Noises Off in San Francisco Amidst all the rail development noise in San Francisco, BART innovates with wheel-quieting projects for smoother rides.
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here’s a lot of rail development noise in the City by the Bay: both BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and SFMTA (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, Muni light rail) are undergoing expansion, and a new CBTC (communications-based train control) system is in the works at BART. Bombardier is supplying 775 new “Fleet of the Future” rapid transit cars to BART to begin operation at the end of 2016. Siemens recently hosted San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) for a behind-the-scenes look at the first of 215 Californiabuilt light rail vehicles currently under production at the Siemens rail manufacturing hub in Sacramento, Calif.
The first SFMTA advanced technology S200 high-floor LRV is expected to arrive in San Francisco in December and will enter into final testing and commissioning prior to revenue service, scheduled for 2018. Amidst all this development noise, BART is also working on innovative approaches to quiet the wheel-squealing problem of urban transit. At one of its noisiest stretches of track—between Balboa Park and Daly City—BART began installing custom made rail dampers to help quiet the tracks this past Labor Day weekend. These dampers, made of steel and rubber, physically clamp onto the rail every 30 inches and help lessen the vibration that causes the well-known screeching noise when November 2016 Railway Age 25