Fun fact, the Prague trolleybuses are meant as a temporary step until the train is finished (it is already being built, although at rather slow pace). after the train is completed, these long bois will be moved on to other lines in the city (mainly busy cross-city ones) which will become electrified until then.
I fully agree that bi-articulated trolleybuses would be a fantastic transit solution throughout North America, but I disagree that you would sidestep the learning curve or hostility to global transit best practices that exists on the continent, and especially in the US. Admittedly, it is a case study of one, but I used to live on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA. I personally witnessed the depowered overhead wire gradually get dismantled over an agonizing two-year period after the MBTA decided to abandon its trolleybus system. From what I have heard and read anecdotally online, the biggest reason that the system was abandoned was a perception at MBTA that overhead wires are uniquely annoying and difficult to maintain, although it didn't help that Cambridge city officials, otherwise so progressive, opposed the overhead system for other reasons (for some, because it made installing bike lanes easier. For others, because of pure visual NIMBYism). If anything, American agencies are more comfortable with rails than they are with overhead wires. You see this now regarding MBTA regional rail electrification, where the agency seems wed to a BEMU approach that would not even wire up North Station. And in New York, advocates are currently trying to forestall a new EMU order for the LIRR that would preclude the use of catenary, making it much harder to electrify the rest of the system in the future since extending the existing DC third rail would be too expensive due to the high number of new substations that would be required compared to AC catenary. The LIRR isn't thinking that far ahead because it is inconceivable in the Tri-State Area that any of the commuter railroads would be interested in expanding electrification. And of course, who can forget that down in the Washington, DC area, MARC converted back to diesel so they wouldn't have to buy electricity from Amtrak.
I'm not saying all hope is lost - among the few cities with trolleybuses, San Francisco and Dayton seem quite committed. SEPTA is more worrisome, but so far seems to be avoiding the calamity we saw with the MBTA. But when I look at American transit agencies as a whole, their hostility to overhead wires is, if anything, even more entrenched than their hostility to rail.
I do think the US is substantially worse than Canada on accepting international best practice because there is more of a perception of an opposing "US practice" which exists.
I would suggest a lot of the opposition is due to perverse incentives, such as in the case of the north east corner. I mean Denver built an entirely new rail system and they installed 25 kv AC from. ohle the beginning!
Yes, there's a weird situation where Western and Southern driving cities are actually better at adopting best practices than Northeastern legacy cities (+Chicago) that use transit the most. Witness Front Runner's all-day clockface schedule or Caltrain electrification. I think it's because there's less institutional detritus that says "This is how we do it here."
I love bi-articulated buses, but the biggest institutional hurdle is that the US limits non-semi truck vehicle length to 60 feet (plus our more limited areas where there’s enough demand to stimulate Buy America-compliant models). IMO the onus is on Canada here to lead the way for North America, where there’s much more bus demand and more local manufacturers.
You lost me when you started bashing American light rail and unfairly generalising the entire USA as being bad at operating light rail transit. Seattle is doing a good job, and so is Salt Lake City.
I’m not sure what to tell you! I took the time to reread that section and I referred to “most systems, not needing the capacity they have and not operating frequently enough” this is factual and if it’s what you would characterize “bashing”, then I think you’re both reading into this is something I haven’t said, and somehow taking a comment about these train systems personally.
Seattle system, for example, is a borderline metro and so obviously I would have a different comment for it. In Salt Lake City absolutely is in the group of cities that doesn’t operate as much frequency as I could!
Washington, D.C. is planning to end service on its failed Obama-era streetcar in the next few years while the mayor has promised a shift to a "next-generation streetcar." Perhaps bi-articulated buses are the solution, especially since H Street NE already has the overhead line infrastrucure built and hosts the extremely busy D20 bus (formerly X2) that already uses single-articulated buses. Also worth noting is that D.C.'s now-canceled Circulator bus service began in the early 2000s with imported buses that were a substantial improvement over most local Metrobus buses at the time. Maybe history will repeat itself!
German cities have tried introducing Bi-Articulated trolleys (most notably Hamburg), but it didn't work out, mostly because of higher maintenance requirements due to the second articulation and surprisingly low (seating) capacity increase due to the short trailer length. They have instead moved on to longer (21m) articulated busses, namely the Mercedes Benz Capacity (L) which are surprisingly close in capacity to e.g. the Hess LightTram 25 (200 vs 213 pax for 6 p/m²). I think, particularly considering the difficulties North American transit agencies seem to face for new bus types (especially electric busses) and the generally wide streets, this might be a better approach as they're just "artics but just longer". German cities generally don't like frequencies much higher than around 6 busses/h for whatever reason, so even smaller cities such as Tübingen and Göppingen with ~92k or ~59k inhabitants employ them for busy routes.
Having ridden some of the "french tram replacements" (and also some Swiss trolleys), with the Mettis in Metz trying trying their hardest to build a french tramway with bi-articulated (though non-trolley) busses, they really don't come close to trams. The huge wheel wells, much longer flexible sections and the general rattly-ness (especially over historic cobblestones) make for unfavorable door layouts, worse circulation and a bus-like standing experience.
Comparing Metz to nearby "Tram-cities" also shows their much worse urban integration (wider RoWs and no grass track) and their limits. E.g. Besancon just received larger vehicles from Alstom as their original trams were just too short with 23m (and all other tram networks in the region use longer vehicles). With a Bi-Artic, you've reached the largest vehicle size (at least for now, let's see what happens with ART outside China).
Larger busses are a good thing to have as an option for an incremental "upgrade" approach and when trams for whatever reason just don't work or don't make sense.
Last but not least: I don't think trolleys are a good long term choice and thus also a bad short-term choice. Their benefits compared to BEVs are a potentially lower purchasing price (although that hasn't panned out in cases I've looked at), have longer range (with flash charging closing the gap for BEVs) and less battery required (lower mass, less mining for the battery itself). Compared to that, battery busses should come down in price and increase in battery capacity (when the battery progress trickles down from cars) and are much more flexible and higher volume, while working without large infrastructure investment outside the bus depot.
Obviously, you make some good points and I'm not suggesting that this is a replacement for all trams, but there are clearly cases where a tram is built where a bi articulated bus is probably a better option! As far as the ART in China, that's a gadget-bahn!
Are you thinking of cases outside Europe? In Europe, a large enough number of cities kept their trams that there is still a market there for catalog tram models - trams that come off-the-shelf.
This is not the case pretty much anywhere else, not even where trams have returned. There is no such market, for example in Australasia or Oceania or anywhere in the Americas.
The ART is sold as a gadget-bahn for sure, but judging from footage and the few minutes spent inside at Innotrans it's also a nice bus for high-capacity demands (layout-wise and length-wise). I think the vehicle itself might work as a further capacity upgrade for e.g. the Brisbane "Metro" or other BRT/BHNS/Metrobus/... lines which already have a lot of infrastructure for busses built out, but comes with legal challenges to be able to operate it.
At this point, you might want to consider another challenger to the tram:
The reason we currently don't have more mini or midibuses is the current issue with smaller buses, that they do not allow a single operator to move as many people at a time as they could with larger buses. But this limits coverage and also means a lot of services than can be supported are not super frequent.
So buses and vans with self-driving technology and no operator onboard might be another challenger to the tram if they make smaller buses at higher frequencies more widely viable.
I think the self-driving-car technology could and will be transferred to trams operating on-sight. Self driving vehicles, which make bus costs much easier to scale down to smaller vehicles, will probably result in quite a different network design. Assuming that these smaller vehicles will still converge to trunk lines, the trunk lines will still need larger vehicles.
My expectation is that (at least in large parts of europe), we'll see much higher frequencies on current low-frequency bus lines and a modest increase in current high-frequency lines associated with smaller vehicles, but there will still be new trams and higher-order modes of transit for busy routes, although probably smaller in size and a bit less often.
Perhaps self-driving technology, by resulting in a different network design, will also result in a different approach to city building. This is part of the reason I said buses and vans with self-driving technology and no operator onboard might be another challenger to the tram.
In Prague, the curent IMC trolleybus boom is in no way seen as an alternative to trams, but rather as a complement.
The main use case, apart from the airport line, are hilly routes. There, the advantages of electric motors over Diesel engines are particularly obvious, and rubber wheels also have advantage over steel where traction is concerned.
And one reason why the introduction of IMC trolleybuses went much smoother than Prague's experience with battery electric buses is the already-existing body of institutional knowledge around 600V/750V DC overhead power coming from long experience with operating one of world's largest tram networks, as well as the possibility to reuse electrical substations originally built for the trams also for the trolleybus.
Well, I didn't suggest it was a tram replacement for Prague! But there's certainly a lot of places that have built trams that would be better off with this technology
Brisbane just launched the M1 along with an entirely reconfigured bus network yesterday. Great to see that we're finally getting some good buses in the Brisbane. It's very exciting. However, not living near a Metro is sad because they are so good and frequencies of every 5 minutes during weekdays and 24 hour service on weekends is genuinely a game changer because our night buses are very, very limited.
One thing I question about the Brisbane "metro", given that it stops at fixed stations and runs entirely on a busway, is why it still technically has request stopping, let alone a request-stop-only policy. Real metros don't have request stops, and as far as I know, it would not be a good idea.
Love it. So frustrating to think of all the $$$ wasted on gimmicky limited new tram lines in the US that could have and should have been spent on articulated long trolleybuses instead. Oh, how i wish municipal authorities here would just contract with best-in-class transit entities from overseas to expand and manage their systems. As your piece on DB and Toronto eloquently argued, definitely something to try, even if the "but North America is different" and "but we have to do it the way we've always done it" attitudes and other culture clashes make that so very hard. In sports, if you want a world class team, you get a world class coach (and good players help too). Yeah, I know: it takes money. In transit, we're told we have to settle for mediocrity.
It's definitely an interesting counter factual, and it would've been enough money to create a number of lines and buy far more vehicles than it was when it was four straight cars
It seems the PCC’s are off route 15/G and there are segments where it’s really one lane for all through traffic or parking in each direction, so the ROW can’t get more dedicated without removing parking (at that, they’d probably keep the trolley lane for turns, as is today. Besides route 15, route 23 and existing 66 trolleybus would probably be prime contenders in addition to the West Chester Pike corridor-but I’m not sure if Delco would allow wires from 69th St to Newtown Square-which would be the bare minimum since you would get two routes using it, with one terminating just after at a community college and the other continuing into West Chester. Eventually maybe have normal trolleybusses as south Philly loops and at least 1 bend for the existing 3 plus the 15 and 23 (but G for Trackless Trolley doesn’t really compute, if they deserve a special designation at all)
Fun fact, the Prague trolleybuses are meant as a temporary step until the train is finished (it is already being built, although at rather slow pace). after the train is completed, these long bois will be moved on to other lines in the city (mainly busy cross-city ones) which will become electrified until then.
Interesting! Thank you so much for adding this color to the story!
I fully agree that bi-articulated trolleybuses would be a fantastic transit solution throughout North America, but I disagree that you would sidestep the learning curve or hostility to global transit best practices that exists on the continent, and especially in the US. Admittedly, it is a case study of one, but I used to live on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA. I personally witnessed the depowered overhead wire gradually get dismantled over an agonizing two-year period after the MBTA decided to abandon its trolleybus system. From what I have heard and read anecdotally online, the biggest reason that the system was abandoned was a perception at MBTA that overhead wires are uniquely annoying and difficult to maintain, although it didn't help that Cambridge city officials, otherwise so progressive, opposed the overhead system for other reasons (for some, because it made installing bike lanes easier. For others, because of pure visual NIMBYism). If anything, American agencies are more comfortable with rails than they are with overhead wires. You see this now regarding MBTA regional rail electrification, where the agency seems wed to a BEMU approach that would not even wire up North Station. And in New York, advocates are currently trying to forestall a new EMU order for the LIRR that would preclude the use of catenary, making it much harder to electrify the rest of the system in the future since extending the existing DC third rail would be too expensive due to the high number of new substations that would be required compared to AC catenary. The LIRR isn't thinking that far ahead because it is inconceivable in the Tri-State Area that any of the commuter railroads would be interested in expanding electrification. And of course, who can forget that down in the Washington, DC area, MARC converted back to diesel so they wouldn't have to buy electricity from Amtrak.
I'm not saying all hope is lost - among the few cities with trolleybuses, San Francisco and Dayton seem quite committed. SEPTA is more worrisome, but so far seems to be avoiding the calamity we saw with the MBTA. But when I look at American transit agencies as a whole, their hostility to overhead wires is, if anything, even more entrenched than their hostility to rail.
I do think the US is substantially worse than Canada on accepting international best practice because there is more of a perception of an opposing "US practice" which exists.
I would suggest a lot of the opposition is due to perverse incentives, such as in the case of the north east corner. I mean Denver built an entirely new rail system and they installed 25 kv AC from. ohle the beginning!
Yes, there's a weird situation where Western and Southern driving cities are actually better at adopting best practices than Northeastern legacy cities (+Chicago) that use transit the most. Witness Front Runner's all-day clockface schedule or Caltrain electrification. I think it's because there's less institutional detritus that says "This is how we do it here."
I love bi-articulated buses, but the biggest institutional hurdle is that the US limits non-semi truck vehicle length to 60 feet (plus our more limited areas where there’s enough demand to stimulate Buy America-compliant models). IMO the onus is on Canada here to lead the way for North America, where there’s much more bus demand and more local manufacturers.
I think either country could do it, but yes Canada is probably more likely
You lost me when you started bashing American light rail and unfairly generalising the entire USA as being bad at operating light rail transit. Seattle is doing a good job, and so is Salt Lake City.
I’m not sure what to tell you! I took the time to reread that section and I referred to “most systems, not needing the capacity they have and not operating frequently enough” this is factual and if it’s what you would characterize “bashing”, then I think you’re both reading into this is something I haven’t said, and somehow taking a comment about these train systems personally.
Seattle system, for example, is a borderline metro and so obviously I would have a different comment for it. In Salt Lake City absolutely is in the group of cities that doesn’t operate as much frequency as I could!
Washington, D.C. is planning to end service on its failed Obama-era streetcar in the next few years while the mayor has promised a shift to a "next-generation streetcar." Perhaps bi-articulated buses are the solution, especially since H Street NE already has the overhead line infrastrucure built and hosts the extremely busy D20 bus (formerly X2) that already uses single-articulated buses. Also worth noting is that D.C.'s now-canceled Circulator bus service began in the early 2000s with imported buses that were a substantial improvement over most local Metrobus buses at the time. Maybe history will repeat itself!
Great article, and great point about Metro Vancouver being an ideal location to introduce bi-articulated in motion charging electric buses.
Generally, a progressive area for new transport technologies, at least for public transport
German cities have tried introducing Bi-Articulated trolleys (most notably Hamburg), but it didn't work out, mostly because of higher maintenance requirements due to the second articulation and surprisingly low (seating) capacity increase due to the short trailer length. They have instead moved on to longer (21m) articulated busses, namely the Mercedes Benz Capacity (L) which are surprisingly close in capacity to e.g. the Hess LightTram 25 (200 vs 213 pax for 6 p/m²). I think, particularly considering the difficulties North American transit agencies seem to face for new bus types (especially electric busses) and the generally wide streets, this might be a better approach as they're just "artics but just longer". German cities generally don't like frequencies much higher than around 6 busses/h for whatever reason, so even smaller cities such as Tübingen and Göppingen with ~92k or ~59k inhabitants employ them for busy routes.
Having ridden some of the "french tram replacements" (and also some Swiss trolleys), with the Mettis in Metz trying trying their hardest to build a french tramway with bi-articulated (though non-trolley) busses, they really don't come close to trams. The huge wheel wells, much longer flexible sections and the general rattly-ness (especially over historic cobblestones) make for unfavorable door layouts, worse circulation and a bus-like standing experience.
Comparing Metz to nearby "Tram-cities" also shows their much worse urban integration (wider RoWs and no grass track) and their limits. E.g. Besancon just received larger vehicles from Alstom as their original trams were just too short with 23m (and all other tram networks in the region use longer vehicles). With a Bi-Artic, you've reached the largest vehicle size (at least for now, let's see what happens with ART outside China).
Larger busses are a good thing to have as an option for an incremental "upgrade" approach and when trams for whatever reason just don't work or don't make sense.
Last but not least: I don't think trolleys are a good long term choice and thus also a bad short-term choice. Their benefits compared to BEVs are a potentially lower purchasing price (although that hasn't panned out in cases I've looked at), have longer range (with flash charging closing the gap for BEVs) and less battery required (lower mass, less mining for the battery itself). Compared to that, battery busses should come down in price and increase in battery capacity (when the battery progress trickles down from cars) and are much more flexible and higher volume, while working without large infrastructure investment outside the bus depot.
Obviously, you make some good points and I'm not suggesting that this is a replacement for all trams, but there are clearly cases where a tram is built where a bi articulated bus is probably a better option! As far as the ART in China, that's a gadget-bahn!
Are you thinking of cases outside Europe? In Europe, a large enough number of cities kept their trams that there is still a market there for catalog tram models - trams that come off-the-shelf.
This is not the case pretty much anywhere else, not even where trams have returned. There is no such market, for example in Australasia or Oceania or anywhere in the Americas.
Yeah.
The ART is sold as a gadget-bahn for sure, but judging from footage and the few minutes spent inside at Innotrans it's also a nice bus for high-capacity demands (layout-wise and length-wise). I think the vehicle itself might work as a further capacity upgrade for e.g. the Brisbane "Metro" or other BRT/BHNS/Metrobus/... lines which already have a lot of infrastructure for busses built out, but comes with legal challenges to be able to operate it.
At this point, you might want to consider another challenger to the tram:
The reason we currently don't have more mini or midibuses is the current issue with smaller buses, that they do not allow a single operator to move as many people at a time as they could with larger buses. But this limits coverage and also means a lot of services than can be supported are not super frequent.
So buses and vans with self-driving technology and no operator onboard might be another challenger to the tram if they make smaller buses at higher frequencies more widely viable.
I think the self-driving-car technology could and will be transferred to trams operating on-sight. Self driving vehicles, which make bus costs much easier to scale down to smaller vehicles, will probably result in quite a different network design. Assuming that these smaller vehicles will still converge to trunk lines, the trunk lines will still need larger vehicles.
My expectation is that (at least in large parts of europe), we'll see much higher frequencies on current low-frequency bus lines and a modest increase in current high-frequency lines associated with smaller vehicles, but there will still be new trams and higher-order modes of transit for busy routes, although probably smaller in size and a bit less often.
But it's very hard to predict.
Perhaps self-driving technology, by resulting in a different network design, will also result in a different approach to city building. This is part of the reason I said buses and vans with self-driving technology and no operator onboard might be another challenger to the tram.
In Prague, the curent IMC trolleybus boom is in no way seen as an alternative to trams, but rather as a complement.
The main use case, apart from the airport line, are hilly routes. There, the advantages of electric motors over Diesel engines are particularly obvious, and rubber wheels also have advantage over steel where traction is concerned.
And one reason why the introduction of IMC trolleybuses went much smoother than Prague's experience with battery electric buses is the already-existing body of institutional knowledge around 600V/750V DC overhead power coming from long experience with operating one of world's largest tram networks, as well as the possibility to reuse electrical substations originally built for the trams also for the trolleybus.
Well, I didn't suggest it was a tram replacement for Prague! But there's certainly a lot of places that have built trams that would be better off with this technology
Well, Prague is, of course, in Europe, and kept its trams. Might they challenge trams outside Europe?
Brisbane just launched the M1 along with an entirely reconfigured bus network yesterday. Great to see that we're finally getting some good buses in the Brisbane. It's very exciting. However, not living near a Metro is sad because they are so good and frequencies of every 5 minutes during weekdays and 24 hour service on weekends is genuinely a game changer because our night buses are very, very limited.
One thing I question about the Brisbane "metro", given that it stops at fixed stations and runs entirely on a busway, is why it still technically has request stopping, let alone a request-stop-only policy. Real metros don't have request stops, and as far as I know, it would not be a good idea.
Love it. So frustrating to think of all the $$$ wasted on gimmicky limited new tram lines in the US that could have and should have been spent on articulated long trolleybuses instead. Oh, how i wish municipal authorities here would just contract with best-in-class transit entities from overseas to expand and manage their systems. As your piece on DB and Toronto eloquently argued, definitely something to try, even if the "but North America is different" and "but we have to do it the way we've always done it" attitudes and other culture clashes make that so very hard. In sports, if you want a world class team, you get a world class coach (and good players help too). Yeah, I know: it takes money. In transit, we're told we have to settle for mediocrity.
It's definitely an interesting counter factual, and it would've been enough money to create a number of lines and buy far more vehicles than it was when it was four straight cars
It seems the PCC’s are off route 15/G and there are segments where it’s really one lane for all through traffic or parking in each direction, so the ROW can’t get more dedicated without removing parking (at that, they’d probably keep the trolley lane for turns, as is today. Besides route 15, route 23 and existing 66 trolleybus would probably be prime contenders in addition to the West Chester Pike corridor-but I’m not sure if Delco would allow wires from 69th St to Newtown Square-which would be the bare minimum since you would get two routes using it, with one terminating just after at a community college and the other continuing into West Chester. Eventually maybe have normal trolleybusses as south Philly loops and at least 1 bend for the existing 3 plus the 15 and 23 (but G for Trackless Trolley doesn’t really compute, if they deserve a special designation at all)