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Wirelessly Charged Buses Being Tested Next Year
An anonymous reader writes "From the article: 'Bombardier's electric transit technology will be tested next winter on buses in Montreal, followed in early 2014 on a route in the German city of Mannheim. The transportation giant's Primove technology is designed to allow buses to be charged by underground induction stations when they stop to let passengers hop on and off.' This technology while impressive may not make it to the U.S. even if proven successful due to the lack of popularity of public transportation. If they could only get my phone to charge wirelessly."
The article says that the induction charging stuff could also be used to charge trains.
What? Why is public transport not popular in the US? o.0
If you carried a coil of wire with the correct circuitry attached you'd be able to charge your cell phone at the bus/train stop as well.
Keep up the good editing!
That sounds kind of dumb. Why would a train need batteries for propulsion?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This technology while impressive may not make it to the U.S. even if proven successful due to the lack of popularity of public transportation.
OK, if you live in the U.S., why don't you ride the bus or train to work?
Chicago is better then other citys and price is better then driving in and parking also faster and less stress some times when walking you have to deal with turning cars that can stack up.
A distinguishing characteristic of trains is that they run on fixed tracks. The kind of thing that's easy to put a third rail beside or a wire overhead. Why TF would you need to charge them?
-- Alastair
The anonymous writer behind the summary slipped in his or her own opinion about the US's appetite for public transit, and the likelihood of such an innovation ever reaching our shores. Speaking as a New Yorker, we *love* public transit. If this proves to be successful, cost effective and green, I bet there would be a major push to adopt it - here at least.
Induction charging, that's rather inefficient. Better to fit the trains with connection pads at the bottom, and have them stop along a solid-contact charging strip in the designated stop area, for direct-wire charging.
Much less to maintain, too.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Americans love public transport, look how often they catch cabs!
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
A city's mass transit system is a reflection of its land. blaming transit systems for poor ridership is like blaming a fat man's obesity on his big pants.
with a nice little carbon tax with a "starter" rate of say $5 per gallon of gas imposed.
It would kill two birds with one stone:
1. Put the brakes on the rate of expansion of fossil fuel use and GHG emissions growth
2. Start making a dent in the US deficit and debt
But of course, being a rational, sensible, simple, and effective policy, this would naturally be political suicide.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
In the USA the charging stations would be stolen for the copper.
So the coils in the ground charge the bus when the bus stops. Do they also erase all the passengers' credit cards and portable device hard disks?
Update: FEMA is aware of the acute punctuation shortage in Chicago and will get a shipment of multipurpose punctuation (usable as commas, apostrophes, and forward or backward quotes) to you as soon as Congress approves the appropriation.
Doesn't seem like the bus would get much charge for the short time it's parked. I can't see the benefit.
Screw trains. How fast will this charge my phone?
If you stand on this will the keys in your pocket melt into your leg?
In Chicago, ANY method of transport is faster and cheaper than driving.
I knew someone who managed to get stuck in traffic for 4 hours on 294 while trying to get through that area once.
Tesla's dream. induction charging. OK not long distance. Tesla got that wrong. If every stop/station had an induction charger it might be able to re-charge the bus. this isn't an easy problem. think about it!
Or one could note that the US has a well established, nationwide, efficient, point to point, cheap, private transportation system that works better for most uses than the public transportation alternative. But by all means, let's pretend it's a character problem.
Dude. Punctuation - it's your friend. As is grammar and spelling. I still don't know what you mean by the last half of your giant sentence.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
How are they going to stop electrickery thiefs
I would love to use public transportation to get to my job.
A bus nearby would get me to the electric line in the chicago area to board in Richton park. An hour and twenty minutes later I could switch trains and head to naperville. After that hour and twenty minute ride I could walk three blocks to work.
Or I can drive for forty minutes and get to work.
I would love to actually move to naperville, but when I bought my house at a fantastic price (it was worth 40 thousand more than I agreed to pay for it) I can't actually sell it cause I'm 60 thousand in the hole due to the market crash.
I can't get a job locally that pays a living wage, crook county has made sure not only to overtax, but to actually chase businesses away. So either I commute or lose everything.
The mass transit system in the chicago area sucks. Unless you manage to live in the city itself, and work in the city itself it's worthless. It would fold overnight if it couldn't tax all the collar counties that can't use the system anyway.
It's a collosal mess and money pit. Just like everything that Chicago runs.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Land. Reread.
Dude. Punctuation - it's your friend. As is grammar and spelling. I still don't know what you mean by the last half of your giant sentence.
You really shouldn't be giving advice on punctuation or grammar. Your spelling is great, though.
Was just in Shanghai in January. They have supercapacitor buses currently operating on major routes. A superstructure on the roof extends upwards to power lines for 5-10s, the caps charge, the structure retracts, and onward the bus goes.
But don't fear for American innovation - just look at Facebook, right?
If by private you mean publicly funded infrastructure such as roads, bridges, highways, traffic systems and policing then you are correct. The only thing private are the cars.
No it's not the existence of this vast asphalt and concrete ball and chain that prevents the US from having a good public transportation system.
It is however the fact that land is plentiful outside metro areas and many people prefer to commute. There are a variety of reasons for this. Historically it has been the industrialization of the inner city areas with businesses wanting to be close to the transportation hubs the cities grew up around. This lead to the residential areas moving further away to avoid pollution and activities they wanted to avoid (bars, worker riots, etc). Which turned the inner city residential areas into lower class neighborhoods and eventually impoverished areas.
So now we have huge suburban communities that sprawl across the land and require decentralized transportation as each area may have residents commuting to entirely different business regions. People now choose where to live based on many factors other than where they work (neighborhood, price, schools, amenities like parks or natural environments) but they still need to commute to work each day.
Centralized transportation of any kind is a failed proposition for many US metro areas. At best it could be a long term strategy if attractive housing and amenities can be set up within walking distance so that young workers can have the choice rather than impoverishing themselves trying to afford a downtown lifestyle.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
(reposted after logging in from anonymous coward status) I was in Shanghai in January, and observed supercapacitor (as labeled) buses operating on major routes on-loading and off-loading passengers. Overhead cables lined the route, and at every stop the bus would extend a superstructure to the cables, make contact (whether directly or inductively - unobservable), wait 5-10s, retract, and onward the bus would go. I don't know who manufactured the buses. I simply thought it notable that the Chinese were fielding such a system. I'll leave the questions about liability, etc. to the floor. In any case, and irrespective of where the bus was manufactured, guess who's going to learn whatever shortcomings may lie in this technology and improve on them first for having deployed it. And if the buses were designed or made in China, then . . . props to them. Not trying to create xenophobic bogeymen here, quite the contrary, it's worth observing how different folks operate.
now if I can just figure out how to modify an EV to take advantage...
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
"This technology while impressive may not make it to the U.S. even if proven successful due to the lack of popularity of public transportation."
America is too busy. I was in Chicago and found the traffic pretty unreal. It's also very difficult to walk in some areas - almost as if you don't have a car, you're not really a valid citizen. What happens with peak oil and people only lose money by having a car? They'll need new public infrastructure so in a way America is an ideal candidate for this. They just don't know it yet. America has plenty of domestically sourced oil and gas but I can't help that think that's planned for something else - like permanent wars maybe.
Can't wait to have GREEN buses for Congress to throw me under.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
CALTRANS had an induction-charged bus deployed in Berkeley in the 1980s. It required precise parking at bus stops, so the two halves of the split transformer could connect magnetically. The system worked OK, but wasn't a huge win.
GE once patented a system where an entire lane had transformers, so vehicles could run on ground power. That was too expensive. It would cost like a maglev track.
I agree that the tax would be unfair if alternatives were not funded well at the same time.
As well as transit infrastructure, it could also fund battery and ultracapacitor R&D, so you could buy an electric car that would compete with a regular car on range, performance, and price.
We have to make a fundamental change in transportation and energy infrastructure as fast as turning on a dime, in case you've been living in a cave and haven't heard or haven't done the math. We have the technology and innovation capacity. We just can't get out of the fossil fuel energy trap because we've optimized the economy for its exploitation. Pricing carbon emissions is the only way to make that leap. Those who do not make that leap will be utterly condemned in the tales told by the next few generations.
And no I'm not rich. I just have my blinders off and my priorities adjusted to know that I can't justify being part of the incredibly destructive status quo.
And why don't you take that time on the bus not stressing out about manouvering in traffic to program the next big thing on your laptop.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Tesla did it, Tesla did it.
... is EvoBus, a subsidary of Daimler-Benz. And that's why the second test track is in Mannheim, Germany, because there EvoBus builds their busses (coaches are build in Ulm, Germany). To be more exact, it's a Citaro bus Bombardier is using.
Nikola tesla called me last night....from beyond the grave. He said, And i Quote "FUCKING CALLED IT CHAPS"
Actually, it can work quite well, as long as places where people *work* (and ideally, shop and go for recreation) can be convinced to locate themselves within convenient walking distance of transit stations... IF the outlying stations are designed with BOTH abundant parking that's conveniently-accessible to commuters who live 3-10 miles away AND the zoning department & elected officials are willing to rezone the area surrounding the stations for intensive high-value high-density office and commercial use (even if the station is 40 miles from downtown and surrounded by cow pastures the day the line opens).
My favorite scenario would be something like this:
1. 16-lane freeway with exits every 2 miles. Braided ramps.
2. Rail transit line running down the middle, but stations below the freeway. There's a pair of stations ~1/2-2/3 mile apart flanking each interchange (1/4-1/3 mile each way), with about 1-1/3 miles between each pair of stations. Urbanists will shoot me here, because I'm not trying to redefine America. The assumption is that the road that interchanges with the freeway is typical 6-lane divided highway, and putting a pair of stations flanking it about 1/3 mile away in both directions actually puts them closer to the activity clusters where the buildings themselves are. The assumption is that people who live 5 miles away will just drive, but the people who live 40 miles away will take the train because it's more convenient.
3. Parking garage(s) above the freeway for the station, with direct access to and from the freeway. This is part of the reason why the freeway's exists are 2 miles apart... to give plenty of room for 2 or 3 lanes to break off, service the station, service the road, service the next station, then duck under the braided 2-3 lanes heading to the next exit and rejoin the freeway (giving them ~2 miles to finish merging before the next chunk of lanes breaks off).
Around the stations, the sky's the limit density-wise. Office towers, regional mall, apartments & condos, whatever. Personally, I'm kind of fond of the idea of a regional ~3 million+ sf mall adjacent to one of those exits whose anchor stores form the lower levels of the pedestal bases for residential towers. I'm also a big fan of stacked big-box stores with adjacent garage that puts odd levels directly adjacent to the store entrances, and even levels in between (for employees and Christmas overflow parking). OK fine, build a few new Urbanist neighborhoods around some of the stations too... just don't kid yourself into thinking people are going to actually do their real shopping at a quaint boutique in the faux-downtown. They'll drive (or take the train) 8 miles to the stacked Super Walmart + Sam's Club adjacent to one of the stations.
The point is, there doesn't HAVE to be an irreconcilable conflict between modern American retail and commercial development, freeways, and transit... as long as the train & freeway get built (or at least laid out and planned) at the same time, and the whole area is zoned to accommodate the new road and stations.
The problem is, most city planners will go into convulsions at the thought of building a huge freeway and transit line through virgin farmland with the explicit intent of transforming it into a string of urban-ish activity clusters equivalent to 2-3 square block downtowns (or a regional mall, or major sports facility, or whatever). So instead, they delude themselves into thinking that it's somehow better to just pretend the shiny new freeway isn't going to spur explosive new development, and instead run the transit line through ghetto neighborhoods that won't gentrify enough to support high-value high-density commercial development for 40 years (if ever). And transit agencies seem to have this idea that parking at stations should be expensive... they see nothing wrong with spending billions of dollars on a transit line, then alienating half the potential riders by charging to park at a garage whose construction cost was barely background noise compared to the cost of the station it's serving. It's like they just *have* to get their pound of flesh.
Excellent. An inefficient way of supplying electricity to vehicles. It's just as well that there's no problem with generating any amount of electricity so that we can afford to waste it... Oh, hang on...
lol. *giggle like a school girl* they are never going to do that. NEVER they totally suck at planning at least in my state. They have know about the issue witht he traffic and freeway and have only made it WORSE. They are completely inept and ignorant of planning or modeling. It is all cronies and white hairs who have all the power. They only exist to get richer and protect each other the people be damn.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Awesome. While you are building Japan's transportation and mini-downtown system complete with pedestal malls supporting office towers, don't forget to build high-priced designer residential housing in those towers (if possible an adjacent tower or private elevator) and the bullet train network that goes with it! I can't see any good reason not to draw people away from the coasts if there are going to be more super storms and flooding anyway...
http://www.proterra.com/ makes a wireless charging electric bus that is in use in the Greenville SC area. Obama was down here not long ago celebrating its rollout in the upstate, and my little town was one of many that received federal grant money to help buy and deploy these systems.
So, I don't know why the article poster though this technology "mignt not make it to the US." Perhaps just a lack of journalistic research... who knows?
The fact is that induction is inefficient and expensive. Instead, put a charge bar on top of the bus similar to what you see on LRT. Far more efficient and easy to install.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This seems like a perfect use for Ultra-capacitors. While they do not have anywhere neat the energy density of modern batteries they do have several other advantages. They can be charged quickly, put high rate recharge stations under a majority of bus stations and they could top off their capacitors in the time it takes for one passenger to get on. They last VERY long with no maintenance and very little degradation of performance, some are rated to over a million charge/discharge cycles. They can operate in extreme temperatures, some from -40c to +65c. They are made out of far less toxic materials. While a bus running on ultra-capacitors would not be able to go very far, buses in urban environments don't usually go very far between stops. Combined with regenerative braking, which ultra-capacitors are very well suited for, they would likely have more than enough range for most urban bus transit.
You made the classic mistake of treating public transport as an all-or-nothing proposition. Public transport is designed to help large numbers of people who make similar journeys, and even in decentralized cities there will still be plenty of opportunities to do that. Maybe it will mean people drive to the outskirts of the city centre and then get a subway or bus, maybe it will mean they have to walk a block or two at either end. It is still more efficient and faster for them if done right.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Can't we just shut down the inner lanes of all interstates and lay rail already? How long does it take government to catch on that the public would like this if they do it. "If you build it they will come!"
They exist everywhere, but they may screw up your phones compass, and maybe the GPS. it depends on a number of factors. If the buses use this technology then i hope they compensate for these potential issues.
BTW, I'd welcome seeing more buses here in the US. I take the bus to college every day, if only we could break the car away as a status symbol. Even if we keep it I'd rater use electric cars, as they are better suited for day to day purposes. (I don't understand why we need to have a gasoline car, to drive ten miles to work every day? Why not have an electric car, and hybrids make no sense at all.)
Dude. Punctuation - it's your friend. As are grammar and spelling. I still don't know what you mean by the last half of your giant sentence.
FTFY
The bus route that will be tested is one off the Island of Montreal, on a small island that is essentially a parc with the formula 1 race circuit on it. It doesn't get heavy traffic, and that location can probably tolerate some ripping of the pavement to install these rechargeable components.
So understand that this is not on a busy bus route.
Secondly, my guess for the non-mentionned Bus manufacturer would be Nova Bus, which builds city of Montreal buses in the province of Quebec. There has been strong electrical powered transportation strategies pushed by all local governments due to low Hydro Electricity costs and environmental push. My bet is on Nova Bus.
Just because you can't use the transit system in the Chicago area, doesn't mean it sucks. It's actually quite good, at least compared to most cities in the US. I live in a collar county, and I use the mass transit system just fine; because I work downtown, it saves me at least 1/2 hour each way and $28 parking a day, and I can sleep or work on the train, rather than paying attention to driving. Public transportation around here is city-centric because it was built that way over the years to serve the workers and businesses who could use it. A lot of it was built when towns like Naperville and Richton were not considered suburbs, but independent towns where people worked and lived. At that time, very few people commuted beyond the city and adjacent suburbs. Because they serve a purpose in keeping the economy moving, the government long ago took over the systems from the private companies who first built them but were closing them due to unprofitability . There hasn't been much expansion of them since, because of costs and political fallout. Yes, the light rail has been extended to the O'Hare and Midway airports, and the North Central service has been added to run on CN freight line tracks, but all of the proposed routes not going downtown have gone unbuilt. Meanwhile several high capacity expressways and highways hvae been built for cars both through and around downtown and the collar counties.
> If they could only get my phone to charge wirelessly.
There is a very significant health impact associated with electromagnetic induction that is strong enough to transmit useful amounts of energy. Some countires banned induction-charged electric toothbrushes already.
Doesn't say how long it takes to charge the bus. Originally I was thinking it was just on the platforms at the stations but it sounds like they plan on putting it at several/all stops on the route. A bus only stops for ~20s at a stop not sure how much charge could be transferred in that time especially if part of the time is spent detecting that the bus is there, getting it lined up properly etc. But if a lot of the stops are charge stations too I suppose you only need to charge enough to get to the next charge station (or at least enough so that your starting full charge lasts the whole day). Interesting anyways go Quebecois maple syrup and trains :)
Correction: Wirelessly Charged Buses Being Tested Next Year, Health Effects To Be Tested In 20 Years In A "Trial By Experimentation".
It was done, half a century ago. Energy was saved in kinetic form - by using flywheel. Overhead direct contacts which can be used even today, if some form of near wireless communication (Xbee, Bluetooth) is used to turn electricity on and off. History repeats itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus
why did you buy a house an hour's walk from the nearest stop?
Because someone may have inherited the house instead of having bought it. Or because there is so much more demand for houses near bus routes that their price has shot up. Or because not everybody lives alone, and the SO works on the opposite side of town.
Have you ever tried to use a laptop on a fucking bus? It's about as easy as doing it in a car
I use my 10" laptop on a bus. I use my 10" laptop in a car. I have had no problems with it. The only problem is that they don't make 10" laptops anymore because the rest of the market failed to appreciate their versatility advantage over tablets that run smartphone operating systems with their all-maximized-all-the-time window management policies.
Add in the probability that someone will try and steal it
It's a bit hard to steal it when it's stuffed in a messenger bag with the strap across my chest and back. One advantage of the 10" laptops was that they would easily fit in such a bag.
One can't necessarily choose where one works. If the jobs in one's field are concentrated in cities with poor public transportation and cost-prohibitive housing near the office, it's either drive or retrain to a different field.
Being crushed by a vehicle tends to be hazardous to health.
And you've explained half of why much of the United States prefers SUVs over compact cars. (The other half is CAFE forcing automakers to phase out station wagons, but that's another topic.)
I do take the bus to and from work but often not elsewhere. In some cases, it takes as long to walk from home to the nearest bus stop and from the nearest bus stop to the destination as it takes to just drive to work. In other cases, buses don't run at all at night, on Sundays, or on the six major holidays. There are even parts of Fort Wayne that Citilink doesn't serve at all on Saturdays.
People now choose where to live based on many factors other than where they work (neighborhood, price, schools, amenities like parks or natural environments)
Or two-income households, with one adult working on one side of town and the other on the other. Or the business relocating to a different location.
Even if you're paying $100 for a public transport monthly pass, it would take around 15 years to make up for purchasing a vehicle
And how much for a taxi to get somewhere at night or on Sunday, when no buses run at all in my home town? And how would you haul a week's worth of groceries for the family?
If it's so close why not just ride a bike?
Today's forecast for Fort Wayne, Indiana: High temperature 26 (-3 Celsius), winds from the south that could gust over 40 mph (60 km/h).
Grammar Nazis, UNITE! Form: MEGRAMMARTRON!
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Land.
Cars.
You can point to the vast road network and I can point to the vast number of vehicles in the US. Most urban public transit schemes (taxis and airlines being the biggest exception) have nearly pure public funding for them.
If by private you mean publicly funded infrastructure such as roads, bridges, highways, traffic systems and policing then you are correct. The only thing private are the cars.
And cars are a huge component to "only" about. Consider this report. It claims just under $0.05 per mile of road travel in costs on the road, including maintenance and interest payments on road-related debt. In contrast, one has to pay quite a bit for the car or other vehicle, gas, maintenance, and insurance. I figure a bit less than ten times as much (based on reimbursement rates which probably overstate the average cost by a set fraction).