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Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
TBF if we hadn't experimented, we'd still be using coal-burning steam engines. Hydrogen's problem is that it doesn't offer any advantage (and indeed has several drawbacks) when making the switch.
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The thing is people generally aim towards a viable use case when they're developing technology. The use case for hydrogen isn't going to be trains, it's things that can't take the weight of batteries and are willing to pay a massive premium to avoid that weight penalty. If that cost premium goes away at some point, that's awesome, but we're not anywhere near there yet, so there's no point in pretending.
That list is a who's who of cranks, and political ghouls. Resurrecting a 30 km/h interurban service in 2025 doesn't make any more sense if you add hydrogen into the mix, even if the tech is somewhat viable. They're basically resurrecting the same broken concept without changes to the things that matter.
Rail for the valley makes a ton of sense, but it will only deliver on the promises if they upgrade the physical track. The upgrades to the track they include in the example budgets are incredibly minimal, because they're trying keep to a shoestring budget.
A shoestring budget doesn't buy a modern tram if the underlying infrastructure was designed to compete with a Model T and a horse.
You must remember, a slow train service isn't a productive one. If it takes 3x as long for a train to move along the same route, there needs to be 3x the trains to achieve the same capacity, and about 3x the operating costs for those trains. The ridership is also inversely proportional to the speed, because nobody will take a train between Abbotsford and Langley that barely manages to be speed competitive with cycling.
This plan would bleed money.
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