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Yeah having street car power lines can be a nightmare in densely crowded cities with a lot of pedestrian traffic and tightly packed buildings. It would be a nig

Yeah having street car power lines can be a nightmare in densely crowded cities with a lot of pedestrian traffic and tightly packed buildings. It would be a nightmare to implement in a place like New York City, and I'm not surprised that cities that have them are slowly removing them. Don't get me wrong, I think they are a great solution electrically and for efficiency / sustainability, but require an enormous geographic footprint, central planning and a lot of overhead space which is difficult to find in dense cities.

wolverine876 4y ago
> street car power lines can be a nightmare in densely crowded cities with a lot of pedestrian traffic and tightly packed buildings. It would be a nightmare to implement in a place like New York City They've been used in dense cities for generations. How hard can it be? > require an enormous geographic footprint What footprint is needed for additional overhead wires?
- lostlogin 4y ago
  I wonder is it is more of less efficient for land use as they don’t need fuelling and the associated land that uses, but do need a pair of lamp posts every 10m.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    One point in favor of running these lines — city already has lots of lamp posts.
    - simfree 4y ago
      In many cities they just bolt these support wires into adjacent buildings when there isnt a convienent lamp post. Electrifying core parts of the route (eg: the most heavily travelled bottlenecks these trucks travel) could fix this issue, enabling charging and heating the battery and cab while still en route or plowing snow.
heavyset_go 4y ago
I don't think the reason that street cars lines were removed is because they're hard to implement, I think they were removed for political reasons.
r00fus 4y ago
So just to be clear they shouldn't cost anywhere near as much as a subway or even tram rails. With a decent bit of battery on the vehicle, you could even have < 100% coverage and have outage resiliency.

wolverine876 4y ago

> street car power lines can be a nightmare in densely crowded cities with a lot of pedestrian traffic and tightly packed buildings. It would be a nightmare to implement in a place like New York City They've been used in dense cities for generations. How hard can it be? > require an enormous geographic footprint What footprint is needed for additional overhead wires?

lostlogin 4y ago
I wonder is it is more of less efficient for land use as they don’t need fuelling and the associated land that uses, but do need a pair of lamp posts every 10m.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  One point in favor of running these lines — city already has lots of lamp posts.
  - simfree 4y ago
    In many cities they just bolt these support wires into adjacent buildings when there isnt a convienent lamp post. Electrifying core parts of the route (eg: the most heavily travelled bottlenecks these trucks travel) could fix this issue, enabling charging and heating the battery and cab while still en route or plowing snow.

heavyset_go 4y ago

I don't think the reason that street cars lines were removed is because they're hard to implement, I think they were removed for political reasons.

r00fus 4y ago

So just to be clear they shouldn't cost anywhere near as much as a subway or even tram rails. With a decent bit of battery on the vehicle, you could even have < 100% coverage and have outage resiliency.