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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.
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.
For most places, it's because the service is so crappy. And in places like Chicago, they think the solution is to cut services and raise prices. The auto/oil industry also has a lot of say in policy.
“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.
That sounds kind of dumb. Why would a train need batteries for propulsion?
Because these days more and more ticket-buying passengers are refusing to help pump the handcar arm.
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.
That sounds kind of dumb. Why would a train need batteries for propulsion?
Because wires can be unsightly, third rails need to be maintained and secured over long distances, and there is always the occasional flooding or natural disaster that could disable an electrical line at the worst possible location when it's sharing a road with cars, or perhaps being loaded on a ferry. And of course, sometimes electrical trains are chosen over non-electrical trains because they make less noise and less smoke.
Plus the bus schedules never line up with work schedules. Might have to get up at 4AM to catch the 5AM bus in order to work at 7. And god forbid you miss the bus and the next one isn't until two hours later. Then if you have to work on a weekend shift or late hours... Bus? Nope!
There's only a few major metropolitan areas where buses are any good. (Usually about 15 min apart in those cases.) Head out to the burbs or anywhere else and buses tend to really suck. (They're pretty much neglected in the U.S. in a manner similar to bicycle and pedestrian friendly transportation infrastructure. In other words: If you live in the U.S. outside of a major large city and don't have a car, you're gonna have a bad time.)
There are almost no electrically powered freight trains in the US. Besides metro/light rail systems, the only electrified rail in the US is the Amtrak northeast corridor line.
Doesn't seem like the bus would get much charge for the short time it's parked. I can't see the benefit.
You really think the problems in Chicago's public sector institutions are the result of big oil, huh?
Hell no, Chicago politicians have too much integrity to accept bribes from Big Oil, and Big Oil's own integrity (and razor-thin margins) precludes them from offering them. :o)
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
I'm from Australia, have lived in Japan, and am now living in the US. I think the US is a great country to live in (especially if you're a software engineer) but one of the things that I find strange is that the downtown areas of cities are so desolate, particularly at night. In every other country I've been to, the "downtown" area is the beating heart of the city - it's the center of business, culture and nightlife. It's a desirable place to be and you have to pay more money to live in or near it.
But in the US, urban environments are for some reason associated with crime, homelessness, the smell of urine and human misery, and so most "normal" (middle-class) people avoid the area. People don't want to live there, let alone be in the area outside of business hours. I find it bizarre that inner city neighborhoods are considered to be bad areas - in Japan and Australia, inner city neighborhoods are the most expensive ones because they're so convenient to live in.
Since most of the normal people (i.e. people who wouldn't urinate in a train) have moved out into the suburbs, American cities are usually left with a decaying urban core and endlessly sprawling suburbs. Public transport requires a certain level of density before it is worthwhile, and most US cities don't meet that level of density. That's the reason why public transport doesn't work here. In the few cities where there is a good level of density (e.g. New York City) there is a good public transport system. But New York is not a typical American city...
Australian cities have sprawling suburbs too, but the urban cores are not full of homeless people and does not smell of urine! The dole bludgers are usually living somewhere in the outer suburbs where land is more affordable.
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.
Come to Vancouver some time.
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!
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.
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.
Only powering the field when the bus is on top.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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?
They also have a huge number of electric vehicles. You'd be amazed at how many people drive them. Why? Because they're incredibly cheap, and with vertical development totally suitable to get from A to B. I've driven one to the office a number of times. They're surprisingly powerful, far more than you might expect.
The capacitor technology may or may not be great (I'm not able to comment on that part), but they are experimenting with the infrastructure you'd need should that turn out to be effective. I can also quite happily say it works, at least from an end user point of view.
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?
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)
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