I use them every day for commute. Trolley buses are absolute pieces of shit. Slow, drivers understand mash the throttle like it’s on and off button and in cold winters their electrical cables overhead freeze and you get delays.
Btw their electrical cables make the city look like garbage. The only ones who think trolleys are a good idea are those who don’t use them.
We had trolley busses here in Wellington NZ for decades. The network needed an upgrade so our shortsighted council ripped it down while promising battery buses to replace the trolleys. We ended up with old, dirty, diesels chugging round our city for years, an I’m not sure we’ve gotten rid of them all yet. It was a disaster.
I hate that they were taken out. I rode on the as a kid regularly, it was always a little adventure when the driver had to reset the runners
Same in Dunedin!
Switzerland runs a lot of these buses. Also trams, normal buses , trains. For those people in the U.S., it’s a very effective and efficient system called public transport.
Yeah literally, what is this post even saying
Yes Switzerland is famous for its public transport
add some steel wheels then its perfect
… on tracks. Steel wheels would destroy the wheels, blacktop, and concrete.
And connect them together.
Choo choo
They are still running in The Netherlands, although only in 1 city.
Really sad we should have more of them their just better then battery electric.
Vancouver, Canada, still rocking these bad bois
I think trams are pretty good as well, which I know the Netherlands has a lot of
Basically the same thing but with actual rails.
There’s also an idea of doing this in highways.
Tom Scott video on it: https://youtu.be/_3P_S7pL7Yg
I always upvote Tom Scott
San Francisco has a fair number of overhead electric busses, too.
I assumed they were pretty common in cities. I don’t know how practical they would be in suburbs.
Down here in NZ my city used to have these too! Apparently it was the last commercial trolleybus network in Oceania. But as a mostly suburban kind of city environment (not quite American suburbia but still low density), their utility definitely was quite limited by the predefined routes. Eventually more and more routes weren’t even using them. But they were still servicing the old main road high frequency routes, so they were still very useful in those instances. Much better than the diesel buses, too, which were so loud you could hear them coming from several stops away! Eventually they phased the trolleys out in 2017, citing all the usual rubbish like maintenance costs and such. But we hadn’t yet electrified our bus fleet, so for a while we had to borrow a bunch more diesel buses. Still on the road to having a fully electric fleet, and I imagine it will be a good while yet before that happens.
Minor cosmetic changes like running above ground power infrastructure where it doesn’t exist anymore?
Its much easier and cheaper to install above ground than in the ground. Bonus points you could open it to Electrical trucks for emission free cargo in the city.
They do still in some places. It’s in my city, we have hybrid buses but we could use some of these.
Not in all though, that’s the point. It’s not an easy transition and rail systems are more reliable for public transit in my opinion.
Rail systems are not necessarily more reliable (at leats tram vs bus I mean), I do love the aesthetic of trams, and they are also more efficient due to the small rolling resistance.
And it is definitely easier to transition into trolley than it is to transition into tram.
*and northern
*and the rest of Europe
i actually like the aesthetic.
Meanwhile on the Autobahn:
Steel rails have even less friction
This is a very nitche application. Tom Scott did a video on it.
I’m very aware of that Tom Scott video, don’t worry. It is an okay middleground, but look at the people in comments pointing out the wear on the trolley.
Not from nimbys
WTF Germany how did I not know this was a thing and why aren’t we doing it here in the US?
Question though. Obviously the wires can’t cover every road and the truck sometimes has to drive off the wired road. Do they have small batteries to carry them between the wires?
The wires aren’t for propulsion, but for recharging electric trucks.
We’ve had these in Boston since I was a kid, but recently they’ve been taking down the wires.
Aren’t those fro the T though? Or did bus routes use them too?
The busses out of Harvard station used them (71, 73, 75? and some others).
Silver line to the airport too, right?
There are 5 testing areas for this atm and only a handful of trucks which use that. These are hybrid trucks having batteries and electrical engines besides the main traditional diesel engine. So it’s far from an widely adopted tech right now.
If they can get that to work this can be massive, assuming we don’t want to improve our rail infrastructure. It will also keep trucks from the passing lane
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Is this a trial or is it getting installed all over? It’s the best solution to electrify goods transport by road. Only a small battery required for off grid to delivery point and back
It is a trial atm. On 5 highways in different areas, a few trucks.
More about this from Tom Scott
My grandfather ran a printing press using old trolley bus motors, reliable and powerful shit.
that rocks
I think someone else mentioned that San Francisco has these. I also wanted to throw in that Seattle has got them too. Maybe it’s a West Coast thing in the USA? I’d be curious to know if other parts of the country have them too.
Vancouver, Canada has them as well
There’s a few in Philadelphia I think
Let’s face it: in most US cities there probably isn’t much aesthetic for the power lines to spoil. Just like in the grey Soviet cities where they come from
Greetings from Winterthur, a pretty nice, human-friendly, town in Switzerland which bunch of old buildings. Also called the bike-city of switzerland. It turns out that the trade off is worth it. I rather have power lines than cars or fuel powered busses.
Yes! I used to live there for most of my childhood, and thus have always considered those power lines to be a normal part of any city as a kid. Growing older and starting to visit other cities (without either trams or trolleys) I was surprised to see them missing and thought it looked strange, like a crucial piece of infrastructure was missing.
Those wires are only there if you are looking for them.
This is in my city. It looks this way because it is the biggest public transport intersection, with trolleybuses going all 4 directions meeting a tram line.
Seriously, after a while you just ignore those wires.
Seattle used to have these as well. Sadly, the US (outside of a few cities that kept their 1930’s infrastructure and updated it) can’t find it’s ass with both hands when it comes to public transportation.
Seattle still does.
Holy carp they’re still there! You’re right.
…we don’t anymore?
You do! I had to look it up. I haven’t seen them in a long time (I don’t get to Seattle much anymore), but they’re still in service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Seattle
