The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[someone123]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

A better parallel might be Quebec City? Centuries old, hilly terrain, but half the population.

I don't want to take the discussion in a competitive direction but the "small city" thing for Halifax is IMO part of the problem with planning there. It's actually growing faster than Quebec City in absolute numbers lately, and is tied with Hamilton. I don't think it's obvious that it has appreciably lower long-term transportation development requirements, but it is operating at a much smaller scale of capital investment planning right now. The Quebec City and Hamilton plans are far beyond a project Halifax would take on, NS doesn't really touch transit projects much unlike ON or QC, and the federal government is unlikely to provide the same kind of funding deals in NS. All of this is part of the problem.

Halifax is around the same size today that Edmonton and Calgary were when they started planning LRT. Not that every city has to be the same at the same population, but I don't think transportation planning in Halifax right now suits the scale of the city and the growth rate. Plus all of the geographic and weird road network issues in Halifax probably mean it's going to need more specialized infrastructure sooner than many other North American cities. The current council and overall zeitgeist in Halifax is very anti-road-building which seems fine but it is going to need some kind of new capacity with just under 10,000 people per year moving there.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

A 10 min wait in a town where you can get across in 20 mins in a car is a recipe for low transit usage. I guess they only want carless students taking transit in Waterloo.

You really think Waterloo Region is a low transit usage region and only carless students use the system? GRT's 7 Mainline and iExpress carried 22,587 riders per weekday in 2016 but somehow this is a problem of low transit ridership?

The combined 5 minute frequency of 7 Mainline and iExpress wasn't some desperate attempt to attract riders onto empty buses, and the LRT that is replacing these routes isn't the result of desperation either. They built this LRT because the ridership is too high, not because the ridership is too low. Rapid transit is for increased capacity, not increased speed. You want ridership to grow, then you need increased capacity, and at 5 minute frequency on its busiest route, Waterloo had already reached its limit with buses, simple as that.

Even if speed was so incredibly important, 6 minute frequency is not going to attract more riders than 10 minute frequency. Waiting time is only a small part of a trip compared to the time spent on the bus or walking to and from the stop. And a 10 minute frequency is actually 5 minutes waiting time, not 10 minutes, so a 6 minute frequency is only 2 minutes less. No one is going to be discouraged from using transit because of an extra 2 minutes.

Before the pandemic, my bus route 39 Britannia in Mississauga got extended to the Toronto border and it started getting so full and overcrowded that they were forced to start using articulated buses on the route. Articulated buses on a route with 25 minute rush hour frequency. Think about that. Frequency doesn't matter as much as you think. High frequency is the result of high ridership, not the other way around. For ridership, walking distance matters much more.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

That's an interesting conversation. What's the current capacity vs ultimate (max frequency + full length trains)?

Same question for the TTC subway, Montreal Metro, Vancouver Skytrain, Edmonton LRT and C-Train on opening day vs ultimate.

In Ottawa, the Transitway pushed the equivalent of one bus per 20 seconds through the downtown, only they came in platoons, not like clock work. And that was maybe 40+ bus routes.

The Confed carries the same number of people with a train every 3 minutes. Current capacity is around 12k phpd, and that can increase to 24k phpd.

Yes, Confederation Line is completely grade separated and LRVs can be combined into longer and longer trains, so frequency and at-grade crossings shouldn't be a problem, unlike with buses and at-grade BRT. If Waterloo had built BRT, the maximum capacity would have been much lower, it would not have been able to grow, and of course Waterloo Region will probably grow a lot.

Ottawa is a snowy city, and snow can interfere with the operation of articulated buses a lot. And the busiest section of their BRT was on-street which is completely backwards. It just wasn't a long term solution. Waterloo thought more long term and they should be applauded for that.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

Another awkward thing right now is that there's a transition to battery electric vehicles underway. So would anybody bother installing new overhead wire systems now? And is there ultimately any advantage to a streetcar over an electric bus? Self-driving will have a similar effect in lowering the advantage to going with bigger vehicles or fully dedicated ROWs that could be automated going back to the 80's.

For sure, it's definitely a hard decision. However, I will say that while I think electric buses are great and a clear improvement which I support, for high frequency services wired vehicles still have advantages.

- Battery buses are extremely heavy which has implications for road maintenance and energy usage. Battery buses are also not as efficient as wired since not only are they heavier, but there is energy loss when charging and discharging. Not a big deal with small devices and for vehicles that can't really be wired such as cars, but something to consider in this case. Since 20-30% of the energy is lost during the charge/discharge cycle, let's look at Protera's ZX5 model which comes in 220, 440, and 660 kW-hr versions. For the 440 version, 440 kW-hr of electricity is equal to the power used by forty-four hundred 100 watt microwave ovens running for an hour. If 25% is lost, the lost energy is enough to power 1467 of the microwaves for an hour. For each bus, for each charge cycle. Still more efficient than ICE vehicles, but damn. Plus, rail vehicles tend to last longer and require less maintenance than road vehicles.

- Battery buses also are at a disadvantage in the winter since heating pulls a lot of power, particularly in a vehicle with constantly opening doors. As a result, battery buses in Canada such as the fleet in Toronto have fossil-fuel powered heaters meaning that for much of the year, buses still need to be "fueled".

- The fact that battery technology is progressing so rapidly also makes it awkward to know when to invest millions in battery vehicles (which are twice the cost of fossil fuel vehicles) given that any vehicle one buys today may be soon obsolete. So there is possible "opportunity cost" issues with both. Yet there is also opportunity cost with any delays, not only due to climate change, but also the longer you wait, the longer you go without the reduce fuel and maintenance cost of electrification.

- Most vehicle batteries still aren't recyclable and with such a huge level of embedded energy are still not as environmentally friendly as wired vehicles (on a frequent route) despite being better than fossil fuel vehicles over their lifecycle.

Cities should really be investing in battery buses regardless. If they're displaced from core routes by overhead power, they can still be used elsewhere and the benefits in the core will still exist.

[someone123]

My impression is all of the downsides of battery electrics will eventually be resolved, but it might take 10-30 years, so transit planners can't just wave their hands and assume the new electrics will solve all ills today. Of course it feels like in some cities officials and politicians decide to do nothing unless a perfect near-risk-free solution falls into their lap.

One question I don't know the answer to is if it's possible to build a modern overhead system that is significantly better than the old systems. The ideal would be a buses that can operate on or off overhead power, charge while running off line power, connect or disconnect automatically without the driver getting out, and operate more reliably. In theory, an area with overheads could be where you charge your buses. It also matters how proven such a system is. Canadian municipalities and transit operators these days do not seem to like to try bleeding edge technologies or partner with companies developing new products. I don't think we have many projects today that are as progressive as the SkyTrain or Scaroborugh RT were in the mid 80's.

In Vancouver you see the trolleybuses pop off of the overheads every so often, then they stop (occasionally showering down sparks; one time I actually saw one bring down one of the lines on Broadway), and this in theory stops all of the buses in behind (if you had a battery backup, the buses behind would disengage then pass by). Older people have told me the trolleybuses in Halifax had the same issues, maybe worse with hills and relatively narrow turns. Vancouver really does have a grid network with some bus routes that run 10+ km with only a couple of turns total and many trips being a single route or combination of N-S + E-W buses. In any case this is one issue that holds back streetcars and trolleybuses compared to regular buses.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Did you miss the part where I said LRT would be pointless in Halifax? I specifically said they should build a network with buses and build transit malls and Woonerfs in the core. I would hope that somebody in an urbanist forum knows what they are.

I didn't miss that at all. I am going to say that the better answer is surface LRT would be pointless on the peninsula. Transit malls with buses is not going to work well in downtown Halifax without an LRT to connect to and get them around the city. The Downtown core and the Dockyard are the highest employment areas in the area. However, most that work there do not live there. As someone who lived in the North End, walking and biking was better than the transit. It really shouldn't have been but the 40 minute walk was faster than the walk and bus. Biking sucked going home. Riding down Devonshire was always fun.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You seem to think you're the only one that's traveled in this forum. I was posted to Shearwater in Dartmouth. And that's the perspective my opinion comes from.

You lived on the Dark Side....
I don't think it, but some people seem to forget that topography of a route is just as important as how busy it may end up being. Dartmouth is not as steep from the water.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

For somebody who has apparently used transit so much, you have quite the pro-sprawl anti-pedestrian viewpoint. Notably also a preference for systems that increase transfers. Which is what your Halifax tunnel idea would do: force transfers onto an LRT to get downtown.

For the record, I've seen 9 provinces and lived in 4 of them in my military career. I've also lived in three countries, have family on 4 continents. And it's those travels that have shown me how badly designed our cities and particularly transit systems are. Some of it may be underfunding, but throwing money at these problems definitely won't fix them. Gotta start with an actual pedestrian irrespective.

I am not pro or anti sprawl. I am about what works for as many residents as possible. Halifax should use all existing rail corridors for a commuter rail. That would help solve much of the traffic on the Peninsula. That would actually do the most for the city with costing the least. However, we are not talking commuter rail. We are talking a replacement for the busiest routes. That would mean that we should look at the various nodes in the city and connect them. West of Gottegen and the Commons, surface LRT would work fine, except for a small section on Robie St. West of that, the terrain is way too steep for most modern LRVs to handle. That is why burying the line makes sense.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Exactly what I am suggesting they should do.

The problem is, there aren't other streets to dump the traffic onto. So, now, traffic is even worse. Not going to win people over. And then you stifle new transit for decades. Ottawa could have done this. However, it would have made things even worse downtown, and they knew it. Don't build for today. Build for tomorrow so that as the city grows, the transit can handle the future loads and challenges.

Originally Posted by FrAnKs

Yes indeed! The transition between the upper and lower towns is too steep! That's why they had to do a tunnel but also because traffic is already intense in the downtown area (not the mention some narrow streets too)

In other words, copy the idea for Halifax and it should work well.

Originally Posted by someone123

I don't want to take the discussion in a competitive direction but the "small city" thing for Halifax is IMO part of the problem with planning there. It's actually growing faster than Quebec City in absolute numbers lately, and is tied with Hamilton. I don't think it's obvious that it has appreciably lower long-term transportation development requirements, but it is operating at a much smaller scale of capital investment planning right now. The Quebec City and Hamilton plans are far beyond a project Halifax would take on, NS doesn't really touch transit projects much unlike ON or QC, and the federal government is unlikely to provide the same kind of funding deals in NS. All of this is part of the problem.

Halifax is around the same size today that Edmonton and Calgary were when they started planning LRT. Not that every city has to be the same at the same population, but I don't think transportation planning in Halifax right now suits the scale of the city and the growth rate. Plus all of the geographic and weird road network issues in Halifax probably mean it's going to need more specialized infrastructure sooner than many other North American cities. The current council and overall zeitgeist in Halifax is very anti-road-building which seems fine but it is going to need some kind of new capacity with just under 10,000 people per year moving there.

The one thing I noticed is that people in Halifax act like they are in a small town. There were protests when Chebucto Rd was widened from 2 lanes to 3 and they had to take down 5 old trees. Imagine that in a place like Toronto or Ottawa, or even in Vancouver. It is the biggest issue, not the mode or where it should go.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by someone123

I wonder what the answer to this will be in Halifax. I think streetcars could maybe work there. It's at an awkward point where there's a lot of pressure to develop the core, mostly focused on residents and not commuters, and the core is a bit too big to walk around comfortably, but transit development is still fairly suburban focused. I am not sure I could see the city or province going for what would be perceived as a "nicer" system for the inner city while suburban areas get buses.

Which is exactly why transit malls would work in this situation. One-seat ride for suburbanites. While providing high frequency for urbanites. Just come up with a set of corridors that allow buses to be funneled in from all directions and to get through the core efficiently.

Originally Posted by someone123

Another awkward thing right now is that there's a transition to battery electric vehicles underway. So would anybody bother installing new overhead wire systems now? And is there ultimately any advantage to a streetcar over an electric bus?

The biggest benefit of a tram/streetcar over a bus is capacity. That capacity, however, comes with some tradeoffs. Lower frequency (as seen in Waterloo). And forced transfers where parallel operation isn't possible. So all those suburbanites will have to be forced to transfer onto the LRT/tram line at some point, unless more can be spent to accommodate the buses too (which would then rob ridership from the tram).

Should be noted as well that going electric doesn't require overhead wires. There are battery trams. The only questions are whether trams might work (given the terrain) and whether Halifax really needs trams (based on capacity required).

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

The one thing I noticed is that people in Halifax act like they are in a small town. There were protests when Chebucto Rd was widened from 2 lanes to 3 and they had to take down 5 old trees. Imagine that in a place like Toronto or Ottawa, or even in Vancouver. It is the biggest issue, not the mode or where it should go.

I can believe it!

Small-town thinking is endemic Canada-wide, I think.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

I can believe it!

Small-town thinking is endemic Canada-wide, I think.

"at least a dozen trees" Much more than 5, and the widening was less than a km, whereas this was for a long route. However, you are right. The difference is that in a city of millions, they can be ignored, whereas in a city of under 500,000, they are listened to.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Small-town thinking is endemic Canada-wide, I think.

Yeah, it's everywhere. I do think that there is a particular small-town attitude in Halifax though, and part of it is how people tend to measure things against Toronto or assume problems are "mini" versions of big city problems and therefore have less urgency or impact. Often this obscures reality.

For example one of the big tropes in Halifax is that it has such great traffic compared to the "big cities". I think people were probably saying this in the 1950's when the city was 1/3 the size and many of the yardstick cities were much smaller still. Yet the HRM traffic studies show people sometimes sit for 50 minutes in their cars trying to get 12 km from Larry Uteck Blvd to downtown when a ferry could take 16 minutes. Whether people in Toronto are sitting in traffic for longer periods of time is irrelevant.

Then at the municipal level there's a "kick the can down the road" attitude combined with "X years to retirement" for staff. There's a bias toward inaction and the small town trope provides some fuel for it. I don't think it's true at all at this point that Halifax can delay transportation projects by 5 or 10 years without significant impacts. Most of these projects have already been delayed for 15 years. It is the same or maybe even worse for housing where some councillors and people were arguing that development should just be stopped or delayed and yet prices have spiked by 25% or more some years with people ending up homeless. The same myopic discussions about lopping 3 or 4 floors off buildings for arbitrary reasons happen when price escalation is enormous. The people leisurely debating these issues are generally insulated from the downsides of delay.

[Doady]

NIMBYism was born in Canada's largest city (Jane Jacobs and the cancellation of the Spadina Expressway), so I've never really associated it with small towns.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

For sure, it's definitely a hard decision. However, I will say that while I think electric buses are great and a clear improvement which I support, for high frequency services wired vehicles still have advantages.

- Battery buses are extremely heavy which has implications for road maintenance and energy usage. Battery buses are also not as efficient as wired since not only are they heavier, but there is energy loss when charging and discharging. Not a big deal with small devices and for vehicles that can't really be wired such as cars, but something to consider in this case. Since 20-30% of the energy is lost during the charge/discharge cycle, let's look at Protera's ZX5 model which comes in 220, 440, and 660 kW-hr versions. For the 440 version, 440 kW-hr of electricity is equal to the power used by forty-four hundred 100 watt microwave ovens running for an hour. If 25% is lost, the lost energy is enough to power 1467 of the microwaves for an hour. For each bus, for each charge cycle. Still more efficient than ICE vehicles, but damn. Plus, rail vehicles tend to last longer and require less maintenance than road vehicles.

You are missing the point here. The main advantage is cost. Installing all that infrastructure and maintaining it for trolley bus has a cost. Putting an Oppcharger up is cheaper and less expensive to maintain.

Also, not sure where you got the idea that 25% is lost during charge/discharge cycles, but you gotta keep in mind, that thanks to regenerative braking a chunk of that is also recovered.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

- Battery buses also are at a disadvantage in the winter since heating pulls a lot of power, particularly in a vehicle with constantly opening doors. As a result, battery buses in Canada such as the fleet in Toronto have fossil-fuel powered heaters meaning that for much of the year, buses still need to be "fueled".

The heating packs take a lot less fuel though. And require a lot less maintenance than the bus diesel engines. I don't think they actually fill the diesel reservoirs for the heater everyday. And they don't need to fill them at all for a good chunk of the year. And this actually might itself get replaced as the heat exchangers improve.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

- The fact that battery technology is progressing so rapidly also makes it awkward to know when to invest millions in battery vehicles (which are twice the cost of fossil fuel vehicles) given that any vehicle one buys today may be soon obsolete. So there is possible "opportunity cost" issues with both. Yet there is also opportunity cost with any delays, not only due to climate change, but also the longer you wait, the longer you go without the reduce fuel and maintenance cost of electrification.

Honestly, this is less of a concern with a transit bus than a consumer car. The large amount of batteries involved usually means that transit bus OEMs usually get really good prices for batteries. The only companies that might beat them are those with vertically integrated supply chains making their own batteries. Heck, companies like Proterra are even offering to lease just the battery pack so that the procurement cost is competitive. This is only possible because the total cost of ownership is lower than a diesel bus. And that math only gets better every year as battery costs go down and the carbon tax goes up.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

- Most vehicle batteries still aren't recyclable and with such a huge level of embedded energy are still not as environmentally friendly as wired vehicles (on a frequent route) despite being better than fossil fuel vehicles over their lifecycle.

Again. Different from cars. The bus OEMs do actually take back their buses and do recycle their batteries. Not that this is actually all that important to transit authorities. It's not like they worry about how diesel buses will be disposed of today.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Cities should really be investing in battery buses regardless. If they're displaced from core routes by overhead power, they can still be used elsewhere and the benefits in the core will still exist.

Aside from the environmental arguments, the biggest arguments in favour of electric buses is that their life cycle operating costs are lower and more predictable. Operators don't have plan for or panic with fuel price swings. Maintenance is both less and far more predictable too. We see this from agencies as their BEB fleets grow.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Doady

NIMBYism was born in Canada's largest city (Jane Jacobs and the cancellation of the Spadina Expressway), so I've never really associated it with small towns.

The same thing happened in many Canadian cities during the same period. In Halifax there was a waterfront expressway plan that was partially built but did not continue beyond 1970 while the normal date given for the Spadina Expressway cancellation is 1971; they were at least roughly contemporary. I wonder if this had more to do with building resentment of the paternalistic and disruptive practices of the 1960's than Jane Jacobs emerging as a "great person" with NIMBYism then spreading out from the Toronto epicentre (didn't she fight some Robert Moses era NYC freeway plan unsuccessfully before moving to Toronto?).

Vancouver had a bunch of unbuilt highway projects too. Not sure of the exact timeline. Toronto ended up with a lot more inner city freeways, for better or worse.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by someone123

My impression is all of the downsides of battery electrics will eventually be resolved, but it might take 10-30 years,

Hardly. The electric bus market is growing faster than the electric car market. Mostly because operators don't care about aesthetics and they are far less likely to be concerned about an higher initial acquisition cost vs. lifecycle costs.

Not sure what the situation is in Halifax. But there's a lot of operators in Europe and Asia that are either going to 100% BEB purchases at some point this decade, or even 100% BEB fleets. And that's as much driven as emissions concerns as the cost savings.

It does take some experience operating them though, to know how best to employ them. This is why the kind of large fleet long term trials (effectively) that Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, etc are running is good. It let's them figure out real world duty cycles, where best to place Oppchargers, what kind of infrastructure to install in their depots, what the operating model should be (charge midday, or charge overnight, etc). I would argue that every transit authority with more than 50 buses should be doing this right now, so that they can start putting in transition plans for beyond 2025 (when it's going to get really difficult to start ignoring the costs savings of electric buses).

Originally Posted by someone123

One question I don't know the answer to is if it's possible to build a modern overhead system that is significantly better than the old systems. The ideal would be a buses that can operate on or off overhead power, charge while running off line power, connect or disconnect automatically without the driver getting out, and operate more reliably.

There are trolley battery electric buses which use overhead wires where possible and run on batteries elsewhere. There's inductive charging pads, where the bus can simply park or drive over a certain area and charge. There's also the Oppchargers with are an SAE standard gantry/pantograph that buses can use at layaways for a 10-15 mins to get the charge needed to get through half a shift. There's actually lots of options. What gets deployed really comes down to what a city wants and prioritizes.

Originally Posted by someone123

In theory, an area with overheads could be where you charge your buses.

I haven't heard of any new operators deploying overhead wires to be honest. The only time this seems to be done is where there are existing tram networks being replaced and so a trolley bus with batteries to range extend becomes cheaper. Otherwise, batteries are cheap enough and Oppchargers high powered enough that there's really no need to put in overhead catenary. Just put in Oppchargers at the layaway where the driver takes his piss break.

Originally Posted by someone123

In Vancouver you see the trolleybuses pop off of the overheads every so often, then they stop (occasionally showering down sparks; one time I actually saw one bring down one of the lines on Broadway), and this in theory stops all of the buses in behind (if you had a battery backup, the buses behind would disengage then pass by). Older people have told me the trolleybuses in Halifax had the same issues, maybe worse with hills and relatively narrow turns. Vancouver really does have a grid network with some bus routes that run 10+ km with only a couple of turns total and many trips being a single route or combination of N-S + E-W buses. In any case this is one issue that holds back streetcars and trolleybuses compared to regular buses.

I am going to make a prediction. At some point during this decade, Vancouver will commit to getting rid of trolley buses and simply using BEBs and Oppchargers. They are getting plenty of experience with their BEB trial using Oppchargers.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Doady

Even if speed was so incredibly important, 6 minute frequency is not going to attract more riders than 10 minute frequency.

Yeah....I don't buy this one. I think a lot of existing transit users in suburban areas and cities put up with this and convince themselves that it doesn't make a difference. But yet we see ridership does go up when frequencies improve. And that's often cited by riders as a reason to locate near a rail line: certainty of schedule and frequencies.

Originally Posted by Doady

Waiting time is only a small part of a trip compared to the time spent on the bus or walking to and from the stop. And a 10 minute frequency is actually 5 minutes waiting time, not 10 minutes, so a 6 minute frequency is only 2 minutes less. No one is going to be discouraged from using transit because of an extra 2 minutes.

You've never pulled up at a stop just to watch the bus or train pull away? If that happens to you on a 10- min headway route, your wait time is 10 mins. And chances are, that's the wait time you'll remember and use when mentally calculating how long it takes to get somewhere with transit.

Toronto actually gets all this. Which is why the TTC is fantastic. Rush hour service even in subdivisions the TTC operates through is "Frequent Service" (FS), or under 10 mins during peak. That is what lets you think you can live without a car in Toronto.

Is sub-10 mins manageable? Sure. Is it good? Absolutely not. They should have bought more LRVs and dropped headways down to 5-6 mins at peak.

Originally Posted by Doady

Before the pandemic, my bus route 39 Britannia in Mississauga got extended to the Toronto border and it started getting so full and overcrowded that they were forced to start using articulated buses on the route. Articulated buses on a route with 25 minute rush hour frequency. Think about that. Frequency doesn't matter as much as you think. High frequency is the result of high ridership, not the other way around. For ridership, walking distance matters much more.

I am starting to see why you think 10 mins is great. I don't think using the baseline of transit in a suburban hellhole (I say this as someone who spent my pre-teens in Brampton) lends itself to a perspective on what good transit design actually centred around transit users should be like. You really can't see in your example that adding another bus, instead of making the buses larger, reducing headways to 12.5 mins would actually be better for riders and would induce more ridership?

Sadly, this kind of view isn't just in Mississauga. Ottawa had some suburban routes that are on 30 min headways outside peak. It's absolutely ridiculous. Especially in a city where winter temperatures routinely drop to -10 or lower. At that point, this is not transit aimed at enabling travel for the middle class as an alternative to the car. It's basically some combination of peak service to move workers around and the bare minimum to move the poor and immobile off-peak.

Originally Posted by Doady

Waterloo thought more long term and they should be applauded for that.

They got lucky, in that politics conspired to have the feds and Queen's Park give them substantial funding, that is proportionally well beyond their size. It's unfortunately not an example that is necessarily repeatable for other cities. I imagine, for example, that if Kingston asked for a billion dollar LRT from the Feds and Queen's Park tomorrow, they wouldn't have anywhere near the same luck.

[someone123]

The battery electric buses are already showing up in transit studies as having a lifetime net cheaper cost than diesels and being better in a bunch of scenarios but what I was getting at more is the point at which they will seem like the no-brainer choice for a risk-averse municipal politician or bureaucrat. Right now the options seem pretty murky and operators don't seem to know exactly how to deploy the buses or how they will work out. I think if they are like "diesel, but better" (cheaper, longer range, less maintenance and fueling/charging logistical issues, and so on) they will be the go-to purchase but cities don't seem to be at that point yet. There's also a problem with evolving technology and concerns over when to buy. Do you want the slightly immature 2021 version of the technology if there's going to be some big jump in 2023?

Note that on a transportation planning timescale in Canada, "now" is about 2026 and "soon" is 2031-2036.

[Truenorth00]

We're actually behind in Canada on deploying battery-electric buses. An unusual development given that we actually have four successful electric and hydrogen bus builders in the country. Which is exactly the Feds promised to fund 5000 buses by 2026.

Halifax's plan to have 50% BEBs by 2028 and a 10 min all day select network is actually a great one. They just need the transit malls in the core to put those buses somewhere. I don't think curbside bus lanes might be enough on streets like Barrington. The plan for BEBs does line up nicely with federal priorities. Should be easy to get some cash to build out the transit malls and curbside bus lanes, priority signals and the comfortable BRT bus stops needed.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You are missing the point here. The main advantage is cost. Installing all that infrastructure and maintaining it for trolley bus has a cost. Putting an Oppcharger up is cheaper and less expensive to maintain.

Also, not sure where you got the idea that 25% is lost during charge/discharge cycles, but you gotta keep in mind, that thanks to regenerative braking a chunk of that is also recovered.

The heating packs take a lot less fuel though. And require a lot less maintenance than the bus diesel engines. I don't think they actually fill the diesel reservoirs for the heater everyday. And they don't need to fill them at all for a good chunk of the year. And this actually might itself get replaced as the heat exchangers improve.

Honestly, this is less of a concern with a transit bus than a consumer car. The large amount of batteries involved usually means that transit bus OEMs usually get really good prices for batteries. The only companies that might beat them are those with vertically integrated supply chains making their own batteries. Heck, companies like Proterra are even offering to lease just the battery pack so that the procurement cost is competitive. This is only possible because the total cost of ownership is lower than a diesel bus. And that math only gets better every year as battery costs go down and the carbon tax goes up.

Again. Different from cars. The bus OEMs do actually take back their buses and do recycle their batteries. Not that this is actually all that important to transit authorities. It's not like they worry about how diesel buses will be disposed of today.

Aside from the environmental arguments, the biggest arguments in favour of electric buses is that their life cycle operating costs are lower and more predictable. Operators don't have plan for or panic with fuel price swings. Maintenance is both less and far more predictable too. We see this from agencies as their BEB fleets grow.

The post you're replying to is only comparing wired vehicles (LRT, streetcar and trolley buses) to battery electric buses, so how they compare to diesel buses isn't really an issue. I stated clearly at the beginning that I support battery electric buses so it wasn't meant as a criticism of them, but simply replying to someone123 who questioned whether battery buses have rendered overhead wire buses and streetcars pointless.

Both wired electric and battery electric vehicles are capable of regenerative braking so that aspect is a wash. And the fact that battery buses use much less fossil fuels for heating compared to the total use in diesel buses is also pointless when comparing to wired electric vehicles. I'm glad to hear that OEMs are willing and able to recycle bus batteries at the end of their life cycle (assuming that they do so consistently) so that does address one downside, but battery buses are still considerably more expensive than both diesel buses and trolley buses so they are indeed a major investment, even if not as major an investment as overhead wiring. When Halifax announced its decision to buy some battery buses, the announced cost was about twice that of diesel buses. Which is fine given the benefits, including lower lifetime cost vs diesel, but there are still benefits inherent to wired vehicles as well. I don't think embracing new or improved technologies automatically requires all existing technologies be ruled obsolete. It all depends on the situation.

[someone123]

I think the shift to electric buses is good, and will address a bunch of noise and pollution issues that people care about, but the biggest long-term issue is bottlenecks on streets all throughout the inner 1/2 or so of the metro area. Transit malls could be nice and one is planned for Barrington as part of Cogswell but I don't think that addresses the bottleneck issue (there will still be 1 lane each way going to the transit mall).

This is the Cogswell design. Spots for maybe 20 buses to pull in and canopies for people to wait under. I don't think it is a bad thing but I wonder if it isn't a bit unambitious when this whole area is being redone. Underground bus infrastructure might also be better in the future without diesel vehicles. Also, a cut and cover tunnel here could in future tie in with 2 existing rail lines. I get the impression the planning horizons for this were narrow.


Source

There has already been some construction of new lanes dedicated to transit like along Bayers Road, which seemed to make perfect sense and was almost unavoidable. The question was whether the new lanes would be mixed traffic or transit.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

... but battery buses are still considerably more expensive than both diesel buses and trolley buses so they are indeed a major investment, even if not as major an investment as overhead wiring. When Halifax announced its decision to buy some battery buses, the announced cost was about twice that of diesel buses. Which is fine given the benefits, including lower lifetime cost vs diesel, but there are still benefits inherent to wired vehicles as well. I don't think embracing new or improved technologies automatically requires all existing technologies be ruled obsolete. It all depends on the situation.

Even as BEBs come in at twice the cost of a diesel bus (a gap that narrows every year), the BEBs are still winning on total cost of ownership. Which kinda speaks to how thirsty diesel buses really are. They literally burn over half a million dollars worth in diesel over their lifetime.

I don't think BEBs have obsoleted trolley buses technologically. But I think the maintenance cost (and aesthetic concerns in some places) is really making it a hard sell as battery prices come down in price and charging speeds improve. I haven't heard of any city that is actually planning to build a whole new trolley bus system in the 2020s. I suspect a lot of cities just think that if they are going to put up overhead catenary, they might as well go LRT.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by someone123

Transit malls could be nice and one is planned for Barrington as part of Cogswell but I don't think that addresses the bottleneck issue (there will still be 1 lane each way going to the transit mall). This is the Cogswell design. Spots for maybe 20 buses to pull in and canopies for people to wait under. I don't think it is a bad thing but I wonder if it isn't a bit unambitious when this whole area is being redone. Underground bus infrastructure might also be better in the future without diesel vehicles. Also, a cut and cover tunnel here could in future tie in with 2 existing rail lines. I get the impression the planning horizons for this were narrow.


Source

That's not a transit mall. That's curbside bus lanes. This is what I mean. This is what they should be building on Robie. What they need near the water is a street exclusively reserved for buses. Shouldn't be any motorized vehicles on there but buses. My vote is to build that on Hollis. Given the narrowness, they could take off the bus lanes and make it mostly about transit. move the cyclists to Barrington. Though, if they can convince the public to get cars off Barrington that would be the ultimate.....