I believe that it's also Newman we can thank for the APS in George St.
During all those years of struggle to get trams accepted again as a form of
city transport in Australian cities, the advocacy relied on the "call them
anything-but-trams" approach, which included such paraphenalia as
wirelessness, calling them "light rail" and so on.

Unfortunately these advocates seize on any suggestion of some new
technology that make it appear "nicer" without acquainting themselves with
all the facts, let alone waiting to see it trialled and proven in
heavy-duty service. The best approach with wireless power is to sit back
for several years and let **others** bear the cost and inconvenience of
trialling before a well-proven result comes out at the end (viz. CAF's
personal wireless test track at Newcastle funded by the NSW taxpayer).
Likewise with rail-less guided buses. These things will doubtless emerge
successfully in the long term, but only after a very long period of
development and proving (including financial proving).

Trams are now well-accepted and one of the funny things one observes
following the Sydney light rail Facebook page is how many of the general
public prefer to call them trams rather than light rail and how many
couldn't care less about overhead wires. Such pretentiousness is confined,
it seems, to academics and local politicians and planners.

Tony P

On Wednesday, 9 January 2019 13:05:21 UTC+11, Tony Galloway wrote:
>

> Peter Newman and others who should know better have been making fools of

> themselves over this solution-in-search-of-a-problem lately.

>