Arriva Low Emission Vehicles

[wirralbus]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles
London is a different bus operating environment , they seem to be light years ahead of the rest of the country.

[Barney]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles

(14/10/2015 05:30)wirralbus Wrote:  London is a different bus operating environment , they seem to be light years ahead of the rest of the country.

I don't really understand this comment. In what way is London a different operating environment? The reason why it is "light years ahead of the rest of the country" is because London receives huge amounts of funding for new initiatives from the government in comparison to the rest of the country.

[steve517757]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles
Whilst I accept what you are saying I dont see how it has any baring on how effective electric buses will be.

In addition to London, they at least operate in York, and are on order for Nottingham. So what is it about Merseyside that will make electric buses unreliable?

[Myllenium2453]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles
The length of the routes could be a factor as is lack of charging points ( ie none at all ) but also a lot of the routes have hills wherever you go and could also be a risk of drawing a lot of power just to get a vehicle up to the top whereas in London the route the all elecy vehicles work on could well be totally flat and thus not put the vehicle at risk of battery drain.

Add to that the weight of the vehicle with a full load of say 90 passengers + driver that means the system has got to move a vehicle of 12 ton + another 6 ton in passengers + driver and there is no way in my opinion that an all elecy vehicle in Merseyside could cope. If any of the companies want to take the task on and try and prove me wrong then bring it on but thats my view anyway.

The 6 ton figure for passenger weight is based on the ratio of every 15 passengers = 1 ton in weight added to the vehicle.

[Barney]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles
We need to acknowledge that electric vehicles are not a new concept as they have been in existence for a very long time. In the 1970s MPTE trialled an all-electric vehicle on the City Circle. The single-decker was commonly referred to as The Clockwork Orange because of its vivid livery.

It was not a success as the basic problem was the battery technology but things have moved on a great deal since then. Although oil prices are at an all-time low at the moment, bus manufacturers and operators around the world recognise that there is an imperative to find the holy grail of large electric vehicles for city centre operation.

[E400]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles
For Arriva and Merseytravel to even think about proposing these Electric vehicles there must be a strong case for their advantagous use on that particular route. I for one would welcome a fully-electric operation on the 26 and 27, hopefully it would pave the way for similar upgrades on other routes.

[Valandil]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles
In Coventry, Travel de Courcey's electric buses were a sad case.
The vehicles themselves were great, but the infrastructure unfortunately by its nature relied on them keeping that particular Park and Ride service, which they didn't (it went to Stagecoach instead).
At least with Arriva's proposed plans there isn't much danger of them stopping operating the 26/27 and I'm sure they will put the charge points in a place which multiple routes could use, were the vehicles ever used on other routes.

[R879 HRF]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles
In regards to electric buses and the advance in technology, don't forget the E1 SMARTeco in Birkenhead between 1998 and 2006 was a trial as part of the EUs JUPITER2 scheme, standing for Joint Urban Project In Transport Energy Reduction.

The scheme was rolled out in a number of cities across Europe, Florence in Italy was another city which ran the exact model Tecnobus as Birkenhead, only ran for much longer, and have only recently been replaced with newer model of Tecnobus. Its been more successful in Italy for a number of reasons - 1 Tecnobus are based there, it was difficult to get parts and support for them in this country. 2 There was more market for the types of routes - theyre used down the narrow old city streets which a full size bus cannot manage. Don't forget climate is a factor - First PMT had difficulties with batteries in the winter, they wernt as efficient in the cold temperatures so didn't last as long.

Originally it was intended to have a wireless charging point at Woodside Ferry so the buses could charge whilst laying over, but it never happened due to cost, and fear of vandalism. One of the failings of course with the E1 is that it was a free service. In Italy I believe you buy before you board, and the buses have a card/pass reader onboard. Merseytravel intended to start charging after the introductory period, but it never happened.

There is an online report concluding some of the findings of the SMARTeco scheme, including the E1, and it is an interesting read.

Click here for PDF report

It also includes an overview of SMARTeco CNG Dennis Darts in Southport (pages 21-24) and pages 25-29 for E1. A number of other UK trials are listed also. A very interesting read.
Now as has been mentioned with advances in technology an all electric service could probably work, especially as a number of manufacturers are working on such technology, and its not such a limited market.

[Myllenium2453]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles
That E1 was the worst pile of junk merseyside has ever had. The drivers hated the glorified milk floats they had to drive and more often than not a standard diesel powered minibus had to be put on in place of the elecy things because the batteries were absolutely goosed and couldn't hold a decent charge sufficient for an entire duty.

Any bus that is developed for all elecy operation will need to be sufficiently powered enough to be able to recharge the batteries while the vehicle is moving and be able to last a decent amount of timr on duty before having to go to the depot because if they cannot last in service the entire venture will be a huge waste of timr AND taxpayers money because nobody is going to pay for a service if the vehicles are not up to doing the duty as required.

[R879 HRF]

RE: Arriva Low Emission Vehicles

(16/10/2015 14:14)Myllenium2453 Wrote:  That E1 was the worst pile of junk merseyside has ever had. The drivers hated the glorified milk floats they had to drive and more often than not a standard diesel powered minibus had to be put on in place of the elecy things because the batteries were absolutely goosed and couldn't hold a decent charge sufficient for an entire duty.

Any bus that is developed for all elecy operation will need to be sufficiently powered enough to be able to recharge the batteries while the vehicle is moving and be able to last a decent amount of timr on duty before having to go to the depot because if they cannot last in service the entire venture will be a huge waste of timr AND taxpayers money because nobody is going to pay for a service if the vehicles are not up to doing the duty as required.

Don't forget the E1 was a technology trial, and was introduced to trial technology and learn lessons from it, so the E1 was a success in that respect. All that you mentioned is covered in the above report. The reliability did drop considerably after a few years because merseytravel stopped funding the onsite technician from tecnobus at rock ferry. As a result he went back to Italy and rock ferry fitters and electricians left to maintain these very complex buses which nobody received any training on. Not a wise idea!