"Marratxi" wrote:

4. I did like the cross-city trains (RER) in Paris. Double-decker trains
were impressive. I do hope that cross-rail does this.

The RER double-deckers are good for shifting more people but they are a
bu**er to get on and off. The vestibules tend to get extremely crowded
with
people who don't want to go up or down the stairs to the seating areas.

This certainly is a problem in doubledecker trains. It is not possible to
have more doors than the ones above the bogies at the end of the carriages
(it takes way to much space to make doors + stairs in the middle; it would
cancel out the gain of having a doubledecker). Therefore, twice as many
people have to use fewer doors than in an ordinary metro-like train.
Therefore, I think doubledeckers are not very suited to railway lines with
many stops and little distance between stops.

Here in the Netherlands, doubledeckers have been in use for almost 20 years
now. They are mainly in use on the middle-distance commuter lines between
the big cities and the more distant commuter towns (Amsterdam-Alme (25
km, Amsterdam-Amersfoort: 40 km etc) where many people get on the train at
the starting point and the trains get gradually emptier. For this type of
services, doubledeckers are perfectly suited.

In the 1990s. Dutch doubledeckers have been tested in the Munich S-Bahn
(comparable to the railway network in South-London or the RER in Paris.
Somewhere between metro and train). S-Bahn services travel between the
busiest point in Munich and surroundings of the city and people usually
travel short distances (in the city, at least). This means many people go on
and off the train on most stations in the city. The tests showed that
doubledeckers weren't suited because of a lack of doors.

regards,
hgrm