urbanMSP

5 LRV are in service and the two LRV on the snap track are LRV 211 & 212

Is there space to store all these cars until they can move to St Paul? Or are all of these being delievered for Blue line service, and Green line cars won't be delivered until it's all wired up?

I've noticed the door delay as well

What's up with that?
And there sure is a hole under the door!?
Just hopped one for 1 block-

LRV's are still arriving. Soon there will be two deliveries in a month. The gap on the bottom of the door will be resolved before winter.

The newest LRV I've seen at the Franklin Yard is 220. According to a presentation given to the Met Council Transportation Committee in August 2012, 24 LRV vehicles were to be delivered by the end of July 2013 with the final deliveries occuring in April 2014. If Siemens and Metro Transit are falling behind, I hope there is no delay in getting the line up and running.

The newest LRV I've seen at the Franklin Yard is 220. According to a presentation given to the Met Council Transportation Committee in August 2012, 24 LRV vehicles were to be delivered by the end of July 2013 with the final deliveries occuring in April 2014. If Siemens and Metro Transit are falling behind, I hope there is no delay in getting the line up and running.

I would not worry about it just yet. LRV 221 and 222 was delivered last Tuesday. LRV 223 and 224 are in route.

With all the vehicles arriving, is Cenral East terminus storage barn going to be used, soon?
When could it be ready as a simple covered parking lot?

I'm not sure how far along they are with the tracks that loop underneath the Lafayette Freeway (US-52) bridge -- there's a loop which needs to be completed in order to access the main storage tracks, which are in the northern part of the building. I've made some modest efforts at getting over there to look, but it's hard to see.

This is roughly represented on OpenStreetMap: http://osm.org/go/T~f0~Ihek-

The train barn by 52 won't be ready for a while yet judging by what I saw. No catenary strung yet, not to mention that they are just starting now to lay track under 52. They could theoretically do it without the tracks outside, there's a double crossover right inside the building and all the tracks inside the building are there

Thanks.

Just hoping arrival of so many vehicles would overwhelm Franklin barn and force progress!

Thanks.

Just hoping arrival of so many vehicles would overwhelm Franklin barn and force progress!

They are working from the west end of the line towards the east. So far all testing is limited to the west bank to stadium station thru the U.

LRV 226 was delivered last night

As I recall, we have ordered 59 LRVs, with an option for more if/when SWLRT gets funded. If that number is still accurate, I guess that puts us at a little under the 50% mark for getting all the LRVs. I assume throughput from the manufacturer will start ramping up soon - this is pretty much on schedule for vehicle delivery, correct?

An LRV presentation given to the Met Council last year had 226 being delivered in August 2013 with delivery of the final and 59th vehicle being delivered in April 2014.

230 is sitting in the Franklin Yard.

I got a photo of 229 undergoing a testing/qualification run today; assuming they're arriving in numerical order, there are now more Siemens cars than Bombardier cars, which is an interesting landmark of sorts.

It was also noteworthy in how long I had to stand around and wait to get a photo of a solid set of Bombarier cars in the old livery; lots and lots of Siemens cars in service, and lots of the Bombardier cars are wearing ad-wraps again now.

Three Siemens trains were delivered Tuesday bringing us up to at least 233.

I see that the final (59th) LRV is expected in April 2014. Is it possible to start Green Line operations without the full complement of LRVs? Or is delivery of all the LRVs a hard deadline (lifeline?) for when operations can begin?

Have we figured out what the exact service frequency is going to be? If there are 10-minute headways, they'd need 30-ish vehicles for peak-period service on each line if my math is right -- 40+ per line if headways drop to 7.5 minutes or less (assuming 10 minutes for layover at each end). Transit agencies typically want to keep about 10% of vehicles in reserve -- partly so maintenance can be performed even during peak hours (it was a pretty amazing trick that Metro Transit pulled by overhauling their 27 Bombardiers while running them at 100% utilization a few years back).

If the line starts out at 100% utilization of the available fleet, with the Blue Line sticking to 10-minute service and the Green Line running at 7 to 7.5 minutes, you'd want to have about 75 vehicles delivered and through the checkout process before starting operation (and it takes 1-2 months for checkout, right?). If their schedule holds, I think they could certainly start operation by April (if the track, catenary, signaling, and station infrastructure is all sorted out by then).

AFAIK, the Green Line will run every 10 minutes, including at peak times.