Re: CRRC trackless trams set for Perth trial
  Tony Galloway

Looks like that formula for APS costs - three times the cost of OHW to install, fifty times the cost to maintain - sounds about right.

Be interesting to know how the all-APS Rio system is going with reliability, if there’s any buyer’s remorse yet. At least they don’t have to open pits in the road to access the switchgear.

In the past all the surface and sub-surface power supplies, studs and conduit, failed because their cost, safety and reliability compared to OHW did them in. The tiresome spectacle of history repeating itself looks like being imminent with the current iterations of these “aesthetic solutions” once the excessive costs and poor reliability are objectively examined.

It would be something the engineering and accounting departments could agree about.

Tony

> On 24 May 2023, at 16:42, Matthew Geier matthew@...> wrote:

>

> On 24/5/23 16:30, Tony Galloway wrote:

>> These things are optically guided, having some buried guidance system defeats the purpose of being “trackless”. Hardly useful for something touted as “cheaper than trams because there’s no track”.

>>

> I think the recently hyped Chinese battery electric multi-artic is optically guided - it follows road markings. Modern machine vision should make this more robust that the original optical systems that would get lost when it snowed.

>

> I find it amusing the the commonly used PR photograph shows the 'tram' changing claims and imaging on the adjacent traffic lane as the body swings out.

>

> It will be fun when some mischievous uni students go out one night and repaint the road markings and send them off in a ditch.

>

>

>

>> Primove was an induction based power supply system AFAIK, not a guidance system. It was intended for electric vehicles following a fixed route, not necessarily trams, and failed due to the inefficiency of induction compared to direct contact systems, and the improvement in battery technology since it was invented.

>

> The distance between the sender and the receiver needed for robustness in and outdoor environment killed the power transfer efficiency being subject to an Inverse-square law.

>

> Breda also tried something they called 'tramwave' using magnets to activate a surface contact system, it didn't make it past 'field trial'. Only Alstom's APS has survived. And that's not what I would call reliable. (Despite multiple trackwork shutdowns and many APS 'power boxes' being replaced, there are still dead segments on George Street)

>

>

>>

>> Anyway, it’s just another over-hyped guided bus, a solution in search of a problem.

>

>

> Yep, to get any sort of 'buzz' for a bus proposal they have to call it a tram. :-)

>

>

> And back in NSW they were desperately trying to get the public to call the trams 'light rails' as the marketing people considered 'tram' too old fashioned. Then come along the bus boosters calling their multi-artic guided buses 'trams' because they think that sounds more high tech or something.

>

> Probably says something about how bad a public perception exists of the humble 'motor omnibus'.

>

>

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