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TTC: Electric and alternative fuel buses

W. K. Lis said:
Los Angeles' Metro takes extra-long electric bus for test drive on the Orange Line

From this link:

750x422
The Lancaster, named after the city where it was built by BYD Motors Inc., is entirely electric and features the accordion-like articulation of L.A.'s extra-long buses. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)



BTW. Los Angeles' fare box recovery ratio is about 30.6%, while Toronto's fare box recovery ratio is about 73%. Nice what you can experiment with when you have the funds to do so.
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The claimed 27 year battery lifecycle is very impressive. This is critical because battery replacements are very expensive. 27 years mans that the battery will likely never need to be replaced.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
The claimed 27 year battery lifecycle is very impressive. This is critical because battery replacements are very expensive. 27 years mans that the battery will likely never need to be replaced.
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Yeah, but what do they really do.

It's simply an electric articulated bus. Same length as the TTC articulated buses. Much shorter than a new streetcar.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
The claimed 27 year battery lifecycle is very impressive. This is critical because battery replacements are very expensive. 27 years mans that the battery will likely never need to be replaced.
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...and 27 years is more than enough time for them to be replaced by much newer technology anyways.
 
Johnny Au said:
...and 27 years is more than enough time for them to be replaced by much newer technology anyways.
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Doesn't matter. These transit agencies won't upgrade to newer busses until their current fleet has been exhausted. For the TTC, that is a 18 year cycle.

Note that the Commission wants to reduce this to a 15 year cycle, to avoid having to rebuild busses.
 
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Regarding the claimed battery longevity, we don't know how many kilometers/year the manufacturer is assuming. The number of kms the bus has been used should have a greater impact on batter longevity than how old the bus is.
 
would 170 miles be enough for a days worth of operations? maybe a bus like that could be purchased and be used for peak service only..
 
Who's ready for some math?
Average speed of bus: 20 kph
Length of a full charge: 273 km
273/20 = 13.63 hours

I'm not sure how long busses are on the road, but this does not sound sufficient.

However, most electric bus implementations I've seen have had quick charge setups at terminal stations. For example, a bus will come into the subway station, and charge for 5 minutes while gathering passengers. In that time, the bus will get enough charge for another 25 km (or whatever). Because of this, battery life isn't much of an issue, assuming there is always a source to recharge
 
Building new trolley lines is a waste of money.

They certainly have their benefits. They are non-polluting, quieter, have faster pickup especially when going up hills which is why they are advantageous in Vancouver, and tend to last longer than regular buses. Conversely they are more expensive to buy, require upgrading and maintenance on overhead power supply, the wires often become dislodged with the power supply around corners, and they tend to be very jerky when accelerating. If the infrastructure is already there then they certainly have their benefits but to build a new line or system from scratch is a waste of money with no real net benefit.
 
There's also the issue of storage. The old trolley buses were housed in former streetcar divisions: Lansdowne and (old) Eglinton. Any new lines would need a dedicated garage similar to what the old carbarns had in terms of overhead clearance, and the current bus garages don't have that.
 
JayBeeGooner said:
I remember the TTC commissioned a report on building a new trolleybus network a few years ago. It was done by Dr. Richard Soberman. I couldn't find the report, but here is Steve Munro's blog post on the report.

http://stevemunro.ca/?p=1821
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The TTC report on the issue is at www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Commission_reports_and_information/Commission_meetings/2009/Feb_18_2009/Reports/Trolley_Bus_Service_.pdf

The Soberman report itself seems to have vanished without trace. Does someone have a copy that they downloaded back in 2009? Drum perhaps - he mentioned it in the thread here urbantoronto.ca/forum/showthread.php/8503-TTC-Trolley-Bus-Idea-Dead - which probably should be merged with this thread.
 
fiendishlibrarian said:
There's also the issue of storage. The old trolley buses were housed in former streetcar divisions: Lansdowne and (old) Eglinton. Any new lines would need a dedicated garage similar to what the old carbarns had in terms of overhead clearance, and the current bus garages don't have that.
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The current garages, with the exception of Wilson and Mount Dennis, are far from routes that would be ideal for (re) electrification: high ridership, few or no branches, straight line.

The trolley bus system Toronto had mostly followed old streetcar routes; the TTC poles, spanwires and substations were in place. Only two routes never directly replaced streetcars: the 4 Annette (which resulted in the re-routing, not the abandonment of the Harbord Carline), and the 61 Nortown. The rest were full or partial replacements for streetcar lines. Some of which benefited from dieselization in the 1990s: the 18 Caledonia and the 47 Lansdowne were finally joined into a proper north-south corridor, as was the 61 to Armour Heights. Extensions were possible for the 63 Ossington into Liberty Village and the 6 Bay to George Brown College.

Of all the old trolley bus routes, the little used 74 Mount Pleasant and 4 Annette/26 Dupont and the still busy 89 Weston stayed intact.

In my opinion, the best routes for electrification would be 7 Bathurst, 29 Dufferin, 63 Ossington again, perhaps 90 Vaughan partly connect those routes. Buses could be operated out of Wilson Garage, though wire might have to be strung along Billy Bishop Way to Dufferin Street rather than Wilson Avenue, if clearances from the Downsview runway preclude overhead. But that's just my dream; I see no real need to bring them back, to install brand new wire and substations, and complicate the fleet.
 
There are duobuses that switch between diesel and electric.

[video=youtube_share;r6-bEbd2ZTc]http://youtu.be/r6-bEbd2ZTc[/video]

So they could go diesel between the route and the garage, but run electric along their route. Or switch to diesel for short turns or emergencies.
 
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