responsible for building and operating the Valley Line — said there are only a few similarities between the new and old cars.
“The common things are, they have motors, they have wheels and they have seats,” Heuman said inside the new train car, which was on display in the parking lot of the Mill Woods Town Centre.
And the differences? The new cars are thinner and lower to the ground — passengers will board the train step-free from sidewalk level, a feature that Heuman says makes the train accessible to those using wheelchairs or other mobility devices. There’s heat in the winter, air-conditioning in the summer and segments of the car designed for passengers with bicycles and strollers.
The cars are also much longer than those currently in use. A single vehicle has seven modules, which translates to 82 seats and a 275-person capacity.
“We can also put two of these together, so we can hold 550 people,” Heuman said. “The trademark of this line is going to be the volume of the people we can take and the frequency and the consistency we can run it with.”
Heuman said visitors most often ask him how the new line will integrate with bus service and street traffic. While bus-route details aren’t yet complete, the train will be integrated electronically with intersections, he said.
That means the train will always have the right-of-way as it approaches roads. From the Mill Woods station at the southern end of the line, a trip downtown will take just over a half-hour.
The city ordered 26 train cars for the new line from Bombardier. The one on display at the Mill Woods Town Centre is the second to arrive.
The next step in testing will come in late October, when Transed will pull train cars along the track without power. Then they’ll try moving the trains through intersections under power before the new year.
The southeast leg of the Valley Line LRT is expected to open in late 2020.