Peter Newman, the guy who campaigned for the Fremantle railway to be reopened, and previously a supporter of light rail.
He has an unfortunate weakness for gee-whiz gadgets like wireless tram operation, and now “railless trams”. As far as I’m concerned anything other than steel wheel, steel rail and overhead wire is pointless flimflam.
If an all new system like Dublin can be built without resorting to gimmicks like APS etc it proves my point.
Tony
> On 10 Jan 2019, at 4:23 pm, 'Richard Youl' via TramsDownUnder tramsdownunder@...> wrote:
>
> If the Newman you are referring to is the one formerly from Brisbane, the only form of public transport he recognised was plain ordinary buses, sometimes prettied up with different paint or an articulation to somehow make them superior. Using any other technology was not his thing.
>
> ISTR that the blue City Glider buses were his answer to a proposed tramline along a similar route. What really endears them to the casual passenger is that they skip a number of stops used by all other buses along the way so you’ve got no idea where the rotten things are going to let you off. With all-over colouring, you can’t even see if anybody is riding unless you get on.
>
> Regards,
>
> On 10 Jan 2019, at 10:23 am, Prescott lenkaprescott@... mailto:lenkaprescott@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
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