This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Trains: Rapid transit High‑importance Trains Portal DYK 2006-10-22 This article is within the scope of WikiProject Trains, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to rail transport on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. See also: WikiProject Trains to do list and the Trains Portal.TrainsWikipedia:WikiProject TrainsTemplate:WikiProject Trainsrail transport articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Associated projects or task forces: /  This article is supported by WikiProject Rapid transit. Canada: Quebec / Montreal Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Canada, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Canada on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CanadaWikipedia:WikiProject CanadaTemplate:WikiProject CanadaCanada-related articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Quebec. This article is supported by WikiProject Montreal (assessed as Mid-importance).

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers. This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist. [[BYD Company#SkyShuttle Rubber-tyred tram|BYD Skyshuttle]] The anchor (#SkyShuttle Rubber-tyred tram) has been deleted. Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

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)[reply]

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)

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

The above comment implies that the entire British commonwealth uses the same spelling as England, which, as mentioned two posts above, simply is untrue since the correct spelling of the word is "tire" in Canada. This also demonstrates that the two choices are not simply British and American. The choice in spelling should be based around the English-speaking countries that make use of the system, thus the European argument doesn`t make sense, since a lot of Europe is neither `British` nor English-speaking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhall27 (talk • contribs) 20:25, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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.

"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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

I think it would still be interesting to know how much political influence there was. Steel performance wasn't that poor even at that time. There are many systems that don't have rubber tyres and work with comparable efficiency. Furthermore it would be interesting if the actually costs are justified by the gain in performance (at least the Paris Métro is dependent on Michelin tyres even to this day). I don't think of ot as bashing if protecionism is considered as a reason nor is it specifically french. Every country on this planet prefers more or less it's domestic industry especially when it comes to railway technology. To provide a more recent example from France you just have to look at the disagrement between Alstom and Eurostar. They said that Eurostar should be forbidden to buy Siemens Velaro EMUs as replacment fleet because these trains were shorter than safety regulations would mandate. Unsurprisingly the length in the safety regulations is exactly the length of the first generation of Eurostar rolling stock. The complaint started to sound ridiculous given the fact the Eurostar's current Alstom stock is already shorter than the regulations. I wouldn't rule out such political reasons as such decisions are nowhere in the world made without the political support and funding. 87.182.218.105 (talk) 17:42, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

I do not see the point of discussing Automated driverless systems within the context of this article since both rubber-tyred and conventional rail system can be driverless. --Georgius (talk) 17:21, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes this should only be a link in this article. There are many automated systems with or without a train operator on standby which are running on conventional steel rails. Although airport people movers an other types of services that transport many people over short distances are the kinds of systems that make the best use of rubber tyres. 87.182.218.105 (talk) 17:48, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed

• Marc Dufour's "The principle behind the rubber-tired metro". (in English)

from the references as the link is no longer active.

You could change it to the Archive version, if necessary https://web.archive.org/web/20110613044058/http://www.emdx.org/rail/metro/principeE.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.170.88.56 (talk) 19:16, 6 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few airport lines on the list that I don't think should be included. I don't think Airport Lines that are transits for terminal to terminal should be included on the list. Any thoughts? --Iluvml93 (talk) 10:07, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a 'citation needed' for the smoother rides, because some searching on the internet only resulted in many pages having exactly the same wording as this Wikipedia article (and have thus probably just copied the Wikipedia content). And personally I found the ride on a rubber-tyred metro in Paris clearly less smooth than a normal metro. Of course that might only be my personal opinion, but I think the statement from the article is not so obvious that it wouldn't need any reliable source. --Wwwdigi (talk) 12:54, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a citation now, but I've also found good sources(https://doi.org/10.4271/740228) which state the exact opposite. I'm not convinced that this claim holds up. NCLI (talk) 23:38, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Actually having read the citation, it is extremely weak. I'm moving it to "disadvantages" based on my source. Please argue back with a better source if one exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NCLI (talk • contribs) 23:42, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It was advertised as a smoother ride when it got out but it was due to all improvements combined (lighting, seating, door control, windows...) not especially the rubber-tyred system : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAw5szN86pg .

But it really depends on the train model:

- In RATP archives I found a lot of letters of people begging the company to operate regular trains on peak hours because the new MP73 trains made them sick. Other notes from engineers noted this problem and addressed during the years the report cited above was published.

- On the other hand older models such as MP59 have very soft suspensions (like renault buses and cars) which tends to amplify movements and feels like sitting on a boat for some people say.

So I don't think it's inherent to the system especially considering rolling comfort offered by newer trains (see M14). I don't know if more recent studies have been posted to corroborate that though... Jujuleju (talk) 09:47, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the US Washington DC Metro system omitted from this article?LorenzoB (talk) 03:26, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Because it is not rubber-tired in the least. It's entirely steel wheel on steel rail. oknazevad (talk) 17:39, 9 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if the Brisbane Metro is valid for inclusion in the list here as it seems to appear more as a articulated bus than a rubber-tyred metro. It doesn't steer by guide rail and is free to move around the busway infrastructure that is shared with other existing buses. Fauzi (talk) 05:10, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone please verify that all of the systems that are “planned” have some sort of reference to back all of them up? A random editor keeps adding planned new systems however I can’t find anything about a “Managua Metro“ or “Vientiane Metro”. They also keep adding these new systems to the bottom of the list, not in alphabetical order. Fork99 (talk) 04:45, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I had a look through their contribution history to see that they also do this on the article List of metro systems for under construction section. Fork99 (talk) 04:56, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Rubber-tyred metro#List of systems Michelin is the name of the company and the article says nothing about the actual technology. Peter Horn User talk 21:35, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wheelset (rail transport)#Special wheelsets would be more like it. Peter Horn User talk 21:41, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is no substantive content or sourcing in this article to justify it being split out from Rubber-tyred metro. It should be merged back into that article. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:36, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

AS far as I checked back it was never part of rubber-tyred metro. Many articles are linked to is so it would need to be a redirect and a section of its own. Peter Horn User talk 02:28, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Based on google searches, the primary topic for "Guide bar" is the component of a chainsaw. Thryduulf (talk) 12:11, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  That is chainsaw#Guide bar There may be a need for a disambiguation Peter Horn User talk 14:31, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  What sources did you find? Peter Horn User talk 19:42, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  When searching google for guide bar nearly all the results relate to chainsaws and I had to add other search terms (I forget which I used) to find pages relating to rubber-tyred metros. My comments do not relate to whether this content should be in a stand-alone article or part of a different one, merely that it is not the primary topic and so should be moved if not merged and if merged this title should redirect to Chainsaw#Guide bar with a hatnote to the merged content. Thryduulf (talk) 14:48, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I propose a new article called Rubber-tired track in a format similar to current collector and list or railroad truck parts. Peter Horn User talk 20:00, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]