Every single cyclist dreams of electric busses, believe you me.
Huffing nitrogen stationary-bus-fart oxides turns any public road here straight into an express lane to lung cancer, without even the courtesy of a nicotine rush.
I laugh when people say cycling is healthy. Not in London. Nooo sir. Between the long term certainty of whatever smokers like to aim for, and the short term gamble of “brain-on-asphalt syndrome”, it’s a bloody joke.
Electric busses can’t rule the streets soon enough.
Not according to this Cambridge study two years ago. They found the health benefits of cycling in London always outweighed the risks.
http://www.mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk/blog/walking-cycling-air-pollu...
It got quite a bit of media coverage, e.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/05/benefits...
Further, while 1% of cities may cross their air thresholds at their assumption levels those are the largest cities. So far more than 1% of the population would be worse off.
It's just the news glossed over the very real downsides mentioned in the study.
The NoX fumes are horrible for pedestrians too. Especially when the buses are stacked one after another, idling.
I seriously can’t believe the government refuses to act on the diesel disaster. Tens of thousands of people die from diesel exhaust complications per year, but they don’t care.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
Both things can be solved, but at the price hit of the EV tech I"m not sure the clients would be very willing to spend the money.
http://www.breathelondon.org/south-east/project/modes-transp...
Bringing in electric buses will not decrease these pollutants. They will also not remove enough of the other half of the pollutants. The change needs to be far wider and harsher.
It's true that there will be an increase in road / tyre dust due to the extra weight of batteries, but I'd be very surprised if this was as much as was saved elsewhere.
> and being of considerable utility, they are remarkably undamaged. It seems that sticking chewing gum in things only applies when the vandal feels they wont personally lose out
(assuming this is actually true, and not another in a long local tradition of overly rose-tinted journalistic views of our grim North Sea shithole)
Spend some time in other coutries and you'll yearn to return. Trust me.
I’ll miss chips and the NHS. I’ll miss my friends. I won’t miss the country — especially not in the current toxic political situation.
The UK has it's good points, but better quality of life can be found elsewhere.
USB charge points under the seats tend to be more broken - accidentally kicked.
Anyway, if you can read this, please flag my post, and give it a downvote while you're there, and perhaps dang will delete it. I hope so. It's too late for me to do it myself. Apologies.
UK is not a particularly attractive destination for either economic/humanitarian reasons compared to Germany/Italy etc.
* How do you arrange parked buses in a garage so that they can charge? Diagrams included!
* Purchase cost: 2x up front compared to diesel, but improving
* Operating cost: 50% lower than diesel (but labor—hiring the driver—is still 60%)
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/18/news/tobacco-giants-analy...
Your car maintenance you'll typically spend 4 hours for an annual service, at $50 per hour. Total: $200
A bus in a depot uses in house staff ($25 per hour), and since all the busses are identical and they're probably performing the same service on 5 at a time, probably only works out to an hour per bus. Total cost $25.
Thats so small compared to the salary of the driver who drives it around normally, maintenance cost might not be a significant part of the equation.
... Anyone here know why swappable batteries haven't taken off for fleets?
As an aside, riding them is very nice -- the noise level is very low.
The project: https://www.electricitygoteborg.se/en
Ashok Leyland of India are launching one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of3Au0fIMjQ
I've lost count of the amount of times that grubby, dusty brake pads have led to screeching that makes me feel like my ears are about to bleed, when buses have come to a standstill beside me. I once even wrote to TFL about the problem, weird little man that I am. Never received a response.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/china-is-adding-a-lon...
https://www.curbed.com/2018/5/4/17320838/china-bus-shenzhen-...
It's fantastic. In a quiet residential area they are nearly silent and when I cycle by them on the way work there's no fumes.
The strangest thing is when you ride them you hear every seat rattle and squeak because there's no roaring engine to drown it out.
