this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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This is the propaganda I can get behind.
And with trolleybuses powered on a renewable grid, it's zero gallons!
Or maybe tell bosses that if your job can be done remotely it should be done remotely. Then there's more room on the bus for people who need to be in meatspace to do their jobs.
Yeah, tell it my boss. I had this conversation today with her.
If only bosses were open to persuasion.
We used to have trolleybuses when I was a kid in the 70's, they were so insanely much more nice to ride than a diesel. No bad smell, and they were smooth and quiet.
I guess we will get back to something similar soon, but with batteries.
It's still a shame because the batteries are less environmentally friendly than the old trolley busses.
Yes in some aspects, it's like we are moving backwards. Funny since the talk about environment is more serious now than back then, still we often use unnecessarily polluting solutions, where the older "too expensive" solutions were viable when we had way less money as a country than we have now?
One would have thought the oil crisis had made us keep the trolley busses?
While I agree with the comparison in the post, the trolleybus powered by renewable energy shouldn't be compared to gas cars.
It should be compared to electric cars powered by renewable energy.
I disagree, the bus is still replacing the purpose of the gas cars. The bus should just be compared to both gas and electric cars.
It is easier and cheaper to make one larger electric vehicle than 68 smaller ones, and they would damage the road less too. Of course this kind of comparison between two different things is inherently very difficult to do fairly
Trolleybuses are much lighter, cheaper and reliable than regular electric bus or car. Also: a car is still a car.
Ik that ttolleybuses are better than electric cars in carbon footprint, traffic, etc. I'm just proposing that we compare things with the same power source together. It makes more impact to say that an electric trolley is x% better on y metric compared to electric cars, than to say they are x% better than gas cars.
Imagine a situation where you say electric trolleybuses are superior to gas cars for reasons x, y, and z on xcretion or speddit. Then some elon musk bootlicker or big oil bootlicker replies to you saying "what about electric cars" or "what about gas buses"? You craft a meticulous reply about why gas buses are better than electric cars. But it's too late. Thousands of lurkers saw the bootlicker's reply to you but will never see your rebuttal. Many of them are now more against public transportation.
How are buses still not better? The ratio of individual people being moved to total mass being moved is better. The maintenance and insurance fees are collective. The driver of the bus is a trained professional vs some rando commuter.
Trolleybuses are great. Fuck Sobyanin.
New electric buses in London are fucking amazing, no need for trolleys.
Until in 5-10 years when the batteries are fucked.
That's the beautiful thing about trolley buses - they do not need a (substantial) battery. They are basically trains on wheels.
There are some places where battery powered buses make sense - for example, where I live, lucerne Switzerland, there is one bus line that just goes up and down a rather steep hill. By using recuperative braking, the battery powered bus is super efficient. For other, normal 'high traffic' lines, trolley makes so much more sense
Trolleys don't really make any sense. I come from Riga, it has a lot of trolleys and the city is designed around trolleys and trams. And yet modern trolleys have bloody diesel engines, because being permanently hooked to the wire makes no sense at all. It's much better to have electric buses with a few overhead wires here and there to fast charge on the go.
Lucerne has a few trolley lines. They are ONLY trolley buses. The long, 3 Segment ones. Then, some 1 Segment hybrid buses that have pantagraphs. At the end of those lines, there is a longer stop where the trolley lines end, the pantagraph gets pulled down and the bus trucks along the last few stations with diesel.
Then theres just normal hybrid buses for more rural lines, and a battery operated bus that goes up and down a hill.
There's a solution for every line - you just need the proper infrastructure. The reason that we have this great pantagraph-compatible infrastructure is that, while there are a lot of trains in Switzerland, there is no metro. So in lucerne, the trolley buses work almost as a metro, with the main lines having buses every 7 minutes.
... why not have as many cables as possible so you can simply minimize battery size? Trolleybuses are just more efficient battery buses.
Cables are expensive and dangerous. Why have them at all?
Batteries are also expensive, and how are cables dangerous? We use them for trams without issue.
People die from touching cables quite regularly.
I have literally never heard of it, and considering how ravenous media is for engagement that makes me rather dubious of that claim.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/uphrj2/person_get_shocked_and_burn_by_touching_power/
https://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2010/03/05/14072-272/
https://www.itv.com/news/central/2022-10-11/parents-of-boy-11-electrocuted-by-overhead-power-cables-warn-of-dangers
Electricity is not a joke, my mate. It is always better to reduce the amount of high voltage (anything above 24V) overhead wiring.