Battery trolleybuses ready for heavy duty climate action
By
Eric Doherty in
Opinion | December 19th 2018
Eric Doherty is a Victoria, B.C. based transportation planning consultant who attended the 6thInternational e-bus conference.
[...]
“It’s a no brainer . . .to use electric buses which are powered with in motion charging,” said Erik Lenz of
Kiepe Electric at the
e-bus conference. Solingen’s transit agency has stopped ordering fossil fuel buses and is using their existing trolley wire network to charge battery trolleybuses. “It is a very efficient system, and that’s why they went for it.”
Cities with existing trolleybus wire networks (such as Lyon, Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco, Shanghai and Bejing, and over 300 other trolleybus cities around the world) already have powerful charging systems in place for electric buses.
New battery trolleybus lines are also being installed for bus rapid transit lines. Bus rapid transit (BRT) utilizes bus lanes, typically in the center of the road, and
other features to make bus service faster and more convenient.) Before the conference, I rode the BRT line in Castellón, Spain, which is about 10 years old. The quiet electric buses run connected to overhead trolley wires on a car-free bus lanes for much of the route, but run off-wire through Castellón’s charming historical center. A new battery trolleybus BRT line will open in Rimini, Italy in 2019. Some European trolleybus cities (including Lyon, France and Zurich, Switzerland) are expanding their already extensive bus lane networks so their transit riders don’t get stuck in traffic.
Trolleybus BRT lines are not isolated to Europe. Two of the three BRT lines in Bejing, China have been converted to operate with trolleybuses. And San Francisco is constructing a BRT corridor on an existing trolleybus line. The oldest trolleybus BRT line is in Quito, Ecuador, in operation since 1995 and widely used by the public.
Since BRT lines are less expensive and quicker to build than other forms of rapid transit, electric BRT is a crucial climate solution – you don’t have to be 15 years old to know humanity is running out of time.
Experts from cities such as Berlin and Stockholm told the e-bus conference that different types of electric bus charging systems are required for different transit lines. Buses that charge overnight work best for smaller buses that don’t travel far per day. Electric buses that stop and charge at fast chargers have a role on moderately demanding lines. But the heavy lifting is best done by battery electric trolleybuses, which are the most practical technology for large buses on the busiest and most demanding routes.
Using other types of electric buses on the most demanding routes would require buying and operating more buses, with each bus driving a shorter distance per day. This would be very expensive in large cities where land to park and charge buses is not readily available. [...]
