TTC: Electric and alternative fuel buses

[Steve X]

Really happy to see Proterra will be invited to bid and that this is not some sole source contract to BYD. Get as many bidders as possible to get a great product.

That would be stupid if the sole sourced it. They are testing the technology not the manufacture's ability to produce a bus.

 

[APTA-2048]

Really happy to see Proterra will be invited to bid and that this is not some sole source contract to BYD. Get as many bidders as possible to get a great product.

They way I read it is there would be 10 buses from each of the 3 manufacturers: BYD, Proterra, and New Flyer.

 

[crs1026]

What is the status of the previously announced electric bus trial north/west of the city? I have heard rumours (via a reliable source, not street chatter) that Ontario intended to pull its share of the funding, putting the federal share in jeapordy also.

- Paul

 

[steveintoronto]

Don't know if this is the apt string for this, but this will be getting a lot of flak in the press: (Note the TTC, wisely, is against driverless buses at this time)

Self-driving bus involved in crash less than two hours after Las Vegas launch
A truck driver is blamed for the accident, but passengers say it could have been avoided if the autonomous vehicle had only reversed
[video linked at website]
Thursday 9 November 2017 10.52 GMT Last modified on Thursday 9 November 2017 13.29 GMT

It took less than two hours for Las Vegas’s brand new self-driving shuttle to end up in a crash on Wednesday – thanks to a human.

The autonomous bus made its debut on public roads around the so called Innovation District in downtown Las Vegas in front of cameras and celebrities, dubbed America’s first self-driving shuttle pilot project geared toward the public. But within two hours it had already been involved in a minor crash with a lorry. No injuries were reported.

Jenny Wong, a passenger on the shuttle at the time of the crash, told local news station KSNV: “The shuttle just stayed still. And we were like, it’s going to hit us, it’s going to hit us. And then it hit us.

“The shuttle didn’t have the ability to move back. The shuttle just stayed still.”

Las Vegas police officer Aden Ocampo-Gomez said the truck’s driver was at fault for the crash and was cited for illegal backing.

“The shuttle did what it was supposed to do, in that its sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident,” the city said in a statement. “Unfortunately the delivery truck did not stop and grazed the front fender of the shuttle. Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has, the accident would have been avoided.”

The oval-shaped shuttle can seat up to eight people and has an attendant and computer monitor, but no steering wheel or brake pedals. Developed by French company Navya, it uses GPS, electronic kerb sensors and other technology to find its way at no more than 15mph.

Before it crashed, dozens of people had lined up to get a free trip on a 0.6-mile loop around Fremont East, Las Vegas, including Nascar driver Danica Patrick and magic duo Penn and Teller. City spokesman Jace Radke said the shuttle took two more loops after the crash.

The year-long pilot project, sponsored by AAA Northern California, Nevada and Utah, is expected to carry 250,000 people. The AAA said human error was responsible for more than 90% of the 30,000 deaths on US roads in 2016, and that robotic cars could help reduce the number of incidents.

Google sibling Waymo announced on Tuesday that it is launching a fully autonomous Uber-like ride-hailing service with no human driver behind the wheel in Phoenix, Arizona in the next few months, making it the first such service accessible to the public without no one to take control in an emergency.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ter-las-vegas-launch-truck-autonomous-vehicle

 

[ShonTron]

There's still many years, at least, between a pilot low-speed circulator shuttle and an automated mass transit bus.

 

[steveintoronto]

There's still many years, at least, between a pilot low-speed circulator shuttle and an automated mass transit bus.

Doubtless. It's going to be a long slog to get there. Trackless shuttles will get there in the near future, most anything else on public roads, not. There's just far too many unpredictable parameters to gauge 'a considered human response' to.

Airplanes can take off and land almost completely automatically, but wisely, a lot is still left up to not just one pilot, but two, even if to intervene in an automated process.

 

[drum118]

TTC plans to buy first electric buses, targets emissions-free fleet by 2040

 

[kEiThZ]

2040 is sort of ridiculous. Paris wants to ban all gas and diesel vehicles by 2030. Maybe that's ambitious for a transit agency. But they could have aimed for 2035 at least.

 

[W. K. Lis]

2040 is sort of ridiculous. Paris wants to ban all gas and diesel vehicles by 2030. Maybe that's ambitious for a transit agency. But they could have aimed for 2035 at least.

They already made a decision in September to purchase 440 "clean diesel" buses. See link and link. Diesel buses have a life expectancy of less than 15 years, if lucky. The electric buses should last much longer than 15 years.

 

[crs1026]

2040 is sort of ridiculous. Paris wants to ban all gas and diesel vehicles by 2030. Maybe that's ambitious for a transit agency. But they could have aimed for 2035 at least.

I read into this that they don't see the technology as having converged yet, and they will continue fleet replacement with diesels, which means we will have to wait until the diesels die before we buy electrics in earnest. Lots of room to adjust that goal as we go.

Not necessarily a bad thing. We could invest a lot of money into e-buses with 32-pin technology, only to find that the industry goes to USB. Never buy the 1.0 anything.

- Paul

 

[rbt]

2040 is sort of ridiculous.

2040 seems reasonable. Toronto uses it's buses for 18 to 20 years. That means the last Diesel bus purchase ever would be between 2020 and 2022. Not very much time to give these models a trial run.

Manufacturing overhead isn't trivial. Abandoning a perfectly functional vehicle for a new emission free one (after it leaves the factory; not during manufacturing) isn't a great idea either.

Diesel buses have a life expectancy of less than 15 years,...

Not typically true for TTC. Other than the occasionally bad model, we typically get 18 years out of them. Sometimes up to 25 years.

 

[Jeff Morgan]

Might be of interest -> https://www.treehugger.com/public-t...n-will-have-only-electric-buses-end-year.html

 

[W. K. Lis]

The city of Shenzhen in China, has more electric buses than all of the (both conventional and electric) buses in Canada's and United States' biggest cities, combined.

See link.

 

[steveintoronto]

The city of Shenzhen in China, has more electric buses than all of the (both conventional and electric) buses in Canada's and United States' biggest cities, combined.

See link.

Batteries not included. (Some assembly may be required)

We could invest a lot of money into e-buses with 32-pin technology, only to find that the industry goes to USB.

Universal Serial Buses?

 

[crs1026]

There are plenty of electric vehicles out there in cold weather. The thing that holds up transit application is that the various manufacturers all have proprietary things that make competing systems incompatible. One technology uses on road charging, another only provides for charging at the garage (which may limit hours in service and thus increases fleet size). Each vendor has their own connection system. Just like cellphone chargers - each model uses a different style of charger.

Certain transit properties have (wisely) taken the position that they won't be locked into unique single vendor designs and have told the competing vendors to get in a room and hammer out a common standard. I'm told there has been a remarkable amount of collaboration between competing vendors, but as usual the odd renegade vendor has tried to steer the spec towards favouring their product. It's a work in progress for Ontario.

- Paul