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

• sleepybrett 4y ago
  Seattle has a great many of them but the lines for them to run on only exist in certain place, granted they are the densest places. But running that pair of electric lines everywhere is a big infrastructure project for any city.
  • olyjohn 4y ago
    They're willing to tear up the streets, install rails and run those slow-ass streetcars down the middle of the road. Also I imagine that getting enough power to your charging facility to charge 50+ buses up overnight isn't going to be any small feat either. At least with the overhead lines, you don't have to worry about charging. You don't have to carry heavy, expensive batteries either. Though you do get the occasional "derailment" where the bus comes off the line. But the bus drivers are able to fix that themselves.
• tapoxi 4y ago
  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 nicer to have.
  • thescriptkiddie 4y ago
    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.