On Mon, 31 Oct 2005, thoss wrote:

In article , Clive D. W. Feather
writes

The main reason for choosing trams over trolleybuses for any given
scheme is capacity. My vague memory is that the Cross-London route
would require 40tph or 130tbph to provide the same capacity; presumably
the same applies on the Uxbridge Road.

That implies that a trolley-bus can carry only 30% of a tram's
passengers. Why not bigger trolley-buses, maybe bendy ones?

For the same reason we don't have bendy-buses the length of a train - the
presence of a track. The track guides the vehicle, at every point along
its length, over a very precisely defined path, with no input from the
driver. This makes it possible for a long, bendy vehicle to take fairly
sharp corners extremely safely.

ISTR the idea of a bus guided automatically by a signal from a cable
buried under the road, a sort of 'virtual tram'; that would presumably
allow much longer buses. I don't know if this is a real technology or a
pipe dream, though.

tom

--
see im down wid yo sci fi crew