TTC: Electric and alternative fuel buses

[W. K. Lis]

There is a Green Bus Technology Plan Update (Presentation) at the June 12th TTC meeting. See presentation at this link.

Three bus garages will see the initial electric bus allocations, Mt. Dennis, Arrow, and Eglinton garages. The McNicoll bus garage will be built to accommodate electric buses, if the future decision is to go forward with electric buses.

 

[drum118]

Now for a little fun...

Now days, the driver drives up to a pan area that allows the poles to be raised and place on the wire without the driver getting out of the seat. Driver can lower the poles any where and they lock down with the driver not getting out of their seat and drive off under battery power.

This is a dead way of doing thing with the coming of battery power buses as well giving the street a clean look with no wires in sight.

Same thing is going to happen for the next replacement of streetcar and the removal of overhead. All the existing old fleet will cease to see operation on the system.

This is how Boston does it when I was there. Will have a look at Dayton system later this month and expect to see the same thing.

 

[drum118]

TTC to add 10 Xcelsior CHARGE battery-electric buses

 

[Voltz]

TTC to add 10 Xcelsior CHARGE battery-electric buses

So when one of those things breaks down, can we blame Scotty?

 

[W. K. Lis]

So when one of those things breaks down, can we blame Scotty?

...and get hauled away as garbage?

 

[pman]

The TTC at the forefront of technology. Hey, what could go wrong?

 

[W. K. Lis]

The TTC at the forefront of technology. Hey, what could go wrong?

The accountants could step in and ruin everything by going with the lowest bidder for cost instead of the best for rider.

 

[Amare]

Exciting news! Personally I way prefer New Flyer to Nova so its cool to see the TTC getting into them

The grand majority of TTC drivers would agree with you there when given the choice between the two.

 

[Tulse]

Given the range of these buses, how often would they have to be recharged during the day?

 

[drum118]

Nova's LFSe first electric bus to pass Altoona Testing

 

[smallspy]

The TTC at the forefront of technology. Hey, what could go wrong?

That's the point of the limited test that the TTC is running. If it goes pear-shaped, all the TTC will be out is 60 buses - an almost insignificant proportion of the bus fleet.

Given the range of these buses, how often would they have to be recharged during the day?

In theory, they should be able to run for a full day of service without a charge. They would charge overnight.

In practice, well.....that's the point of the trial.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[crs1026]

^The Brampton and York tests will have charging stations at the ends of the route.... taking no chances.

- Paul

 

[APTA-2048]

^The Brampton and York tests will have charging stations at the ends of the route.... taking no chances.

- Paul

I believe they well be short-range, fast-charge buses.

 

[muller877]

I believe they well be short-range, fast-charge buses.

I'm disappointed that the TTC did not include short-range buses in their testing. Some shorter routes would be ideal for this type of electric bus. There are transformers spaced along the subway and I would expect that some of them have excess capacity that could have been used for a charging station.

 

[kEiThZ]

I'm disappointed that the TTC did not include short-range buses in their testing. Some shorter routes would be ideal for this type of electric bus. There are transformers spaced along the subway and I would expect that some of them have excess capacity that could have been used for a charging station.

That increases infrastructure cost. The TTC is trying to get an almost plug and play solution. And personally, I think that's the smart play. Battery tech is evolving so quickly, that is range turns out to be their only obstacle, conversion to electric will only need to be pushed back a bit.

With the TTC's plan, the don't need any distributed infrastructure. They simply modify the garages and sheds. And they are good to go.