It depends on what you're wanting to do. It sounded like you want to use the QLine as a starting point for a light rail line. The QLine is not light rail, and not very much of it could be reused for a light rail line, and the parts that you could reuse you wouldn't want to.
If you're just talking about duplicating the QLine, more or less as-is, then yeah, the existing QLine could be used for that. But there also aren't any service quality or cost advantages over other modes, so for that it's less of a technical issue of whether it could be done and more of a question of why. Even doing a light rail line would be very questionable imo. These are modes that are just very poorly suited for Woodward.
I would be happy to hear the case made, because it would open up more transit possibilities for us.
It's true that if you have closer station spacing you can spread the passengers out more so that the stations don't go over capacity, but the QLine doesn't have close station spacing. Other than a few spots where specific destinations cause them to be closer, most of the stations are a third to a half mile apart. Typical close streetcar spacing is having a stop every few blocks like a bus.
Toronto's streetcar stops usually don't have shelters. But the tracks are also in the middle of the street, and you board the streetcar by walking into traffic. They're not ADA accessible. You pay your fare on the streetcar instead of at the station.
So there's a line out to 8 Mile, with stations every half mile or so, the tracks have no interference from traffic except for the occasional intersection, which the train can sail though because of signal priority. With nothing in the way, the QLine streetcar flies by at its maximum speed of... 35 mph.
Then it gets to a station. Even though it carries a maximum of 125 people, there's only two doors, about a third as much door per passenger as a standard city bus. It takes a while but eventually everyone gets on or off.
It doesn't make sense to try to use the QLine streetcars in that way. It would make more sense to get light rail vehicles, which go 50+ mph, have more capacity, more doors, etc. And that don't have to deal with any of the battery stuff.
The traction power substations take electricity from the power grid and convert it for use by the trains. The QLine already has these. One of them is visible at the maintenance facility [[
https://goo.gl/maps/orhXjaw2ufCJjc8o7), and the rest are underground. But they're sized to provide power for the size and number of trains that we already have. If you have bigger trains or if you run more of the same trains, you need more power. Idk if it's a thing where you'd keep the old substations and add additional ones, or if you'd replace the old substations with bigger ones, so maybe there's some cost savings by using the existing QLine or maybe not.
Toronto is a good example for contrasting streetcars with light rail. This is one of their new light rail line's substations
http://www.thecrosstown.ca/news-medi...-substation-12 . Their platforms are 5 times longer than ours.
Maintenance facilities aren't put at transit hubs unless there's no other choice. For maintenance facilities you want large open land for plenty of space for storing the trains and moving them around and working on them, and for a transit station you want dense development. It used to be that the state fair grounds were good for that because there was a lot of big open space out of the way, but that space is now taken up by Amazon. At this point the maintenance facility would probably be in Highland Park.