On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 01:12:45PM -0400, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
Well he did say voltage but perhaps he was referring to when the old fleet is entirely retired. For now they might be modifying the older still serviceable cars to deal with higher voltage in some way.
There is no way to are changing the voltage. Just the current carrying capacity of the overhead wires. If increasing the voltage was an option (which would require simultaniously changing every transformer in the system, and probably the motors in every streetcar too at the same time), then they would be able to keep the old wires since higher voltage reduces the need for higher current to provide the same power. Of course swapping all that out at once is not an option, so the voltage is not changing. So instead if you want more power capacity, you need more current which means thicker wires. Conviniently that can be done area by area. The wires are of course also being updated to work with the pantograph system, which means fixing all the intersections and curves, and eventually making the straight sections move side to side a bit rather than being completely straight (which apparently wears a nice groove into pantographs). After all the plan apparently is that only the first 60 or so of the new streetcars will have trolley poles, while the rest will only have a pantograph (the first 60 have both). -- Len Sorensen