All well said, Rodney – and I appreciate your radicalism, a relief from the general conservatism that generally dominates such ‘senior -dominated’ groups.

Re your penultimate thought: I believe it was I who first suggested broadening TDU’s scope to include Asian etc tramways. I had probably just visited Hong Kong. But I was dismayed when this resulted in a separate group, and I haven’t taken much notice of Trams Pacific Rim since. But it may have suited others.

Brent Efford brent.efford@...

On 13/07/2019, at 10:50 PM, Roderick Smith retirededitor825@...> wrote:

There will always be blurred boundaries.
It is impossible to separate the Canberra tram from the Canberra bus network: the same management, politics and ticketing, and shaped to blend. Of course, we don't post about the Canberra buses as vehicles.
Queensland, which got the grammar wrong with 'tilt' train (correctly tilting train) went off the planet with 'metro' (a busway, not even guided). Again, we won't talk about the vehicles as vehicles, but we have to talk about the service as a service and how it interfaces with the rest.
I was mauled for my early posts about energy supply, but it is a vital part of our traction, and exploded from my prophecies to become an election issue. The public is more worried about domestic costs, and that dominates newspapers.
After that attack, I leave the items with yahoo transport down under.
I was also mauled for the bribing of passengers during unnecessary and badly-implemented replacement of heavy rail with buses for management convenience. That was simply a passing phase: management is now even worse, and knows that it can get away with anything without bribery.
Trams as such are rather a non issue in newspapers, and didn't feature in recent elections. The main commenting has been negative, about delays, disruption and costs (Sydney and Canberra). However, Canberra Times has muted its stance with stage one open, and seems to be supporting stage 2.

Re trolleybuses, Quito (Ecuador) had dual diesel and overhead. The hills were steep, and the overhead was weak. Diesel often supplemented electric. The overhead was failure prone, and diesel kept the service running.

Also re battery buses: what happened to supercapacitors? They were going to save electric transport, and satisfy people who didn't like wires.

All urban transport, electric or otherwise, has a common bond: united against the private motor car. That shows with modern management structures and ticketing systems. Long gone are the 1920s, when VR and M&MTB fought and competed. Outer-urban buses have to be seen as an adjunct of rail spines.
In turn, that brings in the role of urban ferries. We shouldn't be writing about the vessels as vessels, but the services as services should come under the 'government policy' clause in the faq. They are part of an urban network and urban ticketing. In Sydney, the various harbour and Parramatta River services; in Brisbane along and across the river; in Melbourne Portarlington; in Perth across the Swan (ie what would be called rpt in airline parlance, not tourist services).

A further aspect which this group should have the wisdom to acknowledge is the close relationship between urban transport and urban planning. Transport exists to meet a plan, not just to provide us with a chance to take pretty pictures.
Regrettably, most of the railway hobby looks only at the pictorial aspect, and not the justification for having railways at all.
Let them live at 'Thomas' level. This group should be working more at the level of Transit Australia, which was a maturing of Electric Traction.

A penultimate thought: No more disintegration. Internet in all of its branches is filled with mini groups, succeeding only in burying knowledge and not sharing it at all. That is conspicuously true of the railway hobby. Even trams were not immune. Peter caved into online complaints, and created TramsPacificRim. I disagreed with the idea, but did contribute. The complainers contributed nothing, and it languished. Instead, TDU embraced the very topics about which they had complained, giving strength.

I sense that the change from yahell to google has resulted in a lowering of participation. However, that may simply be coincidental with a drop in real news from the Melbourne system, and a shift into spin and politics elsewhere, combined with an ageing membership. Many lurkers may simply have taken stock of their enthusiasm (or lack of) and used the opportunity to make the break. TDU did well to defect: through malice or incompetence, yahell is disintegrated even worse now than then.

Roderick