Do Londoners dream of electric buses?
ianvisits.co.uk
ianvisits.co.uk
Every single cyclist dreams of electric busses, believe you me.
Huffing nitrogen stationary-bus-fart oxides turns any public road here straight into an express lane to lung cancer, without even the courtesy of a nicotine rush.
I laugh when people say cycling is healthy. Not in London. Nooo sir. Between the long term certainty of whatever smokers like to aim for, and the short term gamble of “brain-on-asphalt syndrome”, it’s a bloody joke.
Electric busses can’t rule the streets soon enough.
http://www.breathelondon.org/south-east/project/modes-transp...
But cyclists and pedestrians have no such luxury - they're breathing in the filth whenever they're on, or near, a busy road.
And paper filters do, of course, remove dust and particulates, which are part of the problem. Just not things like NOx and volatile organics. And depending on the filter, it may not be effective against really small (eg PM2.5) particles.
Not according to this Cambridge study two years ago. They found the health benefits of cycling in London always outweighed the risks.
http://www.mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk/blog/walking-cycling-air-pollu...
It got quite a bit of media coverage, e.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/05/benefits...
Further, while 1% of cities may cross their air thresholds at their assumption levels those are the largest cities. So far more than 1% of the population would be worse off.
It's just the news glossed over the very real downsides mentioned in the study.
The NoX fumes are horrible for pedestrians too. Especially when the buses are stacked one after another, idling.
I seriously can’t believe the government refuses to act on the diesel disaster. Tens of thousands of people die from diesel exhaust complications per year, but they don’t care.
Outside of TfL and absent a "diesel scrappage scheme" the cost would be born by primarily by private individuals anyway.
As the article suggests the cash cost of the electric busses may be zero with a longer deprecation period.
Against that "pollutants linked to one in 12 deaths in parts of London." Which would you choose? https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
To me it would be more sensible to only trigger a noise generator upon feedback from the parking sensors, instead of polluting the environment with constant sci-fi noises.
Acoustic Vehicle Alert System (AVAS): https://www.interregs.com/articles/spotlight/eu-updates-requ...
Both things can be solved, but at the price hit of the EV tech I"m not sure the clients would be very willing to spend the money.
Bringing in electric buses will not decrease these pollutants. They will also not remove enough of the other half of the pollutants. The change needs to be far wider and harsher.
"In urban environments, brake wear can contribute up to 55 % by mass to total non-exhaust traffic-related PM10 emissions" [1]. (The "abrasion processes which result in direct particulate matter (PM) emission are tyre, brake, clutch and road surface wear, with other potential sources being engine wear, abrasion of wheel bearings and corrosion of other vehicle components, street furniture and crash barriers.")
When a vehicle regeneratively brakes, the brakes aren't engaged. Instead, the transmission connects to a generator, which resists the vehicle's motion as it converts kinetic energy into electricity.
On urban buses, which are constantly starting and stopping, I imagine it could be even more.
No brake pads required. Simply dump the energy into the battery (or a big heater for the excess when the battery is full or too cold to charge)
Obviously, you can't have a failure in the electrical or control system or you can't brake anymore, so that part will have to be designed with much more redundancy than it is in todays vehicles.
It's true that there will be an increase in road / tyre dust due to the extra weight of batteries, but I'd be very surprised if this was as much as was saved elsewhere.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/china-is-adding-a-lon...
https://www.curbed.com/2018/5/4/17320838/china-bus-shenzhen-...
I've lost count of the amount of times that grubby, dusty brake pads have led to screeching that makes me feel like my ears are about to bleed, when buses have come to a standstill beside me. I once even wrote to TFL about the problem, weird little man that I am. Never received a response.
* How do you arrange parked buses in a garage so that they can charge? Diagrams included!
* Purchase cost: 2x up front compared to diesel, but improving
* Operating cost: 50% lower than diesel (but labor—hiring the driver—is still 60%)
Also there's no idling that would normally cause vibrations.
The noise seems to be exaggerated somewhat in that video - in real life it's pretty subtle.
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/18/news/tobacco-giants-analy...
Your car maintenance you'll typically spend 4 hours for an annual service, at $50 per hour. Total: $200
A bus in a depot uses in house staff ($25 per hour), and since all the busses are identical and they're probably performing the same service on 5 at a time, probably only works out to an hour per bus. Total cost $25.
Thats so small compared to the salary of the driver who drives it around normally, maintenance cost might not be a significant part of the equation.
It's fantastic. In a quiet residential area they are nearly silent and when I cycle by them on the way work there's no fumes.
The strangest thing is when you ride them you hear every seat rattle and squeak because there's no roaring engine to drown it out.
... Anyone here know why swappable batteries haven't taken off for fleets?
As an aside, riding them is very nice -- the noise level is very low.
The project: https://www.electricitygoteborg.se/en
Ashok Leyland of India are launching one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of3Au0fIMjQ
> and being of considerable utility, they are remarkably undamaged. It seems that sticking chewing gum in things only applies when the vandal feels they wont personally lose out
(assuming this is actually true, and not another in a long local tradition of overly rose-tinted journalistic views of our grim North Sea shithole)
Spend some time in other coutries and you'll yearn to return. Trust me.
I’ll miss chips and the NHS. I’ll miss my friends. I won’t miss the country — especially not in the current toxic political situation.
She, particularly, sees the downsides of her home country quite quickly. I have a bit more tolerance, but there're elements of a certain flavour of society missed. For us, anyway.
Oh, and I visited Czechia (whatever) for the first time last year and was smitten... but I was only there for a couple of weeks. Not really enough time to form any useful - or, indeed, completely useless - comparisons.
/anecdata
The UK has it's good points, but better quality of life can be found elsewhere.
High unemployment in an area sucks even when you personally have a job. Given nothing will stop Brexit, I wish I could say I thought Westminster cared enough to provide replacements for EU support of the poorest regions of the UK… but, and this is mere opinion, I don’t think it can see past Kensington nine days out of ten.
Without looking it up what's the current rate of universal credit? What's the current benefit cap level?
I'm all for looking after the vulnerable, but we give so much money to the feckless that we cannot look after those that are most deserving. Lavish money on the disabled, elderly, and the genuinely incapable. Provide a bare minimum of essentials for the cynical, whilst making life unpleasant enough to encourage take up of opportunities to improve, of which there are no shortage. Why do we give up on people so easily?
The UK’s main problem isn’t any particular UK goal, it’s the total lack of anyone competent in charge and, separately, the lack of anyone powerful/charismatic enough to pick only one of the, I count six, main mutually-incompatible post-Brexit targets (each of which comes in left and right wing variations) and say “this one and none of the others”.
Right now, becoming like Singapore wouldn’t have enough support from Brexiteers, never mind Westminster. Unfortunately, the same is true for 100% of the negotiating positions thus far named, and nobody (seems to have) thought about afterwards at all.
As for the latter, I think only the first. The second component would require the government to be as smart as it thinks it is rather than as dumb as it is currently acting. While I am sure some in the government will make such accusations as genuine and sincere beliefs, the government reminds me of a former client who took something like four attempts at telling me to make a button “wider” and rejecting the changes before I ended up asking for a picture and discovering they meant “taller”.
By the way, thanks for keeping it polite! This is a massively divisive topic and I want to applaud every single involved person who avoids internet shouting.
USB charge points under the seats tend to be more broken - accidentally kicked.
UK is not a particularly attractive destination for either economic/humanitarian reasons compared to Germany/Italy etc.
Source: Girlfriend did supply runs to The Jungle. She also found the place shocking in comparison to a literal slum in Nairobi.
But also: compare the size of that camp (~6500) to the ~million (at peak) who had asylum in Germany.
Anyway, if you can read this, please flag my post, and give it a downvote while you're there, and perhaps dang will delete it. I hope so. It's too late for me to do it myself. Apologies.