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We had electric busses in our city. They were awesome. The were far less noisy and didn't stink. But they were scrapped again. Reason: Diesel busses had a maint

We had electric busses in our city. They were awesome. The were far less noisy and didn't stink. But they were scrapped again. Reason: Diesel busses had a maintenance time of 2%, electric busses of 5%, meaning they spend 5% of their running time in maintenance. That was all, so we now have loud and stinky busses again. That said, I don't think you can ever replace individual traffic. It is only possible in the most dense cities. Otherwise bus travel is too slow and unreliable for people working 40h+.

mg 2y ago
Which city is that? bus travel is too slow I would expect travel to speed up when we move from cars to buses. Look at what cars do most of the time. Waiting at crossings, slowing down for crossings, accelerating after passing a crossing. I have not measured it yet, but I would expect buses that carry 20 passengers each to accelerate that by a factor of 10 or so. and unreliable You mean when the bus is stuck in traffic? Don't you have the same problem with a car? people working 40h+ I would think people who work 40h would be happy if they could do their work in a nice electric bus with a table instead of spending that time handling a steering wheel.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > but I would expect buses that carry 20 passengers each FWIW, that's a _tiny_ bus. Typical city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150. At peak time on important routes they'll generally be mostly full. The major capacity limit on buses is stopping. On busy systems at peak times, you'll tend to get clumping at stops, as similar routes line up one after another.
  - mg 2y ago
    city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150 Yes, but then they are not offering a ride that is better than a ride in a private car. I have took an extensive look at this over the last weeks. A typical articulated bus can only carry about 20 to 30 passengers who are seated as comfortably as in a private car. Partly that is because of the design of the buses. If the buses were redesigned to comfortably seat people, they could probably carry an additional 10 or 20 passengers who are comfortably seated.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      > Yes, but then they are not offering a ride that is better than a ride in a private car. Oh, I missed that point. I mean, personally I'd say that any bus offers a better ride than driving a car, in that you do not have to _drive_ the thing, but tastes differ, of course. Ideally most urban bus routes would be short enough that healthy people can comfortably use them without sitting. Realistically, the costs of operating a bus are pretty fixed, and bus networks have hard space-based caps on capacity (as I mention elsewhere stops in particular are a problem), so the priority will always be on getting as many people in the space as possible. It's hard to see why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses; it would degrade the system as a whole, and the ticket price would be unreasonably high. Most people, also, will care more about "can I actually get on the bus for my 20 minute journey" than "if I get on, will I have a comfy seat", which tends to indicate a mostly-standing design with seating available for elderly and disabled people. As an example, take my local system. Dublin's main bus system has about 1,300 buses in operation; almost all of these are double-deckers with a capacity of 90-100 people. The system is pretty much limited by availability of drivers. Fares are 2 euro for a 90 minute journey (or where the last leg of the journey is started within 90 minutes of the first one). Adopting your system, we'd need five times as many buses, so for a start we'd need 6,500 buses, along with maybe 15,000 drivers and another 5,000 or so support staff. It's hard to see how that could happen without dramatically increasing the cost. But also, at peak times, major bus corridors are full of buses, and major bus stops have buses queueing up. It would simply not be reasonable to 5x this.
      - mg 2y ago
        why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses To get people to use the bus instead of a car. The average car costs €300/month. Plus about the same amount of opportunity costs, missed by having to control the steering wheel for about an hour per day. A public transport flatrate in Germany is only €59. Seems like there is a huge gap in the middle for a better bus experience. It would not degrade the system but wastly improve it. Because the buses would be additional buses. Each bus taking over 100 cars of the road. A bus can carry over 20 passengers and drive over 10 hours per day. While the average car ride carries 1.1 passengers or so and the car is only used 1 hour per day or so.
llampx 2y ago
Does the maintenance time include regular servicing or is it only the time spent out of service in a day, for example charging? I think electric vehicles are such a clear win for pollution (air and sound pollution) in cities that rolling back to ICEs should be clearly justified.
I_ 2y ago
How can electric buses have more maintenance downtime than diesel?
- bzzzt 2y ago
  Here in the Netherlands the bus companies are required to buy by tender which has led to the purchase of lots of cheap Byd busses. While they are fast enough and silent they are not that great: there are software problems, heaters don't work, doors won't close and the seats are so bad the (already scarce) drivers are getting back problems.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  As a general rule, in transport fleets, unless the old thing is actually basically at the point where it needs to be scrapped right now, the new thing always has more downtime than the old thing, because the old thing has had its kinks ironed out, and the maintainers are used to maintaining it. Of course, the trouble is, sometimes the new thing is just bad. A commuter/metro train system in my city operates mostly on 40 year old rolling stock. In 2000, some new trainsets were introduced, from two different manufacturers. One model never really worked properly, and was scrapped in 2008; the other survived. The whole thing is now due to be replaced with shiny new trains, starting this year... hopefully these ones work.
  - fiverz 2y ago
    You're talking about Dublin, right?
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      Yup (the scrapped Alstom DARTs). But it happens everywhere; for a start we weren't the only users of that problematic Alstom model. You see a lot of old train rolling stock around, but there's a hell of a survivorship bias; a really alarming number of train models last less than a decade in service in any given operator. You'd _think_ this wouldn't happen, because reliability is absolutely the number one thing that operators care about, and they're usually willing to pay a premium to get it (the alternative being to pay to keep their reliable 40 year old units in service). But the industry's surprisingly bad at delivering it.
threeseed 2y ago
> Otherwise bus travel is too slow and unreliable for people working 40h+ This feels like a very US mindset. In many other places buses are very reliable and cities are built around them e.g. dedicated bus lanes and so they are often much faster than driving.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  Buses are fantastic for the use case "we need to transport 100 people from suburbs to the office every day at 8AM", but they completely suck at use case "this one guy wants to come back home from a concert at 2AM". This means you need some personal vehicle anyway. And if you already have a car, why not use it for work commute. Living in a bike-oriented city, I think e-bikes are the future. Almost as versatile as cars, with none of the downsides.
  - dagss 2y ago
    "why not use it for work-commute" In Oslo (and I am sure other European places), the answer is simply "because I want to spend 30 minutes on my commute instead of 90 minutes". (At least for train/metro) Assuming urban areas: Roads are always congested. Building more roads/more lanes only relieves it a few years then car traffic increases until you are as congested as before. (You can find proper scientific studies of this effect -- "induced traffic") But public transport, if enough people take it, take so ridiculously many more passengers per area of road that it cuts through this effect and actually helps congestion. (Establishing a bus route may also induce more traffic, but you can add another bus much more cheaply than another road lane, and actually keep up.) This requires buses to be prioritized in traffic though (dedicated lanes), otherwise there is as you point out no reason for individuals to take public transport. Basically a reserved bus/metro lane gives you "infinite road capacity" (with the obvious caveats)
    - anal_reactor 2y ago
      > At least for train/metro This is why real estate close to metro is significantly more expensive than further away from metro. > Basically a reserved bus/metro lane Yes
shafyy 2y ago
They were doing something wrong. In many European cities I have lived and visited, electric buses are all over the place.

mg 2y ago

Which city is that? bus travel is too slow I would expect travel to speed up when we move from cars to buses. Look at what cars do most of the time. Waiting at crossings, slowing down for crossings, accelerating after passing a crossing. I have not measured it yet, but I would expect buses that carry 20 passengers each to accelerate that by a factor of 10 or so. and unreliable You mean when the bus is stuck in traffic? Don't you have the same problem with a car? people working 40h+ I would think people who work 40h would be happy if they could do their work in a nice electric bus with a table instead of spending that time handling a steering wheel.

rsynnott 2y ago
> but I would expect buses that carry 20 passengers each FWIW, that's a _tiny_ bus. Typical city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150. At peak time on important routes they'll generally be mostly full. The major capacity limit on buses is stopping. On busy systems at peak times, you'll tend to get clumping at stops, as similar routes line up one after another.
- mg 2y ago
  city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150 Yes, but then they are not offering a ride that is better than a ride in a private car. I have took an extensive look at this over the last weeks. A typical articulated bus can only carry about 20 to 30 passengers who are seated as comfortably as in a private car. Partly that is because of the design of the buses. If the buses were redesigned to comfortably seat people, they could probably carry an additional 10 or 20 passengers who are comfortably seated.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    > Yes, but then they are not offering a ride that is better than a ride in a private car. Oh, I missed that point. I mean, personally I'd say that any bus offers a better ride than driving a car, in that you do not have to _drive_ the thing, but tastes differ, of course. Ideally most urban bus routes would be short enough that healthy people can comfortably use them without sitting. Realistically, the costs of operating a bus are pretty fixed, and bus networks have hard space-based caps on capacity (as I mention elsewhere stops in particular are a problem), so the priority will always be on getting as many people in the space as possible. It's hard to see why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses; it would degrade the system as a whole, and the ticket price would be unreasonably high. Most people, also, will care more about "can I actually get on the bus for my 20 minute journey" than "if I get on, will I have a comfy seat", which tends to indicate a mostly-standing design with seating available for elderly and disabled people. As an example, take my local system. Dublin's main bus system has about 1,300 buses in operation; almost all of these are double-deckers with a capacity of 90-100 people. The system is pretty much limited by availability of drivers. Fares are 2 euro for a 90 minute journey (or where the last leg of the journey is started within 90 minutes of the first one). Adopting your system, we'd need five times as many buses, so for a start we'd need 6,500 buses, along with maybe 15,000 drivers and another 5,000 or so support staff. It's hard to see how that could happen without dramatically increasing the cost. But also, at peak times, major bus corridors are full of buses, and major bus stops have buses queueing up. It would simply not be reasonable to 5x this.
    - mg 2y ago
      why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses To get people to use the bus instead of a car. The average car costs €300/month. Plus about the same amount of opportunity costs, missed by having to control the steering wheel for about an hour per day. A public transport flatrate in Germany is only €59. Seems like there is a huge gap in the middle for a better bus experience. It would not degrade the system but wastly improve it. Because the buses would be additional buses. Each bus taking over 100 cars of the road. A bus can carry over 20 passengers and drive over 10 hours per day. While the average car ride carries 1.1 passengers or so and the car is only used 1 hour per day or so.

llampx 2y ago

Does the maintenance time include regular servicing or is it only the time spent out of service in a day, for example charging? I think electric vehicles are such a clear win for pollution (air and sound pollution) in cities that rolling back to ICEs should be clearly justified.

I_ 2y ago

How can electric buses have more maintenance downtime than diesel?

bzzzt 2y ago
Here in the Netherlands the bus companies are required to buy by tender which has led to the purchase of lots of cheap Byd busses. While they are fast enough and silent they are not that great: there are software problems, heaters don't work, doors won't close and the seats are so bad the (already scarce) drivers are getting back problems.
rsynnott 2y ago
As a general rule, in transport fleets, unless the old thing is actually basically at the point where it needs to be scrapped right now, the new thing always has more downtime than the old thing, because the old thing has had its kinks ironed out, and the maintainers are used to maintaining it. Of course, the trouble is, sometimes the new thing is just bad. A commuter/metro train system in my city operates mostly on 40 year old rolling stock. In 2000, some new trainsets were introduced, from two different manufacturers. One model never really worked properly, and was scrapped in 2008; the other survived. The whole thing is now due to be replaced with shiny new trains, starting this year... hopefully these ones work.
- fiverz 2y ago
  You're talking about Dublin, right?
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    Yup (the scrapped Alstom DARTs). But it happens everywhere; for a start we weren't the only users of that problematic Alstom model. You see a lot of old train rolling stock around, but there's a hell of a survivorship bias; a really alarming number of train models last less than a decade in service in any given operator. You'd _think_ this wouldn't happen, because reliability is absolutely the number one thing that operators care about, and they're usually willing to pay a premium to get it (the alternative being to pay to keep their reliable 40 year old units in service). But the industry's surprisingly bad at delivering it.

threeseed 2y ago

> Otherwise bus travel is too slow and unreliable for people working 40h+ This feels like a very US mindset. In many other places buses are very reliable and cities are built around them e.g. dedicated bus lanes and so they are often much faster than driving.

anal_reactor 2y ago
Buses are fantastic for the use case "we need to transport 100 people from suburbs to the office every day at 8AM", but they completely suck at use case "this one guy wants to come back home from a concert at 2AM". This means you need some personal vehicle anyway. And if you already have a car, why not use it for work commute. Living in a bike-oriented city, I think e-bikes are the future. Almost as versatile as cars, with none of the downsides.
- dagss 2y ago
  "why not use it for work-commute" In Oslo (and I am sure other European places), the answer is simply "because I want to spend 30 minutes on my commute instead of 90 minutes". (At least for train/metro) Assuming urban areas: Roads are always congested. Building more roads/more lanes only relieves it a few years then car traffic increases until you are as congested as before. (You can find proper scientific studies of this effect -- "induced traffic") But public transport, if enough people take it, take so ridiculously many more passengers per area of road that it cuts through this effect and actually helps congestion. (Establishing a bus route may also induce more traffic, but you can add another bus much more cheaply than another road lane, and actually keep up.) This requires buses to be prioritized in traffic though (dedicated lanes), otherwise there is as you point out no reason for individuals to take public transport. Basically a reserved bus/metro lane gives you "infinite road capacity" (with the obvious caveats)
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    > At least for train/metro This is why real estate close to metro is significantly more expensive than further away from metro. > Basically a reserved bus/metro lane Yes

shafyy 2y ago

They were doing something wrong. In many European cities I have lived and visited, electric buses are all over the place.