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After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

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Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#131

Post by nomel »

nomel wrote: post #103
woodruffw wrote: post #82

I think it's fantastic that smaller-to-midsized towns are bringing EV buses into service, but I'll mention my perennial bugbear again: all of these towns had dedicated trolley service under a century ago. The lines were torn up and replaced with less frequent, traffic encumbered bus routes. Hamden, for example, had three lines between it and New Haven[1]. [1]: http://www.hamdenhistoricalsociety.org/trolleys.html

Trolleys have a fixed route, which is not ideal. Fixed routes is why you see buses going down the road empty, or with one person on them.

I'm surprised this comment is so controversial.

Imagine if a bus had on demand stops, rather than stopping at 50 empty stops to get from point a to b. Those 49 extra stops are why nobody uses buses. It literally takes 4 flipping hours to go as what it takes 20 minutes by car, all while on a mostly empty bus, taking a fixed route, with fixed stops. Maybe it's better in other parts of the country, but in every city I've lived in, including San Jose, the nobody uses the buses, because nobody has that kind of time.

Trolleys for congested down town areas, sure.

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#132

Post by thescriptkiddie »

tapoxi wrote: post #90
billyo wrote: post #26

We need more electric trolley busses. This whole battery nonsense is ridiculous

Bostonian here, I used to commute on one every day (MBTA 71 and 73), but they were taken out of service earlier this year, for eventual EV replacement. The problem with electric trolley busses is that they can't pass each other, they perform very poorly in rain, frequently disconnect, and they need constant maintenance of the overhead wiring. I do miss it because it was a local landmark, but an EV bus will be much ni…

Trolley busses can overtake each other, either by having a passing loop built in to the overhead wires or by briefly dewiring and rewiring the bus. Modern trolley busses can travel short distances off-wire and some can even rewire themselves automatically.

The only reason MBTA has had so many problems with unintended dewiring is that they have done little to no maintenance on the overhead wires for the last half century. You can expect that the same will happen sooner or later to whatever charging infrastructure they build for battery electric busses. That is, assuming that they even that far and don't just pull a bait-and-switch as soon as the wires are down.

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#133

Post by woodruffw »

secabeen wrote: post #128
woodruffw wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that was the point about bad service: trolleys and buses can have stable routes but, paradoxically, that stability is generally good for trolleys and not good for buses.

Stability is good, but only to a point. A bus can divert around double-parked car, or a closed road, but a trolley is stuck until the blockage is cleared.

This is absolutely true, and is why both European cities (and slowly, American cities) have taken pains to minimize interconnections between trolley and automotive traffic.

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#134

Post by woodruffw »

pathartl wrote: post #130
woodruffw wrote: post #82

I think it's fantastic that smaller-to-midsized towns are bringing EV buses into service, but I'll mention my perennial bugbear again: all of these towns had dedicated trolley service under a century ago. The lines were torn up and replaced with less frequent, traffic encumbered bus routes. Hamden, for example, had three lines between it and New Haven[1]. [1]: http://www.hamdenhistoricalsociety.org/trolleys.html

Always love myself a good ol' trolley. Those things are beautiful.

Yep, this is another perfectly good reason to want them: they're just pleasant to look at. They instill civic pride in a way that a street with honking cars cannot.

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#135

Post by landemva »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #19

While this is unfortunate to have happened, this says more about CT being smart and having an over abundance of caution, than lack of faith in a technology. BART, which has been running for 50 years recently [1] had an issue with the heat that caused a train to derail. For several days that section of track was totally shut down. For weeks afterwards they ran the trains at an extremely low speed through the miles of…

My take on 737MAX tragedies was lack of FAA diligence. Relocating engine mounts to squeeze in the oversized engines should have required the type certification process. Instead the FAA looked away and approved a software layer to make it seem similar to existing 737s so pilots could avoid re-training for what would be a new type certification.

That was regulatory failure while a bus battery fire could be a one-off manufacturing defect.

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#136

Post by dangerwill »

googlryas wrote: post #108
dangerwill wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These lines would be unambiguously better (cheaper, much simpler materials, much less embodied carbon, faster and more reliable if given a proper right of way) than a bunch of electric buses in shared traffic so it makes sense to bring them up.

Not really, because you can rework bus routes about 10,000x easier than rerouting trolley lines. If there are very dense, well defined lines, then sure trolleys can be better.

And yet bus routes don't change that often. Let's say it would take 10 years to change a trolley path (an insane time frame but it's the usa so...), I don't see any bus routes changing 3x a day. It is easier to reroute but the difference is only really like 2-5x. And with the trolley you can actually be confident of it showing up on time :)

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#137

Post by yellowapple »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #105
jdlshore wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that this bugs you, but what does it add to the conversation today? Those lines are long gone, and it's not like complaining about it will bring them back.

It's not safe on HN to tell the more obvious lies about EVs, renewable power, climate change etc. that are popular in certain circles due to the more technical audience so you get a lot of people with unusually strong views about how obsolete tech X is actually better for the planet than the solution that experts in the field have settled on. Can't have people believing that experts and democratic governance is capab…

> the solution that experts in the field have settled on.

1. The "experts" ain't always actually experts

2. They haven't settled on anything, judging by the abundance of trams and lightrail still in service.

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#138

Post by dangerwill »

mminer237 wrote: post #109
dangerwill wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These lines would be unambiguously better (cheaper, much simpler materials, much less embodied carbon, faster and more reliable if given a proper right of way) than a bunch of electric buses in shared traffic so it makes sense to bring them up.

How is building dedicated trolley tracks cheaper than buying a bus and running it on ordinary pavement? And streetcars have no reason to be faster either. It's easier and historically faster to have a dedicated bus lane than a dedicated trolley lane, but there's just not enough will for even that.

Dedicated bus lanes almost match dedicated trolley paths for on time reliability but it doesn't address the fact that over head wire trolleys are still much more environmentally friendly than battery feed buses. You can even do over head wire trolley buses if you are absolutely wedded to never touching existing pavement. My point really is more that over head wires are so much better for vehicles with set routes than batteries

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#139

Post by woodruffw »

nomel wrote: post #131
nomel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolleys have a fixed route, which is not ideal. Fixed routes is why you see buses going down the road empty, or with one person on them.

I'm surprised this comment is so controversial. Imagine if a bus had on demand stops, rather than stopping at 50 empty stops to get from point a to b. Those 49 extra stops are why nobody uses buses. It literally takes 4 flipping hours to go as what it takes 20 minutes by car, all while on a mostly empty bus, taking a fixed route, with fixed stops. Maybe it's better in other parts of the country, but in every city I'v…

For what it's worth, I think it's unreasonable that it was downvoted.

But also: most municipalities that I know of do not require their buses to make stops if nobody is either waiting or signaling to get off the bus. NYC goes beyond that, and allows you to request a drop-off anywhere along the route during night service[1].

[1]: https://new.mta.info/guides/riding-the-bus

Re: After bus fire, CT pulls electric fleet from service

#140

Post by omg_ponies »

nomel wrote: post #131
nomel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolleys have a fixed route, which is not ideal. Fixed routes is why you see buses going down the road empty, or with one person on them.

I'm surprised this comment is so controversial. Imagine if a bus had on demand stops, rather than stopping at 50 empty stops to get from point a to b. Those 49 extra stops are why nobody uses buses. It literally takes 4 flipping hours to go as what it takes 20 minutes by car, all while on a mostly empty bus, taking a fixed route, with fixed stops. Maybe it's better in other parts of the country, but in every city I'v…

FWIW, I've never heard of or seen a bus halt at an empty stop when no one on board wanted to get off. The only exception to this is if they are running ahead of schedule, in which case a halt to return to the set timetable is the right thing to do.

Maybe this behavour is very locale dependent?

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