3 ms·

Some buses need long range, such as that from Munich to Baku. That's not the common case: the common case is more like line 59 in Munich, whose route is about 1

by Arnt 8y ago

Some buses need long range, such as that from Munich to Baku. That's not the common case: the common case is more like line 59 in Munich, whose route is about 14km long. A lot more people take the 59 to work than take the bus towards Baku. Trucks: There are different kinds, but you can separate them into "ones that could be replaced by trains" and "ones that don't really need long range" and not be very wrong. There are exceptions, such as sparsely populated areas, but they're tautologically minor. Planes: Need dense energy, sure.

bobthepanda 8y ago
Presumably the bus running on line 59 doesn't run once a day; it makes lots of loops back and forth on line 59. Electric charging is not so fast that you can do it in the short amount of time that buses are required to turn around, which is usually measured in minutes. A rail network rarely has capacity for both decent freight (America) and decent passenger service (Europe). There are some exceptions to this rule, like China. But on their end that necessitated building an entirely new national rail network so that they could make room for freight trains on the old one.
- Arnt 8y ago
  Are you saying that the 59 can't be electric because then it would have to wait empty at its two destinations for twenty minutes instead of ten before starting its next route, and that's impossible?
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    Nothing is impossible, but it's certainly more difficult. If charging time is twenty minutes and the bus needs to be out in ten, you need two additional buses on standby to maintain the current schedule (one for each direction.) Except you need more than two, because transit agencies keep a "spare factor" of buses in case a bus breaks down or is otherwise unexpectedly available, and so you probably need ~2.2 buses for this single route. Scale this up across an entire bus network and that could easily be a hundred or two additional buses. And when you're talking about increasing the fleet by that much, you need to consider storage space for said buses. It's incredibly hard to site bus depots, because you want to minimize the distance from the depot to the start of the line, but you also have to consider the price of land and whether or not a land parcel's best use is a parking lot for buses. And this is before you consider that very few people want a parking lot they can't use as a neighbor. And so what seems to be a small problem can very quickly snowball into a large one. Public transit agencies aren't exactly flush with cash to buy a larger fleet than otherwise necessary, or land to store said larger fleet. And even if they had this money, is it best spent going electric? Money that is spent going electric is money not being used to keep the fare down or boost services.

by Arnt 8y ago

bobthepanda 8y ago

Presumably the bus running on line 59 doesn't run once a day; it makes lots of loops back and forth on line 59. Electric charging is not so fast that you can do it in the short amount of time that buses are required to turn around, which is usually measured in minutes. A rail network rarely has capacity for both decent freight (America) and decent passenger service (Europe). There are some exceptions to this rule, like China. But on their end that necessitated building an entirely new national rail network so that they could make room for freight trains on the old one.

Arnt 8y ago
Are you saying that the 59 can't be electric because then it would have to wait empty at its two destinations for twenty minutes instead of ten before starting its next route, and that's impossible?
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  Nothing is impossible, but it's certainly more difficult. If charging time is twenty minutes and the bus needs to be out in ten, you need two additional buses on standby to maintain the current schedule (one for each direction.) Except you need more than two, because transit agencies keep a "spare factor" of buses in case a bus breaks down or is otherwise unexpectedly available, and so you probably need ~2.2 buses for this single route. Scale this up across an entire bus network and that could easily be a hundred or two additional buses. And when you're talking about increasing the fleet by that much, you need to consider storage space for said buses. It's incredibly hard to site bus depots, because you want to minimize the distance from the depot to the start of the line, but you also have to consider the price of land and whether or not a land parcel's best use is a parking lot for buses. And this is before you consider that very few people want a parking lot they can't use as a neighbor. And so what seems to be a small problem can very quickly snowball into a large one. Public transit agencies aren't exactly flush with cash to buy a larger fleet than otherwise necessary, or land to store said larger fleet. And even if they had this money, is it best spent going electric? Money that is spent going electric is money not being used to keep the fare down or boost services.