I’d rather be a prisoner of a gentleman than a free man in a world gone mad.
• Bunker reuse ideas (BusinessInsider)
• London’s original zero-emissions buses (TheEngineer)
• Disused rail stations comeback plans (LiverpoolEcho)
• Congestion, like cholesterol, can be good (CNU)
• Manhattan’s newest neighbourhood over rail yards (NYTimes)
• Planning Toronto’s RER network (UrbanToronto)
• Liability is sleeper issue for new mobility (GreenBiz)
• The man who invented platform safety bumps (Heavy)
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- On Our Line Podcast #8: Talking Uber, Lyft and Mobility disruption
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The article about London’s trolleybuses has a number of innaccuracies.
I have no idea what a “201 Type” was – London Trolleybuses were classified by letter – from A (the Diddlers’ official classification) to the Q Type mentioned in the article.
It was only the post-war Q Type that were sold for further use in Spain.
The total number in the fleet was 1,891, not 1,764 – although the earliest “Diddlers”, plus a few accident and Blitz casualties, had been withdrawn from service before the last batch was completed.
A nickel-cadmium battery is NiCd – NIFE is Nickel-iron. And the trolleybuses surely used lead-acid batteries. The article is misleading in saying they were used for traction – the limited capacity of the batteries made them only useful for shunting in the depots – one of the reasons the experiments in the Holborn Subway were aborted was that the experimental bus couldn’t manage the climb out – the subway was only electrified on the conduit system at the time, and plans to convert it were suspended because of problems with the Poles a few weeks later (Hitler invaded their country)
The Toronto link doesn’t seem to be working, all I can see is flat development projects…
@GT, SHLR
Works on this side of the water. Can you try http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2018/02/union-station-and-go-rer-metrolinxs-phil-verster-future please?
LBM
That works for me. & thanks
🙈@Timbeau
The batteries in the LT trolleybuses I have worked on have all been NIFE. These are the ones at EATM Carlton Colville. Apart from depot shunts they were used for battery turns at some short working termini. Useful if stuck on a dead as well.
This article is not very good, there is plenty of info out there which could have been researched
@timbeau – the “class 201” is wholly inexplicable – bus 201 was in the middle of a large batch of C2s, and those were AEC 664Ts, fitted with EE406 motors. The Leyland D1/2s that followed had MV202 motors, but that’s about as close to 201 as I can find…
Besides the Q1s that went to Spain, 5 C1 vehicles went to Penang – 142, 148, 175, 183 and 138, where they lasted until 1959
Of course, the trolley buses were not ‘London’s original zero emission’ buses. That accolade goes to the electrobus prior to world war 1, which succumbed to a dodgy financier.
London trolley buses were only ‘zero emission’ in the sense that they did not emit smoke themselves. There were plenty of emissions in generating the electricity.
LiS
It’s so much healthier having diesel buses in the street, tham a power station diluting it’s emissions in the countryside, isn’t it?
Grrr ….
As always, “emissions” refers to at least two different things. One is carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming – very serious – wherever it is produced, but has no local effect. The other is a range of substances emitted from tailpipes and chimneys, many of which are deleterious to human health (and some of which are invisible): where these are emitted makes a very great difference.
Electrifying any transport can move the emissions point, rendering many substances harmless, or almost so. But it typically makes the carbon-dioxide emissions worse, by introducing extra inefficiencies. (Unless the electricity is carbon-free, e.g. hydro or wind power).
Anyone got access to New Civil Engineer? It has an article about TFL setting aside £20 billion for six line extensions by 2038. The key bit being tube, overground and tram.
I assume this is in fact just a unfunded wishlist of existing schemes not anything actually new!
I wonder if it has anything to do with that £1.7 billion for a new South London line story that was circulating last month.
A draft TfL Capital Strategy in the Board papers for 27 March 2019 at page 446 includes new infrastructure schemes being developed for delivery over the next 20 years, including Crossrail 2; a combined upgrade of the Bakerloo line and extension to Lewisham, and potentially beyond; an extension of the Elizabeth Line to Ebbsfleet, and extensions of the DLR to Thamesmead, and trams to Sutton. All will need Government money.
Greg Tingey,
Yes, it is better not to have noxious substances emitted in city streets, I did not suggest otherwise, but it is important to realise that electric traction may not be as “green” and pollution free as is sometimes claimed.
Also, when trolley buses were in use in London, most, if not all, of the electricity they consumed would have been generated in moderately-sized coal-fired power stations in urban areas.
@Malcolm
Certainly within the realms of EVs, it does not “make the carbon-dioxide emissions worse”. It’s called the Long Tailpipe theory and it’s been debunked by a few scientific studies now. For reference, here’s an article talking about it in more detail – Long Tailpipe Argument Debunked – But, it a nutshell, even if our grid was powered by 100% coal (it isn’t) an EV would still have the equivalent emissions of your average petrol car.
The study has also been very generous and not taken into account the carbon emissions produced in pumping the oil out of the ground, transporting it round the world to a refinery, refining it, transporting it round the country to a petrol station, then storing it on site.
Malcolm: “But it typically makes the carbon-dioxide emissions worse, by introducing extra inefficiencies.” But that’s just part of the picture: electrifying transport also eliminates significant inefficiencies, the electric motor being much more efficient than the internal-combustion engine, and this will at least go some way to counteracting any introduced inefficiencies.
@LIS hence soot coated architecture and lung diseases bronchitis
@RP TfL has set aside £19.6bn to build six line extensions by 2038 in board budget papers.
It does include the £160m for Barking Riverside as it has not yet begun, but also the half finished Northern line extension to Battersea,
£3.1bn Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham,
£1.5bn for possible extension of the Elizabeth line to Ebbsfleet,
Docklands Light Railway to Thamesmead,
Trams network to Sutton.
This is not all TfL money, funding to be sought from central government investment grant, developer contributions, other forms of land value capture and Network Rail.
@ Aleks – TfL has hardly set any money aside for that programme of extensions etc. The only things that are funded are the Barking Riverside extension and the Battersea extension. There is a notional £100m for the Sutton tram (more likely bus rapid transit) scheme.
Everything else is unfunded, unscoped and needs a huge amount of money and work to get it anywhere near maturity to secure funds. This is just your classic transport wish list put together in a way that might somehow garner some developer or discretionary govt funding (e.g. housing infrastructure funds). I’ll be astonished if the Mayor and TfL secure any extra funding at all. I think DfT and Treasury will tell them to “go away” and start putting fares up before they will even entertain any specific project funding. I don’t even expect Picc Line resignalling to be funded. There is no legislative basis for “land value capture” to be introduced and I don’t see the present govt / Parliament being remotely concerned with such a measure.
I don’t agree that the “Long Tailpipe Argument” has been entirely and universally dismissed. Certainly it seems a bit wobbly, but the “average petrol car” equivalent to an electric car in all-coal India is one which does 24 mpg (UK gallons, that is). Most cars produced recently can do rather better than that. The Wikipedia article strikes me as pretty neutral on the matter.
But much of the literature is specific to private cars, whereas buses, trains, trucks etc each introduce further worms into the can.
My main point really was to try to differentiate between global warming issues, on the one hand, and all the other pollutants emitted by burning stuff, on the other. There is a tendency to talk about “emissions” without saying which of these you are talking about. And sometimes, one type is traded off against the other.
Malcolm,
Going off-topic but I am a bit baffled by the ‘all-coal India’ reference. I don’t think a coal power station has been built in India for a number of years and even if so, as far as I am aware, none are planned. In a country like India solar is more economic (even without subsidy) than coal. They have some huge solar farms – as makes complete sense in a country like that. They are now waking up to battery storage for when the sun doesn’t shine.
PoP: You may well be right about the future of power supply in India, but I am told by the usual source of all (sometimes-flaky) knowledge that in FY 2017-18 it was 76% coal, 4% wind, 2% solar (+ gas, water etc). I only brought in India because there was a table in the also-Wikipedia article I cited which put India in the “coal-based” category, and it may well have been that table (or another like it) which PeeWee (to whom I was responding) had seen.
I accept that “all-coal” is not a completely accurate rendering of “76% coal”. PeeWee made rather more accurate use of this information than I did, when he referred to a hypothetical all-coal country.
In any case one of the main pollution concerns in London is over particulates, and the Oslo Effect (particulates dislodged from tyres and the road surface) would apply to trolleybuses, so calling them zero emission is a bit misleading. Relevant to the question of whether an electric BRT is a suitable alternative to a tram for Sutton.
Also weren’t London’s first carbon-neutral buses the ones powered by horses?
@Ian J But not exactly emission-free…
Re Ian J,
Methane has ~25x the global warming potential of CO2 hence large grass fed animals can be very bad as regards Methane and certainly aren’t “carbon neutral”.* The gaseous emissions can be substantially reduced by feeding them easier to digest feed stocks.
Transport emission wise (diesel and jet engines) the one to look for out for is N2O (the “safe” Nitrogen Oxide so not measured for AQ purposes) with 298 the global warming potential of CO2.
* most Carbon Neutral schemes tended to involve abatement of HCFC etc production and use in developing countries rather than anything directly to do with Carbon or trees planting.
That TfL wish list is obviously unfunded, but as it goes out to 2038 an awful lot will change in the next 19 years!
A change of government, a change of Mayor, economic crises, economic booms etc
Horsepower is carbon-neutral as the carbon in their fuel has only been sequestered from the atmosphere for a matter of weeks at most, between the processes of photosynthesis and metabolism, and not for geological aeons as fossil fuel has been.
The fact that large herbivores’ metabolisms are inefficient, resulting in only partial combustion (to methane rather than CO2) is a problem, admittedly – but partial combustion of fossil fuel is not unknown, and creates carbon monoxide which is much nastier!)