HYDROLLEYS --- Hydrogen-Powered Trolleys, or More Properly, Streetcars
This essay by Stan Thompson, of the Hydrogen Economy Advancement Team, Mooresville, N.C.,
This essay by Stan Thompson, of the Hydrogen Economy Advancement Team, Mooresville, N.C.,
is about a breakthrough method for powering streetcars and making them independent of overhead power-feeder lines, reducing costs so drastically that there is now this major new incentive to equip cities with the capability of installing and extending streetcar --- and light rail --- lines .
The resultant advantages are presented below in an essay by Stan, presented at Hydrail 2013, a recent major international conference in Canada . We're including a hyperlink to the Conference presentation --- immediately below --- so that BLOG readers can download the original. We hope that this methodology will begin to put an end to the prevailing municipal philosophy of using asphalt and new roads to solve the problems brought on by asphalt and old roads . NEW AUTOMOBILE ROADS ARE THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION .
[This is one argument that your BLOGGER enjoys destroying :
[This is one argument that your BLOGGER enjoys destroying :
The Asphalt
Fallacy : believing that
adding more lanes to current roads will solve the traffic nightmare. As the
Mayor of Milwaukee said, in 1997, “Adding highway lanes to reduce traffic
congestion is like loosening your belt to fight obesity”. HNP ]
Download hydrolley presentation [PPT - 3.2MB]
[ ... continuing with Stan Thompson's presentation : ]
Just as hydrail is the easiest application of hydrogen fuel cell technology to transportation, it may be that the hydrolley - or hydrogen streetcar - is the easiest form of hydrail to introduce .
Hydrogen buses are already deployed in several cities around the world and are reportedly doing well, so why do we need hydrolleys? We can think of four reasons:
1. Unlike buses, rail transit has a clear positive effect on high-density residential and business development along the route. In Charlotte, North Carolina, where one of the most recent light rail lines just opened, the investment along the line before it opened was enormous, jumpstarting what had been a fading part of town. And it continues. It's reasonable to expect that similar development will follow clean, silent, wireless hydrolley lines.
[ Your Blogger's comment : This Real World result is in sharp contrast to the standard thesis of a famous Florida transportation engineering Think-tank to which, unfortunately, almost all local transportation plans are submitted before approval . They consistently argue the inverse : They say that transit lines should not be built until population density is high enough to justify them . If that were true, New York City's population would still be hovering at an incredible , stagnating 200,000 people . One hundred years ago, forward-thinking City Fathers ignored that Sacred Tenet and built the subway system transit lines first, and then gleefully watched the population growth explode in direct proportion and proximity to the transit system . ]
[ Your Blogger's comment : This Real World result is in sharp contrast to the standard thesis of a famous Florida transportation engineering Think-tank to which, unfortunately, almost all local transportation plans are submitted before approval . They consistently argue the inverse : They say that transit lines should not be built until population density is high enough to justify them . If that were true, New York City's population would still be hovering at an incredible , stagnating 200,000 people . One hundred years ago, forward-thinking City Fathers ignored that Sacred Tenet and built the subway system transit lines first, and then gleefully watched the population growth explode in direct proportion and proximity to the transit system . ]
2. Steel-wheels-on-rails offer only about one-seventh the rolling friction of rubber tired vehicles, conferring a range and economy advantage over buses.
3. For reasons that are intuitive, if hard to put into words, rail transit is somehow "up market" from buses and will draw ridership that would not give up cars for buses. In Charlotte, plans for a Bus Rapid Transit ("BRT") system linking downtown with the CLT airport disappointed those who preferred something like Atlanta's MARTA train to "ATL." But a wireless hydrolley line at about the same cost of BRT would be an easy sell.
4. And finally, hydrolleys might carry about half again as many passengers per operator as buses, and labor is a major transit expense.
We would like to remind our readers that hydrolleys do not require the expensive , complex, and fragile catenary wiring required of streetcars that must receive their power from overhead lines ]
We would like to remind our readers that hydrolleys do not require the expensive , complex, and fragile catenary wiring required of streetcars that must receive their power from overhead lines ]
Even without hydrail technology, U.S. streetcar re-introduction plans are already booming. Municipalities are willing to bite the catenary bullet and spend big bucks to get folks out of cars.
But if the same hauling capacity can be had without the clutter of overhead wires and without the two to three million dollars per mile of track that overhead power adds to streetcar line construction cost, the advent of the hydrolley may spark a much bigger streetcar renaissance, and do so fairly soon.
With the prospect of hydrolleys now in sight, it's hard to imagine that Federal transit funding for new catenary streetcar lines will continue much beyond the end of this decade.
Our wrap-up : Check with the people in community and industrial development offices --- One of the first questions asked by BOTH prospective new technology fims looking to relocate to your region AND by prospective new residents being recruited as new hires is "Where are the transit lines ? Will it be easy for our staff and management to get into work without the infamous dreaded one hour automobile drive ? " As an easy and instructive personal confirmation of this, try watching some half-hour segments of HGTV's House Hunter program !
Finally, let us recall the unsuccessful struggle of Tampa, Florida's recent mayor to extend the pathetically short TECO trolley line that started out so bravely ... and small. Former Mayor Pam DiOrio wanted to continue this very short line from a collection of tourist attractions into the heart of Downtown Tampa . This was rejected by tight-fisted politicians and voters who did not realize that it might change Tampa from a sleepy, self-satisfied southern town to a Gulf Coast powerhouse . Ask any delegates to the 2012 Republican Convention about some of the Moebius Strip contortion commuting they had to perform to get from their hotels into the Convention proper .
It makes me believe that city planners had never been to a modern, clean, comfortable town in Europe , well-supplied with clean, quiet, easy commuter transit lines .
Our wrap-up : Check with the people in community and industrial development offices --- One of the first questions asked by BOTH prospective new technology fims looking to relocate to your region AND by prospective new residents being recruited as new hires is "Where are the transit lines ? Will it be easy for our staff and management to get into work without the infamous dreaded one hour automobile drive ? " As an easy and instructive personal confirmation of this, try watching some half-hour segments of HGTV's House Hunter program !
Finally, let us recall the unsuccessful struggle of Tampa, Florida's recent mayor to extend the pathetically short TECO trolley line that started out so bravely ... and small. Former Mayor Pam DiOrio wanted to continue this very short line from a collection of tourist attractions into the heart of Downtown Tampa . This was rejected by tight-fisted politicians and voters who did not realize that it might change Tampa from a sleepy, self-satisfied southern town to a Gulf Coast powerhouse . Ask any delegates to the 2012 Republican Convention about some of the Moebius Strip contortion commuting they had to perform to get from their hotels into the Convention proper .
It makes me believe that city planners had never been to a modern, clean, comfortable town in Europe , well-supplied with clean, quiet, easy commuter transit lines .
