Trolleybuses generate a lot of passion, and that passion has created a number of independent analyses of their fiscal merits. I started out somewhat lukewarm on trolleys, but this Central District News piece is pretty convincing that the operating cost of trolleys in considerably lower than that of diesels, including power line maintenance.
At current fuel price levels ($2.30 a gallon for diesel), the additional capital costs of buses overwhelm that difference. However, annual fuel price inflation as low as 7.75% is enough to neutralize that disadvantage. I’m not in the business of predicting fuel prices, but that hardly seems like an outlandish scenario. Moreover, there’s a substantial tail risk of a steep rise as in 2008. That was a financial catastrophe for Metro then, and it would be nice to have an important segment of the system be immune to it in future.
There is one other factor not in the analysis that is pertinent to the budget: availability of capital funds. For whatever reason, the federal government almost always funds capital costs rather than delivering a direct operating subsidy. For that reason, it generally makes sense to assume a little more capital cost if it reduces operating expense.
Of course, there are also externalities (diesel pollution, street damage, noise, etc.), but those aren’t in Metro’s budget and perhaps it’s unfair to ask a cash-strapped agency to alleviate those problems.
Just as a note, at current prices, a 7.75% increase would mean prices of $2.48/gallon.
Why is noise pollution never taken seriously?
That is reason alone to not even consider replacing electrics with diesel beasts
Because you don’t get a check in the mail every week.
How many people will still want to rent apartments or buy condos that face a converted uphill diesel bus route? Property taxes are indirectly based on what the landlords can get for rent, and directly on what condos are worth.
Living on Rt 1, I have had to live with diesels on the weekend, when they have had the power shut down for various reasons. Nothing like waking up on Saturday morning to a diesel trying to make it up W Olympic, and my apartment faces away from the street.
I’m not thrilled about everyone using Metro’s numbers for this. They still haven’t come back with a real source for their capital cost data. ETB’s should be cheaper than hybrids. I could imagine an extra fee for not being off-the-shelf, but with a purchase order of hundreds of buses that should be on the order of 10%.
New Flyer is the only ETB (Electric Trolley Bus) manufacturer in North America. The ETBs are more expensive. Offhand, I think the numbers for 60 foot articulated coaches are: diesel-electric hybrid: $650,000 electric only: $900,000
I don’t know why. I’m sure you could contact sales and find out why exactly.
What are these prices based on? One bus? Hybrids are sold in large enough quantities to be mass produced, electrics aren’t. If you’re talking about one, or five. Hundreds? For a bus, that’s mass production.
I don’t know specifics, I was more or less guestimating. Those would’ve been prices off a contract.
New Flyer isn’t the only ETB manufacturer, they’re just the only one in North America. I think Metro was going to bring down one of Vancouver’s E60LFRs sometime within the next year to play with it.
I think the article made some compelling points to keep trolleys. The ‘replace em all’ by 2015 rational was pretty much debunked here several weeks ago, and the feds do provide higher subsidies for trolleys than diesel coaches.
Even Sarah’s ‘drill baby drill’ comment has faded into peoples memory for getting out of our energy fix.
I can’t see the Mayor or Council allowing Metro to walk away from the wire. They would be less harmed if they pulled the trigger on the shotgun aimed at their feet.
As the Deepwater Horizon plumes are sucked into the Gulf Stream and sent around Florida, the Bahamas and the north of Cuba, destroying all beachfront property (and $$$ production) there, the “drill, baby, drill” mantra will be further muted.
Let’s just hope this spill does not shut down the Ocean Conveyor Belt, or the irony that this was caused by British Petroleum will be huge.
I can’t imagine the volume of oil is anywhere large enough to shut down the Ocean Conveyor Belt. Yes, it’s a buttload of oil, but ocean currents are hugemongous; moreover, the main driver of the OCB that the oil could potentially make it to is like near Iceland – it’d be pretty dilute by then. It still sucks a big one, of course.
By Ocean Conveyer Belt, you mean the Gulf Stream that warms northern Europe? There was already concern that climate change might shut it off suddenly.
it is too bad that this decision does not require environmental review through the SEPA process, as then the Green House Gas of both options would have to be quantified and all the other environemental issues (such as noise) would have to be discussed scientifically by enviro engineers and such.
Are we sure it doesn’t? Maybe the courts have never tested this since no one’s bothered to try?
The original study that claimed that Metro might save $8 million a year by replacing ETBs with hybrids contained several fatal flaws. The biggest flaw was presuming that hybrids would perform equally well when operating on trolley routes. The study claimed that the operating costs of ETBs and hybrids were derived from existing data. But, in daily operations, many of the hybrid routes whiz through the DSTT, then move into a transit-only lane on a freeway, exit to a park-and-ride lot and continue on in a similar pattern, often carrying less than full passenger loads. The ETBs operate routes that are very congested with lots of starts and stops. The ETBs are operated on hills, often with every seat taken and a crush load of standees. To presume that a hybrid will still have lower operating costs when operated under ETB conditions is nonsense. I don’t know what it costs to buy a new transmission or replace a set of brakes, but I do know that if the hybrids are moved to the ETB routes, there will be an increase in operating costs for the hybrids.
I also would question the definition of what the report calls the “estimated useful life” of ETBs and hybrids. The hybrid is given 16 years of “useful life” while an ETB is given 18 years of “useful life”. I would point out that towards the end of a hybrid’s useful life it will likely be reduced operating commute hour runs and short days only, but the ETBs seem to take on full day schedules for most of their useful lives. So if near the end of its useful life a hybrid is costing $141,000/year to operate, but it’s only providing 4-6 hours of service per day and a trolley is costing $177,000/per year to operate, but provides 10 hours of service per day, which coach is more cost efficient?
I also wonder if external costs like damage to roadways are factored into the cost comparisons. If a hybrid is heavier than a trolley it will cause more road damage. Will Metro pay for the additional road maintenance, or will that cost be transfered to SDOT without compensation?
I read a report somewhere–and I’ve never been able to find it–but when Metro first started evaluating their Hybrid buses they did some comparisons with the 60 foot New Flyer diesels and the diesel-electric hybrids. They tested them on routes from various bases–one of which was Atlantic Base routes. Atlantic base has all of the electric routes (some trips are dieselized and are operated out of other bases, but that’s not important here). Metro concluded that the hybrids performed better than the diesel buses on the Atlantic routes.
I don’t know what data the audit used. But if anyone finds this report that I’m mentioning, please, please, please send it to me–find me on Flickr by clicking my name or find me on Twitter–@AtomicTaco
I used to have that report, but I can’t find it at the moment. I believe that Bernie linked to it in one of his comments on a recent blog entry about the ETBs.
I didn’t use numbers from the audit. I used numbers from Metro’s year end reports for a number of years. The trouble with the report are numerous but the bottom line is the bottom line. I guessed at $3 a gallon for diesel but if I recalculate for $2.30 I still would put the cost per hour (which is more important than cost per mile) at about a 7:1 advantage to the ETB. I also made a guess at 10 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity and I’m pretty sure Metro is getting a much better deal than that.
Central District News piece has the advantage at only 5:1 but I have some questions with their numbers. First if you divide their $5M for diesel by $2.30/gal. you come up with ~$2.3M gallons. For the ETB they give cost per mile so dividing the total cost of $1M by 35 cents per mile you get just shy of 3 million miles. The problem is, if you then go back and figure miles per gallon for the diesel (3M / 2.3M) you come up with only 1.3 mpg which is way below the fleet average and probably way low for even the routes run by the ETBs.
I’m also confused by their time value for the money. Straight up a 44 million capital cost divided by $4M per year in savings you’d say the payback was 11 years. If you subtract the interest value of the money (say 6%) you still only push the payback out to 12 years. But if you factor in the longer life (16 vs 18 is 11%) you get the payback to less than 11 years. All of this assumes zero differential change in the cost of diesel vs electricity which probably isn’t going to be true. If you factor in general inflation I think that tips things even more in favor of the larger out of pocket expense up front (the ETB) because your $44 million saved is going to be worth less over time and the operational savings will increase in relative value.
Interesting numbers, however that’s only one side of the “operational” costs. There are still maintenance costs, and I don’t have numbers for those. Supposedly the propulsion systems in an electric bus are much, much, much more reliable than its diesel counterpart–which is why we bought Gillig shells 12 years ago.
But if you add wire maintenance/repair into those figures, it’s closer to a true comparison. Also, while minimal, there’s always the small cost of added training. Training operators how to drive trolleys, training mechanics how to work on them, training the F&M people to fix the wires, etc.
I sound anti-ETB but I’m not. The noise and pollution benefits are enough to sway me.
Here it is.
http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/fleettest/pdfs/40585.pdf
Awesome. Page 9 is what I wanted.
Trolley buses are fine, but all these questions should be thoroughly researched and answered, as previous posters suggest, before a decision is made.
One question I have: do trolley buses ever have air-conditioning?
I would just like to point out that the price of oil has fall about $20 (about 23%) in the last two weeks, which would compute to about a 50-cent-per-gallon drop in gas or diesel prices, when this price drop is passed along in a few weeks.
Where do you get $2.30 per gallon as the current price of diesel? Is that what Metro actually pays? Or, is that the national average price of diesel at the wholesale level?
$2.30 is the cost that Metro pays for diesel, as of last week when we requested the data.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm
This chart shows that the national average retail price of diesel in the U.S. as of 5-17-10 was about $3.09 per gallon. If you take out the approximately 33 cents/gallon markup from wholesale prices, that would put the wholsesale price of diesel at around $2.76, nationally. It is probably higher in the Seattle area than the national average.
So, even if Metro is paying wholesale prices, which I assume they are, a price of $2.30 per gallon for diesel suggests to me that Metro is not paying any gas taxes whatsoever on the diesel they buy.
Can anyone confirm if this is true or not? Does Metro or ST pay any gas tax or other tax on the diesel fuel thsy buy?
Although none of us can predict diesel prices out 2, 5, 10, 50 years, we just might be able to agree that there probably won’t be a long-term downward trend. Its pointless to discuss what has happened to the price in the last two weeks.
And the price of diesel is but one data point in a comparison that lacks any clear deciding factor. Initial cost, operating cost, environmental cost (both immediate environment along the route and the earth), rider, driver & community satisfaction, and so on. Its difficult to make decisions on factors which have no numbers associated with them, aka human values.
ETBs have many shortcomings, but as a whole I prefer riding ETBs and I prefer them traveling through my neighborhood instead of diesels or hybrids (noise). This is merely *one* opinion.
My understanding is that metro has a contract on oil futures so regardless of what oil prices do over the lifetime of the contract they will always pay the same amount.
That suggests rising fuel prices will only become a problem once the contract ends.
I believe it was a 2 year contract they signed.
There is a provision in Washington State code that transit agencies are exempt from State sales tax. I’m not sure about federal but based on $2.30 per gallon vs the pump price of diesel I’m guessing they are exempt from that as well.
I believe that all government agencies are exempt from at least the federal gas tax, not sure about the state gas tax. I always thought it was an absurd idea for government agencies to pay any tax. Peter, meet Paul.
So then, Metro, and, by extension, Metro bus passengers, is paying exactly ZERO money towards the roads that buses use, and tear up?
Well–sorta. Doesn’t really make sense for them to pay taxes when they are the beneficiary (so to speak) of taxes.
“So then, Metro, and, by extension, Metro bus passengers, is paying exactly ZERO money towards the roads that buses use, and tear up?”
No, because most local road maintenance is paid for by sales and property tax revenue, and everyone pays that. Government spending is government spending and the money all comes from the same place in the long run. Maybe there’s a Tea Baggers blog you could talk about this on?
ALL public vehicles are exempt from both the registration and fuel taxes.
(If they fill up at the fleet or yard pump)
The current ones that Seattle has do not have A/C. But the last two models (AMGeneral/New Flyer)that Philadelphia has used do, as do the new Neoplans in Boston/Cambridge and the Shkodas in Dayton.
There is actually no reason why the current Gillig ETB’s in Seattle could not have a Thermo-King or other like A/C unit retrofitted to them.
One thing that new ETB’s would offer is the low-floor option. I suppose the current Gillig shells could have been ordered as Low-Floors but Rick Walsh, the past GM for Metro was very stubborn about ordering high-floors do to their slightly larger passenger capacities.
I love Vancouver’s new trolly buses. Low floors, A/C, GPS with reader board telling next stop as well as voice activation. I am sure they paid a pretty penny for those coaches!
The on-board stop announcements are though a separate vendor–init. init bid on Metro’s OBS/CCS project but I don’t know who won. Motorola is building the new 700MHz TDMA radio system.
@Norman: Is air conditioning really a concern in Seattle? Air conditioning is only really necessary for comfort perhaps a few weeks at most during a typical year. Air conditioning always adds to the cost of operating a vehicle. I don’t see why A/C couldn’t be installed on ETBs but why add another mechanism that needs to be maintained for little use.
You never ride trolley buses in the summer? It seems to me that the #2 and #13 trolley buses never have air conditioning. When they use the new diesel buses on those routes in the summer, they have air conditioning.
I am just wondering if any of the current Metro trolley buses have air conditioning. Or, if new trolley buses would have air conditioning.
I doubt (and hope not) that Metro or ST would ever buy a new bus that did not have air conditioning.
I actually agree with Norman here. Pretty much all cars have air conditioning, so if we want people to use cars less and buses more we have to make buses more comfortable. All that body heat makes buses really hot in the summer.
If it were a matter of just having the driver turn on the air a few times during the year, then I would agree, buy the air.
But in practice, Metro buys ‘climate controlled’ buses, which means the windows don’t open and the preset thermometers in the coaches control the air/heat cycle, and that damn noisy fan in the back drown out conversation.
Which means the cell phone talkers ramp it up.
I liked the old trolleys, with the windows that opened – except when the occasional kid jumped out to avoid the fare.
One of the big issues I find when riding a non-A/C bus in Seattle is the lack of preparation by the operators for operation on a hot day.
There does not seem to be any training on how to properly use the Emergency hatch spring-vents. Usually I see the one by the driver popped up with no tilt and the rear one closed. This does nothing.
If drivers would tilt the forward hatch open to the front to form a scoop and then tilt open the rear hatch to make a rear facing vent, air will flow quite nicely through the coach when it is in motion. Opening all windows fully adds to the effect. This should be done at the beginning of each run on any day where the temperature is predicted to be above 70 degrees.
Don’t all Metro buses, even the ones whose large windows don’t slide open, have those upper windows that snap open and closed? Those windows are right below the heat/AC vents, and all it takes is one person to completely ruin any attempt at climate control.
The Bredas could have air conditioning, but they don’t.
Sometimes passengers like to mess with those things too.
All of the hybrids have those, save for 6813-6850. Those ones have no windows that open for that exact reason. Some passengers find this annoying since the windows can’t be opened to alleviate stench. I kinda like that because there’s always someone that decides the windows need to be open when it’s below 40 outside, and I don’t need a cold breeze blowing on me.
I was told by a driver once that many of Metro’s older buses don’t have AC because Metro specifically requested air conditioning be removed when they were purchased, presumably to reduce initial and maintenance costs. The newer buses have it, but most of the time it’s a complete waste because one or two passengers inevitably open the windows on a hot day, either out of habit or simple lack of consideration for others.
I’d love to see Metro switch to windows that can’t be opened (like buses in many other cities), or at least put signs (and whenever they finally get the automated stop announcements, an audio announcement) to remind users not to open windows when the AC is on. Of course, then it’d be harder to deal with drivers that keep their buses at 70 in the winter, ignoring that passengers usually can’t remove their heavy coats on a packed bus.
Yeah, I’d really rather we not go to windows that don’t open. At least when I have a window I can open, I have a chance at clearing the air on a hot bus on a cooler day where the driver hasn’t bothered to turn on the A/C (assuming it’s available) and/or not configured the roof hatch vents as described above.
I will say that if/when we get to purchase new trolley buses, in addition to low floor coaches I sure hope we can keep the rear window clear. My biggest frustration with the current low-floors, other than the low clearance in the back seating section due to the raised floor in the rear, which has caused me to bang my head more than once, is the lack of a rear window.
me too. I hate those fixed closed window buses. It’s far worse than the lack of A/C.
Ever been stuck in a packed bus in the tunnel with those new A/C non working units? It’s not pleasant.
Opening windows gives you fresh air and a breeze. Climate control gives you recirculated air, the smell of the street person two seats away, the wrong temperature maybe, and less fuel efficiency.
Betting that the price of diesel will remain low is probably a really bad bet. Yes the world economies are slowing down, and currently supply is up because the pipes are still flowing at full speed but that’s not going to last.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175249/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_the_oil_rush_to_hell/
It seems to me that the negative consequences of burning diesel are alone enough to keep the trolley buses.
Where do you get that “the pipes are still flowing at full speed”? OPEC is currently holding their oil production down by millions of barrels per day below what they are capable of producing at “full speed.”
In other words, the world is not even close to full production of crude oil at the present time — there is a large amount of oil that could be produced, but which OPEC is holding off the market to keep prices artificially high.
As I understand it refining capacity is the current bottleneck in the whole gasoline supply chain, not crude production.
Does anyone know what capacity the refineries are running at?
Will it matter in 20 years whether the refineries are running at 72% or 84% or 96% today?
Noooo it wont. It is time for Metro to hang more wire and order 300+ new electrics.
Most major fields are in decline and most of what is going to come online is more “sour” and/or from unconventional sources ( deepwater anyone? ) but hey its Happy Motoring America
I have a feeling None of us can predict any of this. I didn’t mean to give credibility to the discussion of current oil prices or predictions of future prices or availability. The folks who say oil will quadruple in price in the next 5 years are probably wrong, and those who think we’ll keep finding new sources and prices will remain flat are wrong.
I’m a fan of ETBs, even if they somehow manage to look more expensive on paper. Keep the wire routes we have, expand/restore routes where it makes sense.
The US Military, which I believe is the world’s largest user of liquid fuels, believes peak oil is coming as soon as next year. More here.
Making a hundreds-of-million dollar bet on cheap oil continuing for at least the next 15 years doesn’t seem like the wisest gamble.
Thanks for that link, Matt – I was going to mention the same thing. When the USAF and the other branches start getting worried, Metro would be wise to pay attention.
That study is embarrasingly bad. Just amateur hour. I can’t believe anyone reading it would give it a shred of credence.
Oil and gas prices may rise somewhat in the coming decades, but, as prices rise, people will use less, so oil and gas prices will have less and less impact on peoples’ lives.
When the average car in the U.S. gets 35 mpg, instead of 23 mpg, people will buy a lot less gas.
And natural gas is realtively plentiful, and it is really very easy to convert cars and buses to run on natural gas. If the price of gasoline rises significantly, more and more vehicles will start running on natural gas.
Even if “peak oil” has been reached, or is reached soon, it will have very little, if any, impact on peoples’ lives.
Natural gas is relatively plentiful, for now. But how long is that “now”? Perhaps thirty years, the time since RR became President.
Far be it from me to “dis” the enormously valuable development (thin-shale horizontal production), but no matter how many new glory holes we may sink, eventually the hydrocarbons sequestered a hundred million years ago will be used up. I think we should thank our lucky stars that we have it to help us make the transition and use it to build an energy infrastructure that will last before there is insufficient energy left to create it.
Just as it is not utterly impossible even to design much less to manufacture the next generation of computers without the most sophisticated examples of the current one, it will consume vast amounts of fossil energy to produce a renewable energy system.
All of us — myself included though I do my best to reduce my burden by giving up an extra hour a day most days to commute by transit from North Vancouver to West Beaverton – are stealing from the future. We Americans are all guilty of pre-meditated Grand Larceny.
Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine all the people from the future of a technological humanity lining up outside the New York Merc with dollars or renminbi or Euros or whatever in their hands to purchase oil for sequestration until their time on Earth.
How much do you think a bbl of WTI would sell for? I would not be surprised it if were $5000/barrel. It can make agricultural chemicals to feed people, and hundreds of thousands of other useful compounds like coatings, plastics, and solvents that make daily life immeasurably better for homo technologicus.
Every barrel we burn deprives a hundred future human beings of those benefits.
We are all low-level hustlers in a vast criminal enterprise.
So keep the ETB’s and save your soul from a little bit of condemnation.
“Just as it is NOW”, not “Just as it is not”. Damn spellchecker must be a Republican.
Refineries are producing significantly below capacity at the current time.
One of my favorite quotes related to refinery capacity comes from current oil company bad boy, Tony Hayward CEO of BP:
“We will never sell more gasoline in the U.S. than we sold in 2007”
Translation: Gasoline is expensive enough now to encourage people to switch to alternative fuels, smaller cars, and even drive less. The current recession has definitely reduced driving, but the trend towards smaller cars seems to be holding – for now at least.
I read that American car ownership peaked in the early 2000s, and I think it said the same for miles driven.
Metro should stick with windows that open–its really a basic public health issue. Being confined with someone who is sick with no way to rapidly ventilate the space is a bad idea. All winter long i was opening windows during rush hour when the heat was on full blast and the 36/2/3/14 were packed to the gills. If we have a major illness in the county and the windows don’t open–no one will be riding the bus.
In terms of A/C, if it costs a ton more then skip it..not all routes need it, def the ones in the tunnel i think, but not even a majority of the routes. After all, it really does not get that hot here people, except for that 3 week 5th season in August.
A/C doesn’t work in the tunnel due to Hush Mode.
I wonder if the debate between electric and hybrid buses highlights how underutilized the trolley bus lines are. Perhaps if we stop thinking of them as buses and use a term like ‘trackless trolleys’ we could begin to imagine their full potential. With all the fuss over street cars I hope we don’t miss an opportunity to build a much more comprehensive (and affordable) green rapid transit network based on:
-new electric trackless trolleys (look at the new models used in Moscow, San Francisco and Vancouver)
-improved transit corridors
-real transit stations
As we talk about investing in new electric buses I think we should look past slight improvements like AC and try to rebrand them as the amazing electric vehicles they are. People often bemoan the loss of the old streetcars in Seattle but a modern electric bus network with signal priority, more transit only lanes, and further spaced, quality stations could blow the old street car lines (and in many instances the use of a personal car) out of the water. If we want to build a transit infrastructure that will really get people out of their cars I don’t think the question should be diesel or electric buses. It should be track or trackless trolleys, at least for the dense corridors of Seattle.
The cost/ benefit relationship of creating the world’s best electric bus lines versus building street cars is a much more interesting avenue for discussion than whether we can save a buck in the next fifteen years by switching to diesel buses.
Why don’t we start by turning the 44 into a uniquely branded line with a fancy acronym that takes you from Ballard to the future light rail stations in the U district in little more than the time it would take to drive yourself there, perhaps by adding express buses (that is indeed possible with trolley lines), and expanding upon already planned transit corridor improvements along 45th and let’s do it for a fraction of the cost and time it would take for a similar level of service with light rail. Perhaps there are even some opportunities for new revenue with quality advertising like those cool “Visit Montana” bus wraps and getting help with station improvements from local businesses and community groups.
I’m sorry to erupt in comment like this but one last thought. In order to really reboot the system, can the City of Seattle take back ownership from Metro for any new lines? If Metro is seriously considering abandoning the trolley lines they would breach the agreement that the city made when it handed over control of those lines. Clearly, the county-wide approach has short changed Seattle’s transit network over the last thirty years and I personally think we need a more Seattle-centric approach. That is where the ripe fruit for walkable, ridable, transit oriented communities lie so that is where we need to invest most heavily.
Great comment. I’ve long supported the idea that we should use SDOT to create our own transportation system. A large county has much different transit priorities than a dense city.
As political boundaries go, county lines are even more arbitrary than most, and they are less representative of land-use patterns than any other unit of analysis (city, state, country). Using them as our planning units has been an inefficient disaster. It was a breath of fresh air to live in Vancouver and have puzzled Canadians say to me, “I’ve never quite understood that, what exactly IS a county anyway?”
New Water Splitting Catalyst Found
http://tomorrow2100.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-water-splitting-catalyst-found.html
No more excuses…Hydrogen Buses are the answer.
You don’t seem to understand what a catalyst is. It lowers the reaction threshold for a chemical process. Even if you could make it 100% efficient (which you can’t) you still need to input as much energy to create the hydrogen as you get back out. Plus you need to use considerable energy to pressureize or liquify the hydrogen. Why bother with the inefficiency of carrying around an explosive gas when you can store the electricty in a battery and/or distribute it directly via a wire or rail. Plus you seem to have glossed over the fact this is still in the basic research stage which means it’s not yet the answer to anything but a big question mark.
On second thought, you might be on to something here… dirigible busses! No need to waste the energy to compress the gas if it’s stored in the lifting envelope. You get a quiet ride above all the congested traffic with no expensive rail infrastructure to build and maintain. You could even make the skin out of thin film solar cells and have a hybrid! Sure you’d have to build some elevated stations but that ties in perfectly with TOD. Kemper (forward thinker that he is) already has a stop in DT Bellevue. But the best part is you don’t need any stops. You just jump out the back with your squirel suit and glide quickly to your destination. That should half the number of stations required because the walk effort is only for boarding. And if you live/work in a highrise (again dove tailing nicely with TOD) you just ride the elevator up to the roof and fly back to catch the derigibus. Genius!
Fanned!
No, Trolleybuses with large Hydrogen fuel cells making electricity that can be fed into the grid when not needed by the buses. Also a central location allows for safety and proper fire prevention.
There are some great ideas here to make trackless trolleys a second backbone. Branded with special right of ways, and the ability to switch lights, or whatever could really make them an inter city main line. Runs up Eastlake and Westlake, and the long needed long overdue and impossible for street car east west arterial routes.
This city had more and longer cable car routes than SF in the halcyon days of that mode. PERFECT for climbing and crossing the east west hilly ridges. Why not two loops or more that overlap in a continuously serviced set of loops that meet up and cross major backbones. Quiet, high torque, they would be feeders that meet up with the current major routes, putting “ribs” on the backbones.
For example, a route that crossed the lengths of 35th and 50th (lets call it route A), while the second north end loop did 45th and 80th (call it B).
A would go clockwise, B counter clockwise. Route A would weave around the UW campus, heading west by northlake and back up to 35th, then up and under Aurora and back down to Freemont and Ballard. At 15th NW it would head north up to Market, and come back via 50th all the way to 15 NE, and then head south again.
B would run EASTbound on 45th to U Village, then up 35th to 75th, then over to 85th, then cut down by Blanchett to 75th and follow to maybe 24th…
ALL electric, and tied to feed it all…
Streetcars aside, maybe a third route that tackled Pine to Madison to water, or better yet did east and west bound on the old cable car lines of Yesler and Madrona Lines?
With all the talk of Metro abandoning trolley buses, there should be a recognition that Metro developed scenarios to the Alaskan Way Viaduct that invested more in the Electric Trolley Bus as part of a “Rapid Trolley Network.” See here: http://crosscut.com/2009/03/18/transportation/18902/Good-transit-plan-gone-missing/
Where is Metro’s vision?
Thanks for the link. I had read the original article but not this follow up.
Where are all of the “Light Rail > Bus” people?
What is the top speed of Trolley buses? I figure they are limited by ‘switching’ operations, but given a long, relatively straight stretch, how fast are they rated to go?
High speed trolley shoes and wire can get the bus up to 65-70 km/hr. It’s not freeway speeds but is plenty fast for in-arterial operations. You have to look to Europe for the engineers that do it.
Speaking of Europe… that’s about 40-45mph. :)
If you’re talking about Link-style Light Rail, the ETBs are simply a different market segment. ETBs provide local access transit (aka pedestrian accelerators) not Rapid Transit. The only rail competition for ETBs would be streetcar or tram style light rail, which wouldn’t work for most Seattle ETB routes because of the hills.
That said, there are a few ETB routes that could be replaced by streetcars–the MT 70 being the most obvious example–but the capital costs are too high for now, at least without grants and/or LIDs. If we’re going to invest that kind of local tax money, I’d much rather implement the Rapid Trolley Network.
Streetcars/cable cars are better than ETBs! But we already have the ETB infrastructure and it’ll be a long time til we get rail on all those routes so keep the ETBs going!
Excellent!
Whoops, that “Excellent” post was supposed to follow Bernie’s Dirigibus idea.
Does anyone whether carbon footprint offsets have been factored into the costs for either option by Metro. Given the region’s green focus it would seem that this would be necessary.
It might be time for Metro to do a test of trolley-vs-hybrid operating costs by permanently scheduling one hybrid bus to operate every day on routes 7, 43 or 44 for one whole year and see if the operations and maintenance cost is equal to the O & M for a trolley. If Metro had 40 foot hybrids, one could be run for a year on the 2/3/4/13 routes and a comparison of the O & M costs vs trolleys could be calculated. I wouldn’t expect to find a huge savings with the trolley on the 7, 43, 44 bus, but I would expect a trolley on the 2/3/4/13 routes to be much more efficient than a hybrid.
http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/fleettest/pdfs/40585.pdf
I talked to a wire crew as they were working at 3rd and Virginia, and they said that the trolleys will most likely stay. They said they’d probably bring some trolleys over from Vancouver to test their off-wire capability and other features.
IMO, they could use 25-33% more articulated trolleys than what they already have for complete and total electrification of route 36!
Dayton’s Shkoda built Trolleybuses (Same company that built the Tacoma LINK cars).
About 13 years old now. I love the Czech-style rear door! Wish that was standard design here.