Talk:Rubber-tyred metro

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DYK 2006-10-22
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Is it conversion that is high-cost or building in general? The new line 14, built in 98 is rubber-tyred.

I have understood (but correct me if I'm wrong) that conversion has been abandoned because of the high cost, not building in general, as seems confirmed by this rather recent new line. Patrick 21:30 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)

"At the same time, De Gaulle sought to differentiate the French and their way of doing things, as well as create a morale booster. De Gaulle posed the question as to how that might be applied to the Paris Metro rebuilding and the rubber-tired technology became one of the manifestations of the French "coming back". So, for the most part, the real impetus for implementing this burdensome system was political, not technical merit. Nevertheless, the French have succeeded in propagating and exporting this technology, as "state-of-the-art" and au courant" does not sound NPOV to me David.Monniaux 20:02, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The Adelaide, Australian O-bahn could be considered rubber-tired metro. Any reason not to consider it here?

Yes; the Australian O-bahn is a form of BRT, specifically a guided busway, not rubber-tired metro. Markmtl 09:40, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] edited

I removed editorial comments from within the article - please put such comments in these talk pages, not in the article. Also, I did some rewording and removed the "NPOV" tag, which is a confusing one at best (it says the story needs better NPOV but the article's neutrality isn't contested, and I don't know what that means). - DavidWBrooks 17:53, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] tire vs. tyre

I see that somebody changed the spelling of this word from American to the non-American spelling throughout the article. Normally Wikipedia frowns on such tweaking, since it can lead to revert wars across the Atlantic (or across the 49th parallel), but in this case it seems appropriate since none of the examples given are in the U.S., so non-U.S. spelling should be used. Similary, an article about the British pound should use "colour" but an article about the U.S. dollar should use "color" - DavidWBrooks 14:03, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Although in Canada and in English translations in Québec it is spelled "tire." Don't mind the British version at all, but we shouldn't assume British English to be international, or more international, than American English. . . or should we?  ;-) Markmtl 09:44, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

In the article 'tyre' is used, and not 'tire', so i changed the title to 'Rubber-tyred metro'. Rubber-tyred metros are rare in the US and common in Europe, so we'll use Commonwealth spelling. And yes, commonwealth spelling is more international than American ;-) --Lord Snoeckx 21:01, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] link

I removed the link to the city of MOnterrey, Mexico, because I live here, and travel in Both Metro lines everyday, and there is no evidence of using tires in the system. e-mailed Metrorrey (The Company which operates both lines), and this information was affirmed.


[edit] Rubber Tired Metros as burdensome and having only political (not technical) merit

"At the same time, Charles de Gaulle sought to differentiate the French and their way of doing things, as well as create a morale booster. So the real impetus for implementing this burdensome system was political, not technical merit. "

Can anyone prove this claim? - that the principal reason for use of the rubber-tire system in the Paris metro is "political, not technical". Also, that DeGaulle had substantial input into the decision. Doubtlessly, supporters of such rubber tire systems would point out the numerous technical advantages of rubber tire metros (faster acceleration and braking, noise reduction compared to the older metros of that era, etc.).

Also, there is a potential issue of French-bashing. Calling a stereotypically "French" technology a "burdensome system" (when it does have many merits) and claiming that it has "not been widely adopted, except by the few cities listed below" (when that list of cities is actually fairly substantial and not limited to France or French-speaking people) really seems grossly inaccurate. Please don't forget that are an unusually large number of other wikipedia articles have portrayed French (and Canadian) people and things in a negative light.

Don't believe me? Just two (of many) examples. Look at older versions of the Jacques Chirac article. Even local anti-Chirac sentiment and rather bizarre political caricatures (such as Super Menteur) by his local French liberal rivals (Chirac is by all means conservative in the American sense) seem to warrant extended treatment. Even the George W Bush article (our currently very controversial US president and a comparable figure) doesn't get quite the same ultra-detailed account of nearly every little controversy imaginable. And keep in mind that most English speakers know much more about President Bush (for example) than they know about most French people or things. Another example: Look at the Bombardier (a large Canadian conglomerate) article - a large portion is devoted to its alleged corporate misdeeds. Almost every major corporation has such controversial issues, but very few such corporations have gotten such a detailed treatment (in any mnetion at all , in some cases) on wikipedia (look at the Lockheed Martin or General Electric pages for comparable US conglomerates). Also, weak claims such as "Bombardier's reputation may have been tarnished" by delays on one recent small streetcar order for Las Vegas are made in the article, while the fact that the company has successfully completed many, much larger equipment orders without technical problems for many other buyers (such as New York City) for at least 2 decades, is not mentioned in the article.

So, if noone can substantiate the claims in the article about rubber tired technology in a reasonable time frame, I will edit the section (at a later time) to be more factual.

joseph

Since Charles De Gaulle was not in power from 1946 to 1958, the decision to start the rubber tire program did not come from him. However, given the timeframe of the conversion of lines 1 & 4, he may have pushed for this solution, but I somewhat doubt it.

From the documents I possess, the usual explainantions for the development of rubber tire system is that the 1900-1930s Sprague-Thomson cars from the Paris subway had a very hard time on the steepest grades of the network, especially on the difficult 11 line. The new Materiel Articulé cars, whose design started in 1936, but were produced only in 1951, were not satisfactory either. This opened the path to the successful experiments of 1951, which validated the feasibility of the system, and the better performance on steep grade, acceleration and braking compared to the 30's cars. The RATP did not look back on rail cars until 1966, when it appeared that converting the whole network would be too long, too expensive, and that it would need to replace all the older cars before the end of the conversion. Given the performance improvements provided by the 60's technology, the gap between rubber-tires and rail was much smaller. As a result, the MF67, designed at thas moment, is the most used model on the RATP network, even if it is less capable than its tired counterparts.

--87.88.101.119 21:44, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

The rubber-tyred metro program was started because of poor steel performance at that time: a metro loose most time accelerating and braking because of short distances between stops. Top speed means little compared to overal speed.
With an Paris steel metro, you need to brake before the station start, with rubber metro, you can brake at station's half.
This is a technical issue, not a political one.
Conversions have stopped because they were expensive, and as time passed, steel had bettered its performance, although not as good as rubber (especially in short curves vibrations).
Of course, rubber better performance is due to larger surface contacts, and so the frictions are worse.
Gonioul 01:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't look like anyone's got anything to substantiate the de Gaule assertion. Shall we remove that claim? —Eric S. Smith 20:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

  1. remove - Gonioul 17:47, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
  2. remove - Sounds like French-bashing to me. J-C V 08:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
  3. remove - Ldemery 02:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Since most people seem to agree that this section should be deleted, I will do it now. J-C V 22:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Metromover?

Should the Miami Metromover be on this list? It's certainly rubber-tyred, but may not count as a metro system. --87.82.27.203 16:58, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

From everything in that article, it looks like a metro to me, if a small one. David Arthur 22:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming of the title to Rubber-tyred railway

I suggest changing the article title due to the recent argument about Singapore's LRT. IMO it may reduce the embarrassment to include the rubber-tyred light rail, tramway, or even the rubber-tyred rail-guided bus into this article. The term "rubber-tyred metro" is not Paris metro specific, right? -- Sameboat - 同舟 04:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

IMHO so called "rubber-tramways", pre-metro, guided buses, etc, already have their own articles, and are not real metro or railways.
But beware, if you rename it to railway, then you'll have to include things like Micheline! :p
Rubber-tyred rapid transit maybe?
Gonioul 10:33, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I ain't against it. But including Micheline and rubber-tyred people mover (except the rubber-tyred train in the theme park) isn't something terrible. The role of this article can be slightly adjusted to be like talking about the principle of Rubber-tyred rapid transit and using the {{main|main article}} to link to each type of rubber-tyred technology. Honestly, this article need to be cleaned up to match the Wiki format, it's a bad example to have first 8 paragraphs without giving each of them relative headline/subject. -- Sameboat - 同舟 11:09, 20 February 2007 (UTC)