So basically they reinvented the trolleybuss[1] that's been around for over 100 years and still popular in some European cities by putting a tram pantograph[2] on top and moving them on highways.
Setting the title would probably do a lot. They do occasionally come unhooked and the driver has to hop out and reconnect.
Trams solve that with a pantograph and steel wheels on steel rails. Trolley busses use two collectors tied to the independent overhead lines.
This system uses two pantographs with a control system pulling them back when he truck leaves the lane and pushes them up when entering the lane. Doing that on highway speeds is a bit more complicated.
Time to bring trolleybus back instead of EVs that as any individual cars have no place in a city.
That's one view. The other is that cities are too dense. There is no reason, in the era of fast digital communications, to pack humans so densely that we are discussing the right to use an 8m² space in the city for personal use. It's an attack on the symptom rather than an attack on the cause.
From Wikipedia, Montreal seems to have a lower density than my home city (Porto), at 4k/km² vs 7k/km², but higher total urban population (3.5M vs 1.5M). Porto has very decent traffic (rush hour lasts 2h, entry/exit times peak at 30min).
It's either the total population that is causing stress in Montreal, or traffic planning. Porto did a very thorough change in traffic in the 90s, to great effect. Outer rings to avoid passing traffic going into the city, an inner traffic distribution ring, channels to have traffic avoid the old city center (centuries old, poor fit for auto traffic).
I think we agree that we can have nice 'small' but dense cities. We don't all need to be New York, but we also don't want to clutter the planet with suburbs.
It's funny how it look like a quick description on how traffic is organized around Paris, which is heavily gridlocked. Of course, that's two different metro area and I'm not a specialist on why we have traffic issues here in Paris.
In a city bikes and public transport should be all you need. Cars do not belong in the city.
Agreed! And what better time to get rid of those diesel-belching, noisy buses and bring back trolleybuses? The problem is in the UK (IMO) is that politicians generally can't think beyond the next election, so anything like this gets ignored.
In other words, I'm not advocating large sprawling cities, nor am I advocating a return to rural population distribution, but rather saner sized cities.
That's medium?!
What do those cities have which a city of 100k inhabitants does not have?
Not to say that a city of 100k lacks any of these things, but a place far larger can have much more.
I've lived in a 100k city for a few years. It was a fun time, I liked it a lot, and you have access to most amenities, but you do notice it is a small city. Fewer different restaurants, very limited selection of bars and night clubs [1], much limited selection of cultural events.
[1] This has an unexpected upside: you can go out on a whim and expect to find your friends at the usual places, in a Cheers like fashion.
Not in Germany [1] (which is the topic here), nor in The Netherlands (where I'm from). Amsterdam doesn't have 1M, yet it is very culturally diverse. Zaanstad (containing Zaandam) is 'only' ~150k, and has the most cultures of The Netherlands (a total of 135 different nationalities).
[1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-biggest-cities-in-ge...
EDIT: Ah, now it makes sense. Thanks for clearing it up! :)
As for myself, I found Taipei to be the perfect density.
Suburban sprawl, office parks and shopping malls don't offer much in the way of cultural and community development and they are very heavily focused around those who own an automobile and get everywhere by driving. Riding a bike or walking in a busy CBD is usually much more productive and practical than riding or walking around a sprawling suburbia. Getting any meaningful distance takes far longer in a suburban sprawl and often your destination is in the center of a completely different suburb, with it's own gigantic sprawl to cover before you get to the businesses.
I am interested in what your solutions to the symptoms would be, I think I'm probably doing you a disservice by assuming your solution is more suburbia.
You are 20 minutes from hills, rural towns, or world class beaches from the CBD. We have dozens of national parks and outdoor activity areas (lots of Mountain Biking for example). I enjoy good cycling once nearer the city, although I am definitely at that limit I was talking about where it's too far to cycle practically to stuff in the suburbs. Cycling to the CBD is fine, because once you're there everything you need is in the same place.
I suppose I'm inclined to agree with you, with a modifier that it would be nice to have medium residential density in the suburbs as well so that it was more affordable to live a saner cycling distance from the city. The issue is that while it's fine to cycle to one destination in the suburbs, if you need to be in two different locations in one day plus work you can't really achieve it. That's where a strong CBD helps a lot.
If a city / transit agency does not have overhead wiring infrastructure already, I do not think they will have much interest in setting it up from scratch.
It's probably a lot easier to either (i) have a few charging spots on a bus route, (ii) use hybrid buses, or (iii) have EV buses with range extenders where needed.
In St.-Petersburg, Russia we had trolleybus all the time, but lately they got batteries and it was a mind blowing experience to see a trolleybus going without wires. The next surprising thing of that sort would be a tram going without rails.
"In English language use, the Kontaktwagen was later named the "trolley", giving the trolley car and trolley bus their names."
The differences of this proposal are the distances and speeds, and that I assume the trucks are multimode (so can use electric on the Autobahn and then ICE elsewhere.
My city got a significant trolleybus network. It's on slow streets only because that's where public transit stops are. But from technical perspective, there's nothing stopping from putting them on a highway. The biggest issue is tight intersections downtown. They go painfully slow at those. Straight line? No problem at all and they can safely floor it. And boy is there a difference between flooring a trolley and a diesel bus...