That anyone would fall for this "too big for the tracks" nonsense.
This is a garbage story put out by an anti-streecar politician to a reporter who did't check. That mayor is desperate to justify shutting down construction on that streetcar line. Taking lots of heat for that and trying to make others look bad. Those same CAF cars run fine in other US cities, especially Kansas City. During the Winter Olympics, Salt Lake City borrowed longer and heavier cars from Dallas to help in moving the crowds with their light rail. Standard guage has been a thing since Abraham Lincoln, folks!
A moment's thought will tell you that it is generally the width of a train car that would be a clearance issue, not the length. Kind of like the way the same tracks near your house can handle freight trains of anything between 1 and 110 cars.
Practical examples for any of you not familiar with street railway technology in the modern age: Toronto is right now replacing their 46-foot CLRVs from the 1970s with Bombardier Flexities that are 91-feet long. There have been no issues with this (save that Bombardier has been a bit slow on delivery). San Francisco's new Siemens cars are longer than the Bredas they replaced, which were longer than the Boeings they ran before that, which were longer than the 1940s President Conference Committee cars they ran before that. Anyone notice that longer streetcars didn't stop San Francisco, which has even reopened lines once abandoned, adding to streetcar service? Those longer, modern cars are articulated in design, meaning their longer lengths have shorter carbodies joined together - kind of like a semi instead of a fixed-frame on a truck. The 91-foot long streetcars can then easily handle the same 36-foot turns as fixed frame cars half their length.
The talk about extra weight in the original story is garbage, too. This is no different in streetcar terms than when we traded in my bride's old Scion XA for a Subaru Forester last year. It is longer and heavier, but the garage floor didn't exactly collapse, and the streets around our house didn't need repaving! Things like the bridges in service pits at the shops are not just rated in overall load, but load per length.
A longer and heavier car could actually put less load on a bridge. In Milwaukee, just testing to start their own streetcar line, engineers thought they'd need to reinforce the St. Paul St. Bridge for the 80,000 pound streetcars. Only, when they ran the numbers, the actual load on the bridge the streetcar makes is less than a loaded semi. They did nothing structure to the bridge except to weld on the rails, and it's working fine!
This is a garbage story put out for political purpose. Don't be fooled.
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