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Battery Powered Tram Charges in 60 Seconds
SK writes to tell us that a new streetcar, powered by lithium battery, has been invented by the Railway Technical Research Institute in Kokubunji, Tokyo. The new transport is capable of speeds of 40 kph for 15 kilometers and can convert 70 percent of its deceleration energy into electricity which is then sent back to the battery which can recharge in under one minute.
Actually, for light-rail systems, this would be great.
- 40kph is enough. That's approximately 25mph, which is just right for light-rail.
- 15km is not quite enough. Many light-rail systems have stops that are farther apart than that. Double that number and it's golden. (15km = approx. 9 mi. 18 mi. should be enough for 90% of light-rail systems.)
Recharging at each stop is not unfeasible if the wait is only 60 seconds.
Now for the real problems:
- What does it cost?
- What does it cost to maintain?
If either of those numbers is large, it won't work in the US until mass transit catches on with the masses it's named after. Gasoline will have to be $10/gallon before that will happen.
Wow, what a strawman. This isn't about your freedom.
However, I agree with some the arguments you make, if you view things from a purely American point of view. You describe an implementation and a system where public transportation has failed. However, one flawed implementation does not mean that the entire idea is bad.
Public transportation works in Europe. Granted, there are geographical differences as well as cultural differences. If you spent enough time in the right European cities, you would probably see systems where public transportation is working.
Here is one case study... I spent a year in Poznan, Poland (pop 567,882). In that city, there are 20 trams (streetcar) lines and 57 bus lines. The trams run center-city and through the more dense areas, with buses making up the difference. While some own vehicles, the public transportation system has high ridership, to the point that during rush-hour one must be careful not to be crushed... People are not living by loud trains, but they are more comfortable with walking and riding bikes, and there are sidewalks (something quite rare in the USA). It may be 1-2 kilometers to the nearest tram stop, and that is perfectly fine by the city inhabitants. In fact, I would drive to the mall a few kilometers away, I would get heckled by my wife's friends -- who would drive if it was only a 30 minute walk? That said, I lived right next to the tram on the 6th floor of a high-rise, and hardly noticed the tram. It wasn't much, if at all, worse than the traffic of an average suburban street in the USA.
The area in discussion is fairly low income, relative to the prices for gasoline and for automobiles themselves. While the salaries were magnitudes lower than those in the USA, gas prices were around $6/gallon. So, if gasoline was lower, or if salaries were higher, would public transportation falter? Perhaps slightly, but one must also remember that the streets in this particular city couldn't handle that much traffic. In fact, this is already a situation occurring in Poznan, as more become capable of affording the cost of an automobile. The streets are becoming crowded at rush hour, and many drivers are choosing to return to public transportation as it is simply a much faster method of travel. Why wait in a traffic jam, watching the tram go past?
In other cities I've visited where the cost of travel was not as much a concern, such as Germany, I found cities where public transportation was not popular, but on the other hand, good city planning had eliminated the need. Walking from one side of the city to the other was no more than an hour, and much less by bicycle. They simply built a number of smaller cities with great urban planning, and in the 20th century linked them with high speed light rail. Thus, if you would rather take a train for 40 minutes, rather than walking for 40 minutes, you could do that as well.
Either way, I'm not sure I've ever met anyone in Europe that spent more than 40 minutes getting to work. I only knew a small handful of people that used a car for work travel, and they were in sales, freelance photography, and real estate. All cases were they were constantly 'on the go' where a car made more sense. (and even then, they would often use public transportation)
In the US, the combination of suburban sprawl and law have created an environment where companies have pulled themselves out of the downtown environments. This amongst other practices has have undoubtedly lead to much success, raising profits, and has helped make us a rich nation. However, these are also the things that, if you want to bring freedom into this, have stripped us of freedom, such as the freedom to walk down the street without the fear of being run over -- something that Ray Bradbury certainly predicted with 451/451' vision.
Finally, my point isn't that you're wrong that there are challenges, I admit that there are. In the USA, city planning is simply not pedestrian and public-transportation friendly. To ch