In message . com,
writes
Clearly where there are wires they will be able to be seen if
you look but what is better a view with wires or an atmosphere laden
with pollutants which we (now) know make people (especially children
and the elderly) suffer with breathing problems and die prematurely?
Can't agree with the above. Until recently diesel vehicles put out
small particles of soot called smoke which smelled rather unpleasant but
wasn't dangerous. What has always been dangerous were car exhausts and
now some modern diesels. Cars are really the main problem because
although the exhaust looks clean it carries PM10s, (that is particulate
matter that is smaller than 10 microns) and it's these that cause lung
damage. I've been watching this argument rage over the years and
diesels were always given a bad name because you could see the smoke,
but now that science has proved a better answer people with petrol
engine vehicles don't like it.
--
Clive.

sweek wrote:

But a Trolleybus wouldn't solve any traffic problems, and wouldn't be
any faster than the buses there are now along Uxbridge Road - which I
thought was the main incentive for the tram. I use the route all the
time and traffic is really bad.In the end, trams are narrower than
buses so a right of way tramway would be easier to implement.

And I've been looking through those pictures and can't see any example
at all, of a trolleybus and its wiring that does not look ugly. I also
haven't seen much modern implementation of these things. If any at
all, really. Are there any cities that have recently constructed a
trolleybus network? The only example I can find is the Silver Line in
Boston, which all Bostonians I've talked with seem to hate.


Yes, 27 August 2003 a trolleybus route opened in the town Landskrona in
southern Sweden. The reason it was built was that a new railway station
was built out of the town centre and a frequent shuttle transport
solution was needed between the town centre and the new station.

There is not much information, especially not in English, on-line about
this trolleybus route AFAIK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landskrona


Every now and then I seem to run into a few enthousiasts about the
whole thing, but I haven't seen any serious planning for a system.
Wikipedia doesn't help much, either.


There were a discussion at the Swedish Tramway Society discussion forum
about the Landskrona trolleybus project and much of the discussion lead
to the conclusion that trolleybuses are not an alternative to trams,
they are just ordinary buses with the same capacity limitations as
ordinary buses. If there is demand for trams to replace an overcrowded
bus route or to releive congestion on street then there is no need to
even consider trolleybuses.

For those of you who read scandinavian languages, that discussion is
he http://www.ss.se/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2492

And I still think they're just very ugly. Pollution is a problem
obviously, but I hope we can find a nicer way around it than this.

Ugly or not, here are some pictures:
http://www.bussfoto.com/Bildgalleri/...a_060512a.html
http://www.bussfoto.com/Bildgalleri/...a_060512c.html
http://www.bussfoto.com/Bildgalleri/...a_060512c.html
On most streets I would say many people don't even notice the overhead
wires. But there are some parts of the route where the road look has
changed considerably.
http://www.bussfoto.com/Bildgalleri/...a_060512e.html

And finally some very fresh pictures from one of the enthusiasts in a
snowy Landskrona:
http://upload6.postimage.org/367408/photo_hosting.html
http://upload6.postimage.org/367578/photo_hosting.html


--
Olof Lagerkvist
ICQ: 724451
Web: http://here.is/olof

In article .com,
(Boltar) wrote:

On Feb 20, 10:42 am, wrote:
As for the gradient issue: actually electric trolleybuses have
better hill-climbing abilitities than diesels.

True , but not on battery power I suspect - ultimately you're
limited by the amount of power a battery can put out and I very much
doubt that could be more than a large diesel engine - at least not if
you want the battery to have a significant lifespan.

Diesels in cities are a lousy idea and should be phased out of
London.

Agreed. A pity the short sighted morons back in the 50s didn't see
it that way. God knows what they were thinking - it can't purely have
been a cynical money saving exercise could it?

A big problem in London is that much of the central area never had
electric vehicles due to the authorities' objections to the disruption
from overhead wire and tramway installations.

The whole London network was effectively divided in two, only connected
by the Kingsway tram subway (yes I know there were also limited
connections in West London).

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(Paul Scott) wrote:

IIRC (it was over 40 years ago) the Newcastle trolleybuses' diesel
engines were quite low powered, and were provided to allow the 'bus
to get out of the way if there was a problem with the wires or
pickup arms, but not for normal use...

I wasn't aware that any UK trolleybuses had diesel engines. London
trolleybuses had traction batteries to get themselves out of the way.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article .com,
() wrote:

KOS wrote:
If we have to have some form of electric transport Trolley Buses
seem a far more attractive, cheaper and flexible option than trams.
Why is Ken so keen on trams rather than Trolley Buses?

Capacity. Switching from diesel to electric buses has no effect on
capacity, whereas trams can carry far more people along the same
route.

Not quite true. London trolleybuses carried 70 passengers in the days
when diesel buses carried 56. The only trolleybus replacements that had
higher capacity were the initial batch of 24 RMLs introduced in 1961. The
main RML build was long after the trolleys had gone.

In my recollection, trolleybuses had lower floors and larger rear
platforms.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

"Colin Rosenstiel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Paul Scott) wrote:

IIRC (it was over 40 years ago) the Newcastle trolleybuses' diesel
engines were quite low powered, and were provided to allow the 'bus
to get out of the way if there was a problem with the wires or
pickup arms, but not for normal use...

I wasn't aware that any UK trolleybuses had diesel engines. London
trolleybuses had traction batteries to get themselves out of the way.


You might be correct - I only had this second hand, when I asked how come a
trolleybus was slowly moving along on a road with no wires...

Paul

wrote:
On Feb 18, 11:56 am, "sweek" wrote:
I think they're simply too ugly, and would hate to see so many wires
in London. I know that this is obviously true for trams, too, unless
we go for the still buggy system that Bordeaux has at the moment. But
at least the vehicles look a lot nicer then, and trams have a higher
"status" compared to buses.

Wires do not have to be as conspicuous as they often are in tram
schemes (huge steel 'I' girders and tensioned wires with large
weights). Trolleybus wiring can be quite light weight and is not
tensioned. In urban areas it can be suspended from brackets on
buildings. In really sensitive areas, you can of course dispense with
wiring and run on batteries or super capacitors or other auxiliary
power. Clearly where there are wires they will be able to be seen if
you look but what is better a view with wires or an atmosphere laden
with pollutants which we (now) know make people (especially children
and the elderly) suffer with breathing problems and die prematurely?
We can make the excuse of non-knowledge for the widespread electric to
diesel conversions of the 50's through to 1972 in the UK but that
excuse no longer holds water.

The ugly, high visibility wire supports for tram lines are not necessary
for the higher tension overhead used by modern tram systems, they are
simply cheaper than the alternative. In the pictures linked below, the
overhead is supported by the existing buildings, not by independent masts.

http://www.nettrams.net/PictureGalle...s/image001.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:N...ss-transit.jpg

Of course trolley buses are not immune to ugly, cheap masts:
http://www.bussfoto.com/Bildgalleri/...a_060512c.html

Where overhead wiring is deemed too ugly, it is possible to run trams
with no overhead wires at all, with no need for a separate on board
power supply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:B...-Roustaing.jpg

In the various new generation and updated first generation tram and
trolleybus systems I have visited, I would have to say that the
trolleybus overhead in general is more visually intrusive because of the
second wire and because of the much more complex (and noisy) equipment
necessary for junctions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:M..._at_Haight.jpg

Robin

On Feb 21, 8:03 pm, "Clive Coleman." wrote:
In message . com,
writesClearly where there are wires they will be able to be seen if
you look but what is better a view with wires or an atmosphere laden
with pollutants which we (now) know make people (especially children
and the elderly) suffer with breathing problems and die prematurely?

Can't agree with the above. Until recently diesel vehicles put out
small particles of soot called smoke which smelled rather unpleasant but
wasn't dangerous. What has always been dangerous were car exhausts and

Not quite true. The smoke was mostly soot but that carbon particles
often had small amounts of unpleasent organics in and on them. And
lets face it , having smoke everywhere isn't pleasent anyway whether
poisonous or not.

diesels were always given a bad name because you could see the smoke,
but now that science has proved a better answer people with petrol
engine vehicles don't like it.

Diesel engines are still dirty. Sure , they might come out of the
showroom with exhaust emissions that would have birdies tweeting , but
a few years of stop start motoring and old filters, and most diesel
engines start belching black gunk. In theory MOT and other tests
should prevent this but I think we've all seen enough buses , taxis ,
white vans etc blowing crap out the exhaust to know something isn't
working properly.

B2003

On Feb 21, 6:28 pm, "sweek" wrote:
But aTrolleybuswouldn't solve any traffic problems, and wouldn't be
any faster than the buses there are now along Uxbridge Road - which I
thought was the main incentive for the tram. I use the route all the
time and traffic is really bad.In the end, trams are narrower than
buses so a right of way tramway would be easier to implement.

And I've been looking through those pictures and can't see any example
at all, of atrolleybusand its wiring that does not look ugly. I also
haven't seen much modern implementation of these things. If any at
all, really. Are there any cities that have recently constructed atrolleybusnetwork? The only example I can find is the Silver Line in
Boston, which all Bostonians I've talked with seem to hate.

Every now and then I seem to run into a few enthousiasts about the
whole thing, but I haven't seen any serious planning for a system.
Wikipedia doesn't help much, either.

And I still think they're just very ugly. Pollution is a problem
obviously, but I hope we can find a nicer way around it than this.

The maximum width for a bus in the UK is 2.55m. for a tram it's 2.65m
so trams are often actually wider not narrower.

The point about Uxbridge Road (made consistently on the www.tfwl site)
is that no mode of transport along the road itself simply replacing
the 207/427/607 buses will cure the congestion. It is TfL who claim
that by changing mode this will magically happen! The tram is
certainly not planned to be very fast (19 kph = 13 mph!). The plan
would befor it to be slower than the 607 and in fact no faster than a
bus (diesel or electric) would be with similar restricted stops (one
every 400 metres). This of course is not suprising because the tram
cannot achieve any high degree of segregation. Whether the new
junctions and layouts along the route will work has of course never
been proved by TfL who have never done any simulations, so the trams
could well not move faster than the buses but in fact much slower.
This of course is one of the reasons why the scheme is now opposed by
the councils of all the boroughs through which it is planned to pass.
This represents movement from 'pro' to 'anti' as the detail of the
scheme has been appreciated. This is certainly not just 'NIMBYism' and
it is probably unprecedented for a major public transport scheme to
meet this level of objections from the elected local bodies.

The problem with the Uxbridge Road is that large numbers of journeys
are not simply along it but use it for only part of the journey. These
represent the vast bulk of the current car journeys (all the evidence
is available publicly in the MORI poll question answers and even more
evidence is available to TfL if they chose to look). These people are
not going to change from bus to tram (and possibly to bus again) for a
very much slower than car overall journey including a walk in the rain
between the (separate) bus and tram stops. If you want to get people
out of cars you have to improve the whole network of services in the
West London area including buses off and across the Uxbridge Road.
With a much cheaper and more flexible electric trolleybus trunk option
you have money left to do that. If you waste all your money on a slow
inflexible street running tram and worsen the bus routes (to make them
tram 'feeders' as proposed ) you are actually likely to encourage more
car usage not less. If TfL were not vastly exaggerating the projected
likely usage figures and totally ignoring all the known disbenefits in
the calculation, I would suggest that the Benefit/Cost ratio would not
come out as 1.5 but probably more like 0.5!

It is not just the mode which is wrong in this scheme. The whole
concept is completely flawed and shows a complete lack of
understanding of why people choose particular modes. Rgerettably it is
typical of the arrogant and misguided policy that has become a
hallmark of TfL.

Design is very much a personal thing. There are plenty of ugly trams
and some very smart trolleybuses (the Lyon Cristalis for instance).
Personally I would say that even the ftr diesel buses are more stylish
than Manchester trams, which are a bit like blunt pointed bricks but
it is all only a matter of personal taste.

In respect of new systems, the biggest completely new trolleybus
system recently is Rome although Athens and Arnhem have renewed their
systems and Lyons has expanded theirs. These are just a few examples.
If you wish to argue on numbers (not necessarily that helpful!) there
are actually currently more trolleybus systems world wide than tram
systems. The disparity is of course much greater if you remove the
totally segregated light rail systems such as Tyne and Wear Metro, DLR
and others worldwide, all of which really have almost nothing in
common even with Croydon Tramlink let alone West London Transit. This
of course is not to mention the heritage systems which are also
normally included in tram and light rail system totals.

'Pollution is a problem' is a bit of an understatement. The simple
fact is that traffic fumes (to which diesel buses contribute a large
amount in London along the roads that they operate) are a major
contributor to bad health and certainly make asthma far worse and
according to some studies cause it. If the choice is some wires above
the major bus route roads or thousands of people suffering breathing
problems all their lives and dying prematurely, what is the better
choice? I know my answer!

At least one Trolleybus had a diesel engine and it was based on a Dennis
Dominator and had a small engine in the back for NON electrified roads. It
was owned by SYPTE and was based at Doncaster depot and it is now at
Sandtoft Museum. I know about that one as I was one of the few drivers to
drive it on the test track at the side of the race course.

Ken


"Colin Rosenstiel" wrote in message
...
In article .com,
() wrote:

KOS wrote:
If we have to have some form of electric transport Trolley Buses
seem a far more attractive, cheaper and flexible option than trams.
Why is Ken so keen on trams rather than Trolley Buses?

Capacity. Switching from diesel to electric buses has no effect on
capacity, whereas trams can carry far more people along the same
route.

Not quite true. London trolleybuses carried 70 passengers in the days
when diesel buses carried 56. The only trolleybus replacements that had
higher capacity were the initial batch of 24 RMLs introduced in 1961. The
main RML build was long after the trolleys had gone.

In my recollection, trolleybuses had lower floors and larger rear
platforms.

--
Colin Rosenstiel