Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus
Battery electric buses are now good enough for cities interested in electric buses to start buying; you don't have to anticipate improvements, they are already here. My own city has a growing fleet of them. Given that most city leaders view wires as a negative due to aesthetic opposition, the transit benefits of trolleybuses over battery buses aren't enough to outweigh the bad politics of building wires.
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But in places where they reintroduce trams, they don't seem to have a problem with overhead wires above tram tracks. Actually, the improvements you mention have been there since the 1990s.
Overhead power is still used on most tram networks (newbuild as well as legacy) and new light rail installations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
Yeah, I just don't see a situation where an agency builds a ground up OCS trolleybus line again unless, maybe, and that's a very strong maybe, it's in a city where they already have trolleybuses and it's viewed as a modest expansion that shares some existing OCS segments and shares depots, maintenance facilities, etc etc. That said I don't see an American city doing that for a variety of reasons, some mentioned by cirrus. Maybe somewhere in Russia or the former SSR's perhaps. Outside that I just don't see it.
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There have been a few new trolleybus power networks since, for example in Rome in 2005 and in the Southern Italian city of Lecce in 2012.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
...the realities of rapid advancement in both battery scale, power and range will make any new OCS systems about as unlikely as a return of Blockbuster Video. The real question that remains to be seen probably should be as battery buses became more practical and cheaper, will it lead to removal of fixed OCS guideways in favor of the freedom of route flexibility as regular buses have? Well obviously most reading this will yell I HOPE NOT!!! but who knows.
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I did say no anticipation of improvements in battery technology. As for video stores, just how unfortunate does it seem that so many disappeared so soon after the introduction of blu-ray?
In most cities that still have trolleybuses, there are no plans to remove the wires.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Chemist
Shanghai has a few trolley bus lines, including one express bus line that was built rather recently. However, given the major swing toward battery electric buses in Shanghai / China, and the fact that even new trolley buses here have batteries for short sections of routes that don't have wires, I doubt they'll be expanding the use of trolley buses in the future.
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I'm pretty sure all new trolleybuses have some sort of auxiliary power unit, trolleybuses in Rome (mentioned above) use battery power centre of Rome.