Metro bus services is actually an ideal application for electric vehicles: The needed range is short, charging facilities can be in one place (depot), stop-start driving suits the propulsion system, and low noise and no emissions are a bonus in the highly populated areas.
Battery electric buses, on the other hand, can operate anywhere that diesel buses can, and a fault with one bus or one section of wire will not break the whole route.
Many cities also consider overhead wires to be visually unattractive. Birmingham's new tram network is being built to use overhead wires on suburban tracks, but switch to battery power in the city centre to avoid having to install overhead wires there.
The wires are planned and owned by an (intentionally) inefficient government bureaucracy and installed and maintained by expensive local labor and you can't just change routes on a whim, you may be forced to do a full system upgrade in the future, etc, etc.
In somewhere like China where the government can just tell people where the trams are going to be and that's that the wires are probably the better solution in more cases. In the west where have to work with the public to get their approval for infrastructure it's generally a better all around solution to buy electric buses to replace your diesel ones even if it is less environmentally efficient on paper.
Edit: Some of you are appear to be taking my factual statement about the efficiency of government poorly. The inefficiency of government is a feature, not a bug. Government that can do good things (like install wires for trams) quickly and fairly unilaterally can also do bad things (like waste money installing wires for trams where nobody wants them) fairly unilaterally. You can't have it both ways and sometimes you just have to work around the system and if that means buying the buses with batteries then that's fine.
I.e. “Stringing wires in a dense urban environment requires co-ordination with many stakeholders and balancing of interests, such as the preservation of the visual appeal of historical landmarks, local shopkeepers’ interest in preserving parking spaces possibly occupied by the support structures, the disruption by construction crews...”
The argument about batteries being damaging to the environment mostly relates to cobalt mining. However, buses typically use iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries which contain no cobalt.
Source: I asked the driver.
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/success-of-montr...
Also, that’s the cost of being first. Early adopters pay more.
I agree that it’s expendive tho. But I don’t mind as a taxpayer. I’m glad the city is forward thinking in some areas.
Yes, there is. Montreal runs $60k per km.
>I’m glad the city is forward thinking in some areas.
The city isn't forward thinking, it is exploiting ignorance to steal from people. Wasting tons of money on stupid nonsense like this is possible precisely because people think "oh its green so its ok" when it is the same corporate bribery to corrupt politicians to steal from the people as always. This is tremendously wasteful, and still burns tons of diesel. Tram buses would cost less and stop burning diesel period.
How so? You're talking about literal tons of batteries, and the charging stations for them. And you have to replace those batteries every decade because their useful lifespan is less than 20,000 cycles.
>or replacing diesel
Sure, if you are just replacing a couple of buses it would make sense.
>Also, batteries are charged overnight, allowing cheap off-peak energy to be used
Batteries have to be charged multiple times per day. It isn't feasible for a bus to carry around an entire day of energy in batteries, the extra weight uses more extra energy than is worthwhile. And lots of places don't have cheap off-peak electricity, they have a single rate.
If the lifespan of the batteries is 20,000 cycles, then they would last 54 years with daily cycling! In reality, the cycle life is probably less than that, but is still sufficient to ensure many years of daily service.
Diesel buses do not usually last much more than 10 years in daily service anyway.
"Batteries have to be charged multiple times per day. It isn't feasible for a bus to carry around an entire day of energy in batteries"
That is incorrect. The range of a battery electric bus is hundreds of miles, more than enough for a full day's duty in most cities.
London, for example, has several hundred battery electric busses, including double-deckers, many of which have been in daily service for several years now. These have been very successful and there are hundreds more on order.
Their strategy is to install chargers in the depots where the busses are parked overnight. There is currently no facility for charging on-route or topping up during the day.
I expect that at some point in the next 1-2 years, London will commit to purchasing only zero-emission busses with the goal of an all-electric fleet by 2030 or so.
It is less than, as I said.
>then they would last 54 years with daily cycling!
Which isn't the case unless they are buying 10 times the batteries and swapping them all day. They can't run all day on a single charge.
>Diesel buses do not usually last much more than 10 years in daily service anyway.
What? There's tons of Diesel buses that are decades old and in use. And what on earth do diesel buses have to do with anything? We're comparing batteries vs wires.
>That is incorrect
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/success-of-montr...
>The range of a battery electric bus is hundreds of miles
Not any of the ones anyone has. And those buses are burning diesel to heat the bus in the winter, which would not be needed using a tram bus.
>I expect that at some point in the next 1-2 years, London will commit to purchasing only zero-emission busses with the goal of an all-electric fleet by 2030 or so.
What does that have to do with anything? Electric buses are "zero emission" (move the emission somewhere else) regardless of batteries vs power lines.
Again, you are incorrect here. If you don't believe me, please come to London (or any one of dozens of cities in China and Europe) where battery electric buses routinely operate all day, every day, with overnight recharging only.
> "There's tons of Diesel buses that are decades old and in use."
In London, virtually all diesel buses are retired by the time they are 10 years old. They often are then sold on to other operators where they get less intensive use, but in London it is uneconomical to continue operating old buses. Maintenance costs increase with age, and breakdowns are costly and disruptive.
> "Electric buses are "zero emission" (move the emission somewhere else) regardless of batteries vs power lines."
All electricity is not equally polluting. In the UK, and many other grids around the world, the peak demand periods are in the early morning and evening - exactly the times when the most buses are on the road!
At these peak times, more fossil-fuel power plants are typically active, so the carbon intensity of each kWh is higher. But overnight charging means that electric buses shift their energy use to when demand is lowest. Overnight electricity is not only much cheaper, but largely produced by renewables and nuclear, so the carbon intensity is low.
(OK, this may not be applicable in Montreal where most electricity is produced from hydro. But it does apply to the grids of most major European, North American, and Asian cities.)
Given what we now know about the health and environmental impacts of diesel, it can be argued that this was a mistake. However, it would be very difficult and costly to reinstate such a network today - we are talking about thousands of miles of wires, and surely huge opposition from businesses and residents who would not want wires cluttering their streets.
Battery electrics offer the best of both worlds. The smooth, quiet passenger experience and zero emissions of a trollybus, with the flexibility and low fixed costs of diesel.
>Again, you are incorrect here. If you don't believe me, please come to London (or any one of dozens of cities in China and Europe) where battery electric buses routinely operate all day, every day, with overnight recharging only.
I do not need to physically go to London to know you are incorrect. I can speak to an operations manager in London and ask him directly. There are absolutely no electric buses in London that operate a full day. Zero.
>In London, virtually all diesel buses are retired by the time they are 10 years old.
Yes, lots of cities do that. They are not retired because they need to be, they are retired because federal funding is available to retire them. Those exact buses are sold at a huge loss to private companies who operate them for another 30 years. In countries where there are no programs to throw the public's money in the garbage buying new equipment that isn't needed, diesel buses operate for 30-40 years.
>Overnight electricity is not only much cheaper, but largely produced by renewables and nuclear, so the carbon intensity is low.
It is not much cheaper. If it were actually a net benefit to shift electricity usage to night time using batteries, then that would still be done. You don't need the batteries in the buses to do that. It is actually much better for them not to be in the buses. There's lots of trollybus systems all over the world in active use. None of them install batteries to shift electricity usage to the night time. The reason is obvious, it isn't cost effective. You can't pretend a negative that you are stuck with is a positive when if it were actually a positive it would apply to the system you are fighting against too.
>However, it would be very difficult and costly to reinstate such a network today
There is nothing difficult about running wires. We already have people who do this job. It would be expensive. But it is less expensive than batteries, which is why cities where there are no corporate interests bribing politicians to buy expensive battery systems are buying trollybuses. You can't compare wires to nothing and proclaim them expensive, you have to compare it to the alternative, which is much more expensive.
>Battery electrics offer the best of both worlds
No, they do not.
>The smooth, quiet passenger experience and zero emissions of a trollybus
They are not zero emissions, they burn diesel all winter to heat the bus.
>with the flexibility and low fixed costs of diesel.
What low fixed costs of diesel? The only definition in which diesel is low cost is upfront purchase price, and by that measure battery powered buses are high cost, 160% of the cost even. In any long term cost comparison, trollybuses are cheaper than battery which are cheaper than diesel.
Calling people you disagree with trolls and then going back through their comments to post irrelevant ad-homs in other threads doesn't seem like it is within the spirit of the commenting guidelines as I read them. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong.
Neither are batteries.
>Plus there may be new safety considerations compared to when trolleys were retired.
Like what? What new safety consideration prevents us from using overhead power lines now? And trolleys were not retired in lots of cities.
Relative to what they used to cost, sure. Relative to batteries they are quite cheap. It takes a lot of batteries to move a bus, and they have to be replaced every few years because they are charged and discharged multiple times per day.
They are a way of dodging the battery expenses but unfortunately have their own set of issues. If you already have a great cable car infastructure by all means keep on doing it but they are rare and often more curiosities or secondary transit components.
We use them in Vancouver. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_buses_in_Vancouver
Streetcars (one kind of trolley) require tracks but not roads (though they often share space with roads for convenience purposes, hence the name, but this is not required, and is often for only for portions of their route.)
Trolley coaches (aka, trolley busses) require roads, but not tracks.
Trolleybuses were invented because at the time electric storage technology wasn't good enough.
In Berlin there are already electric buses in operation on several lines (manufactured by Solaris, a Polish company and EVO bus, a Mercedes Benz subsidiary) and they will start experimenting with inductive charging soon. The idea is that you have a charging pad beneath each bus stop, where the short stops the bus makes would be sufficient to recharge the bus enough to keep it running all day.
A single electric bus with charging station costs them about 600.000 € (https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article215300097/BVG-Busflo...) btw. So about 1000 times my annual subscription :D They ordered 30 more that will be in service next year and plan to have their whole fleet electrified before 2030.
[0] https://www.verkehr-bs.de/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/Em...
All the busses I've seen have this system where the driver has to walk to the back and pull on some rubber bands to put the tentacles back on the wires. If this could be automated, then perhaps you could omit wires at big junctions where it's most messy, needs lots of points, etc. Building & maintaining wires with 90% coverage might cost half as much as 100% coverage, I would guess.
The driver just has to stop on the usual spot, press a button, and while passengers are boarding and exiting, the "tentacles" unfurl, and are guided by these "catchers" towards wires. The driver just watches for a light to go on on his dashboard.
It works pretty well - in many years, I have only seen once that the tentacles did not end up where they should, and the driver had to get out and manually correct it.
The word I would use here are "trolley poles".
Now if a magic wand is waved and people start to work at home then those desks in the city centre will still be there. If the roads are that bit - 10% - faster/clearer then that tempts people from neighbouring towns to commute into the big city as they can now afford the time to do so due to the roads being quicker.
Rather than work remote the far better idea is to have people work local.
Imagine you have a programming gig on the other side of town and commute across town taking an hour or so each way. Coming the opposite way is someone else who lives near where you work and they are trying to get to an office down the road from where you live. They are a programmer too.
Now what if you could swap jobs with them? In that way you might have a ten minute commute and they might too. In that way a far bigger difference can be made. But the thing is that we don't have a means of matching these job swap opportunities up.
Time for a YC job swap for lazy commute startup?
Then your counter proposal depends on people being able to 'swap jobs' while handwaving away the complexity that would involve. Most knowledge worker roles aren't that fungible.
After decades of contraction, Lyon[0] re-started expanding its trolleybus network and converting ICE lines (sometimes back) to trolley a few years back. In the near future they're intending converting half a dozen ICE lines using IMC trolleys for more flexibility (able to run on batteries between overhead transmission segments, and to opportunistically recharge at bus stops).
[0] the premier French city for trolleybuses and one of only 3 cities which still has a network
In "Ile de France" (Paris and its metropolitan area) the last tram line was closed in 1938 but it's coming back and there are now 14 lines planned, 10 of which are already opened (8 of those opened between 2006 and 2017), the oldest one opened in 1992 and the last one in the current plan should open in 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramways_in_%C3%8Ele-de-France
Today, Nantes still has a wide Tram network and I really enjoy it. I find it more enjoyable than metro. They tend to smell less and you can enjoy the scenery will traveling :) .
Seems to be a common theme in France
They are also now able to disconnect and reconnect from the wires from inside the cabin via button press at specific locations.
Diesel buses were more cost effective than electric trolleys, which is why they replaced all the trolleys with diesel buses.
Electric (battery) buses are expected to be more cost effective than the diesel buses they’re replacing.
Thanks to the transitive property of inequality, we would expect electric buses to be more cost effective than electric trolleys.
In general a lot of this has to do with the infrastructure of your city, and the local costs of retrofitting streets to include overhead wires.
I always thought about them as quirky archaic tech, but you have just changed my view! Cheers
If you look at the challenges that entities like Google Fiber and municipal wifi initiatives have, one of the major ones is that pole infrastructure is really expensive. In my city, streetlights cost something like $800/yr each.
Battery and associated infrastructure is cheap and effective.
The overhead wires are the biggest reason to avoid trolley buses. They're expensive to deploy and maintain, a visual eyesore, and constrain the bus network to predefined routes. Electric buses are a great improvement - At the expense of more batteries per bus and deployment of charging stations at depots/terminus, you avoid the wiring hassle entirely and have far more flexibility to change routes as required.