Check this out. It is nifty, but is it a threat to rail?
http://www.cnet.com/au/news/sweden-opens-1-2-mile-long-electric-highway-for-trucks/
Reminds me of that old National Lampoon satire of the Metroliner: "Speeding America into the Fifties ... Railroading's answer to the DC6"
I don't think I could come up with a much more pointedly inefficient system if I were designing the thing as a parody. Two large complicated pans on each truck, probably with complex insulator arrangements and shielding when (not if) one of them gets tangled in an emergency lane change; nice cat poles just outside Armco right at the edge of the travel lane; two sets of catenary and its wiring to be paid for, maintained, and looked at as an eyesore ...
Even the old automatic-highway proposals didn't use high-voltage overhead. The 'current' (n pun intended) systems use some form of induction under the road surface (I'm too lazy to find the references over the past few years, but I even have some of my own from the '70s that are better than this Siemens thing...)
Not to say there aren't places where a system like this might work ... with "helpers" rather than a complicated dual-power setup on every tractor. Of course, setting all the trucks up with the needed hardpoints to work with such an arrangement is itself a high-dollar system needing a combination of standardization and incentives to work here.
Take this simple Cummins Turbo Diesel quiz: If my engine option costs me $7000, and I save about 10mpg, how many miles do I have to drive before I break even... and how many miles does a Dodge beer can run before it needs extensive rebuilding? This system is going to involve substantially higher pro rata cost than that, so we can assume a combination of European carrots and sticks, probably involving carbon credits somewhere, to get it implemented or perhaps even standardized enough to get acceptable take rate for 'truck-only toll roads' (note that the system is worthless for any vehicle much smaller than a bus, which is not at all the case for induction systems)
Overmod'truck-only toll roads'
Russell
This system has been used for transit buses, only they used trolley poles with swivel bases instead of pantographs.
The only threat to rail is the price of oil. Now that OPEC has determined that the oil bubble has been deflated the price will rise and rail's market share will start to grow again.
Editor Emeritus, This Week at Amtrak
A threat to rail? I doubt it. Besides, where's all that juice to run the trucks supposed to come from?
In a way, this has been tried before. Back in the late 30's through the 40's Public Service Coordinated Transport of New Jersey ran what they called ASVs, or All Service Vehicles, trolley buses that drew power from overhead lines and then used on-board gasoline powered generators where no wire was available.
They were gone by the 50's.
csxns Overmod If this comes to the USA who will pay for the truck only roads?
Overmod
If this comes to the USA who will pay for the truck only roads?
I was speaking purely of the European model, described and illustrated in the original story. But there have been truck toll road proposals made. (I won't go into how likely they were to be approved, let alone built or run effectively.)
While the separate truck lanes of part of the Jersey Turnpike are not purely 'truck-only', they represent one kind of option that this system would provide: a dedicated lane or lanes that cars can be "induced" to avoid. However, I get the strong impression that the actual 'truck road' would more resemble a cross between the Lincoln Tunnel bus lane (a horizontal high-speed heart attack, nose to tail at 100-mph-plus closing speeds with 2' clearance). Fortunately we can include self-driving among the features these fancy trucks will sport!
On the other hand, it would greatly reduce many sources if current aggravation to truckers to have a dedicated and autonomously-enabled route, and it would certainly improve things on many sections of the Interstate system not to have to accommodate two different speed and weight ranges for vehicles...
Boston's South Station - Logan Airport bus line uses dual-mode trolley-diesel buses, because of the use of a bus subway. Lausanne, Switzerland, has a large fleet on several line. Also, most Swiss trolleybuses do have a diesel and generator to provide emergency off-wire capability. The generator (alternator) is the one that provides normal vehicle electricity but is much larger. Even in the case of Lausanne dual-modes, there is not an attempt to match the on-wire performance, but in the case of Boston there is. I suspect the future Swiss trolleybuses will use batteries for off-wire emergencies instead, like the new Dallas Brookville-built streetcars.
Firelock76In a way, this has been tried before.
Doesn't Seattle have dual powered busses that use electric op in the downtown tunnel and diesel on the road?
Dayton's Trolley busses can operate short distances on battery.
As long as there's any possibility that a typical 4-wheeler pilot can interact with the juggernaut, this will be problematical at best.
Then, that overhead is vulnerable to other problems. It's not compatable with high-wide loads, whether running under it or crossing it at any angle. I have a photo of a backhoe boom that cut through about ten feet of an overpass when the teamster driving the drop-bed centipede either missed or misinterpreted a clearance sign. Catenary wouldn't have slowed it down. Add in the temptation of expensive metal out where there's nothing but miles and miles of miles and miles, with not a sign of habitation or civilization... (Most of my home state resembles that.)
Chuck (Bemused desert tortoise)
MarknLisa Check this out. It is nifty, but is it a threat to rail? http://www.cnet.com/au/news/sweden-opens-1-2-mile-long-electric-highway-for-trucks/
Pretty interesting "concept"... CONCEPT being the operative word. Not necessarily a new proposal, but once again we are faced with the fact,"... that everything 'old', is 'new' again..." Maybe, Maybe Not?
Specifically, trolley supplied electrical power to rubber-tired, large vehicles. Even with this concept of the use of large commercial vehicles to draw their power from overhead lines.
Way back in the ear between WWI and WWII, American Cities were visited by the,then latest public transportation craze.. TROLLEY BUSES. They came on the scene as the tracked trolley was starting to see a downward trajectory in its popularity, as roads got better (paved,etc) and cars were subject to the obsticles presented by trolley tracks in roads and intersections, tracks that could 'grab' the non-power steering in a car, and send it off in unwanted directions. The trolley bus was a hoped for alternative for auto driving citizens; after all, they could run on any smooth surface that could support them, while they followed the overhead power source.
Growing up in Memphis, Tn. during the time trolley buses were being used over a large part of the city, Trolley buses were a constant presence in town. The gas and later diesel buses were also a growing presence. Anyone who rode the trolley buses for any length of time became very aware of their faults: If the driver got too far away from the cewnterline of the overhead dual wire path, the trolley poles became disengaged. An action that caused a drive to have to stop, get out and try to re-attach them to the overhead cable. Have a driver miss a turn, and the bus get off the overhead power source, the vehicle then became a captive of the drivers in-attention, and if it went too far off route- a product of its own mass and momentum; it had to be towed back to its power source. Our very early 'trackless trolley (buses) were provided by ACF-BRILL, in the 19+30's and then in the 1940's by Pullman-Standard,and General Electric ( and I think GM also might have been building the bur bodies(?).
The track-less trolleys lasted into the early 1960's. when they were finally phased out in favor of the Diesel Buses, made by Flexible, and then GM. The heavy steel poles that lined the old trolley bus routes may still be found around town, converted to use by the electric utility. The strength, and presence of these poles is tested by some of the errant auto traffic, which has occasion to run into one.
Here is a linked site with a lot of photos and information on it about what was known as the Memphis Street Railway before it bacame a modern alphabet anacronym, MATA, which itself seems to have been through some changes over the years.
@ http://www.trolleybuses.net/mem/mem.htm
@ this site also a pretty good resource..Its author: Mike Condren deserves all the credit. well worth the time if interested: http://condrenrails.com/MRP/Memphis-Street-Railway/Memphis-Trolley-Coaches.htm
I could be wrong, wrong, wrong on this but I think Philadelphia had trolley buses at one time.
Several Swiss cities have trolleybuses and some dual-modes. Many Russian cities have trolleybuses, including some like Moscow that have subways, trams, trolleybuses, and buses (and just closed a monorail). Vacouver still has trolleybuses. Boston, Dayon and Seattle have plans to keep trolleybuses into the future. Boston also has dual-modes, but that rout is not connected to the Harvard Square-based three-line trolleybus system. Probably I should not write Boston for the trolleybuses; the three lines serve Cambridge, Watertown, and Waverly all as feeders to the Red Line rapid transit at Harvard Square with an underground transfer station.
The dual-mode Bredas in Seattle that used the Tunnel Bus Subway have been replaced by battery-diesel hybred GMs, which share the Tunnel with light rail. (1200V). The Bredas now operate as simple diesels on routes not using the Tunnel.
Firelock76I could be wrong, wrong, wrong on this but I think Philadelphia had trolley buses at one time.
Not only had 'em -- they had the first regularly-scheduled ones anywhere, and still run service: http://www.septa.org/media/50th/trackless-trolleys.html
This was the first use of those now-wacky-looking Brill Rail-less cars.
How is their future in Phili? Was there are period where they were out of service and then restored?
Note my correction to the previous post. Arlington and Arlington heights have diesel bus service, although the Waverly and Watertown streetcar lines did run through Harvard Square and North Cambridge to Arlington and Arlington Heights, for a while with PCCs too! But the wire on Massachusetts Avenue goes only as far as North Cambridge.
daveklepperHow is their future in Phili? Was there are period where they were out of service and then restored?
There has just been a purchase of modern buses, so I think the three lines are safe for a while. IIRC service was suspended 2002-2010. A SEPTA site would tell you more.
Overmod Firelock76 I could be wrong, wrong, wrong on this but I think Philadelphia had trolley buses at one time. Not only had 'em -- they had the first regularly-scheduled ones anywhere, and still run service: http://www.septa.org/media/50th/trackless-trolleys.html This was the first use of those now-wacky-looking Brill Rail-less cars.
Firelock76 I could be wrong, wrong, wrong on this but I think Philadelphia had trolley buses at one time.
Thanks for the link Overmod, very interesting indeed.
In fact, the trolley buses in photos three and four, plus the photo on the brochure, are almost dead-ringers for those Public Service ASV's I mentioned earlier.
Guys, San Fran still runs trolley buses also...
http://www.sanfrancisco.net/bus
In addition to kgbw49's San Fransico, count Vancouver, BC; Dayton, OH. Boston, MA. Philadelphia PA; as having Electric Trolley Busses.
As far as implementing this on long distance truck corridors in the U.S I would think that the same issues that impact freight rail electrification proposals(i.e extreme cost and who pays?) would be at play with a hypothetical trolley truck network..
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
Most truck transport is shorthaul. This could work well in dense corridors. Would likely need to be taxpayer funded with some of the cost charged back to the users.
Glad to know they are back in Philly and have a future. Cannot figure out why I left out SF in my list. Rode them there (Stockton - SP Station, was once F, probably now a number) and keep up-to-date with The Inside Track and my MSRA membership and the www.streetcars.org website.
Where else in North America was a trolleybus line replaced by streetcars? The present heritage F Embarkadaro-Market-Castro line when first opened was just Market-Castro and replaced that trolleybus line.
Zurich is replacing or has replaced its Bumplis trolleybus line with "ligh trail."
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