Graham Lees wrote:
> mass transit need. Finance will come from the French agency ADF and

> operation will start by the end of 2010. Alstom Citadis featuring APS

> surface current collection will be used on the line. Montpellier

> transport authority TAM has signed a separate EUR 350, 000 contract to

> provide six years of technical consultancy through to project completion.

>

> So Brazil doesn't only have sensational music, fabulous football and

> beautiful women

>

> They also have sensible city officials!

>

Not completely, they chose the APS ground level power system.

It took 2 years and expensive refits to get it to work acceptably in Bordeaux and is considerably more expensive than overhead wire to install.

Modern tram overhead is quite light and not obtrusive, APS is an very expensive way to avoid a couple of wires strung above the tracks. I'm not including the poles, as in a street scape they would be there anyway for lighting.
(And apparently it doesn't allow regeneration of braking energy, so one of the 'green' aspects of a modern tramway can't be used).

The city has been suckered by the visual pollution lobby.

I find it ironic that APS was developed my the French, who have demonstrated on several modern tramways that they can build a very neat and light looking overhead supply system that's also highly reliable.

Now that 'super-capacitor' storage systems are dropping in price and have capacities that allow a couple km of tram movement with out overhead power, and since APS doesn't allow regeneration, to get regen energy savings you would have to install a super-cap storage module, skip the whole thing and just have gaps in the overhead where 'special work' would mean it can't be 'light and unobtrusive' (like over junctions) and use the capacitor storage to run over the gaps.

There is an article in a recent Railway Gazette International about modern tramway power systems. They are quite scathing of the whole surface power idea, basically saying it's unnecessary inflation of the construction and operational cost of an already expensive tramway.
(And APS is one of the more energy efficient ideas, Bombardier has an inductive system on offer, 10-15% power loss in the inductive loop. There goes the 'green' credentials, that's a significant power loss. And no regeneration either).