Re: Economics of electric buses
  David McLoughlin

> Our next stop is a city with a TVR system. They were to replace the TVRs

with 'proper' trams, but that project has apparently succumbed to a
'financial crisis' (and change of city government) and they are looking at
just acquiring 'standard' trolley buses... However I wouldn't mind betting
there will be a significant push to get rid of the 'unsightly wires' now
that 'technology doesn't require them'.

Nancy has ordered 25 double-articulated Hess trolleybuses to replace the
guide-railed TVR system; they will start running when pavements wrecked by
the TVRs are repaired and the overhead wires modified, see:

https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/25-hess-bi-articulated-trolleybuses-for-nancy/

Not everyone by any means think trolleybus wires are unsightly, and they
can see the benefit of in-motion charging for extending routes beyond a
basic wired network. Praha is already doing this with two new trolleybus
routes, while Berlin is planning to get a large fleet of trolleybuses for
routes in the Spandau area, which is well west of the tramway system, now
expanding strongly back into former West Berlin from the former East Berlin.

At least one hopeful trolleybus maker is exhibiting at a trade fair in
Berlin this week:

https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/a-trolleybus-to-be-presented-for-the-first-time-at-the-berlin-trade-fair-innotrans/

> Particularly interesting is the bar chart which contains the sort of

information that the authorities in Wellington and Brisbane, for example,
should have properly considered before they made the decisions they did.

Wellington's transport tsars wanted only to get rid of the trolleybuses,
hence they looked at no other wired option at all. The system was ordered
closed as soon as the contract signed in 2007 expired in 2017, despite $10
million year of public money being spent on replacing the old overhead with
new K&M equipment, not to mention 61 new trolleys which cost another $50
million. They were replaced with second-hand diesel buses hurriedly brought
in from Auckland. They are now making the bus operators buy very expensive
battery buses and boasting how these "reduce emissions".

The Greater Wellington Regional Council transport manager who liked
trolleys and was responsible for the 2007 contract was pushed out soon
after it was signed and heavily anti-trolley officers replaced him. The
transport committee chairman also hated trolleys. The fact they were
wasting $100 million of public investment made from 2007 to 2017 didn't
bother them at all. Bastards.

david mcl