Rail is a very big upfront investment, but it lasts for longer, all but eliminates the need to actively handle fuel, (you still need a few diesel locos to deal with maintenance) and have an effectively unlimited fuel range.
Buss Rapid Transit (thanks for making me google that btw) is not a bad idea, but since that is basically a trackless tram with way worse capacity and higher pollution, I don’t really see the point other than a temporary lines to determine viabillity of a new tram line.
I know you are about to dig into me regarding the pollution and the range of busses.
So, let me break down my argument.
Pollution, a bus has a much shorter service life than trains and trams, they also have a much lower capacity, this means that you not only need more busses at the start, you also need to replace them much more frequently. This includes hybrids, battery busses, trolly busses and any other kind of bus. So that is using way more resources over time, and causes way more waste over time.
Out of the busses I mentioned above, I want to put special focus on battery busses.
THEY BE HEAVY, MAN!
Battery busses are idiotic, the batteries weigh a shitloaf and it has already caused issues with both roads and busses, where the new busses our local transit authority bought have been banned from driving the route they were supposed be used on due to road and bridge dammage from their weight.
Heavy vehicles cause vastly more dammage to roads and infrastructure than lighter busses.
They also have limited range and need to be recharged at a stop, this also reduces their usefullness, as they are locked in to charge.
“But what about fast charging?”
Sure, that exists and is working, while significantly increasing the wear on the batteries, thus reducing the life time further.
This means that reprocessing will either be expensive (reprocessing domestically with oversight) or cheap and unethical (outsourcing to countries with less oversight where labour is cheap and and safety standards are not always followed).
Hybrid busses makes more sense since they have a smaller battery to assist the normal engine, this means that the batteries does not run the entire bus constantly, but they vastly bring down fuel emmisions, and are way less heavy, the batteries lasts longer causing less waste.
Trolly busses is the best bus, light, unlimited range, causes less waste and is over all a fantastic way to implement busses.
What remains is the capacity problem, trains and even trams are way, way more space for passengers, so you need fewer vehicles and last way longer so you don’t need to replace them as often, which is even better.
Hey, excuse me for the late answer, I was a bit busy, and wanted to have more time to read your comment.
Rail has some downsides with respect to maintenance: very few companies manufacter them, so maintenance costs are far higher. The required use of specialized tracks Aldo make these operations more complex, while a BRT can use normal roads if needed.
For me, underground metro systems are the better solution, then BRT then light rail, but this depends a lot on the realities of the cities: geography, budget, political will, etc.
I’m currently reading The BRT planning guide, and have been enjoying it. I think you’ll do as well, as it discusses some nuances of public transport systems in specialized tracks (BRT, light rails and heavy rails) with real life examples, in a very friendly way for non-experts. I used to think metro is the obvious solution, but the book has been really opening my mind of a more complex reality. It has a slight bias in favor of BRTs tho, but the discussion is very interesting anyway.
I’m not the original commentator. Rail has very low maintenance. The electric motors are robust AF and last a long, long time. Steel wheels on steel track have very little wear. Rail is common so maintenance is not exactly specialized. There are plenty of companies that make rail cars when eventual replacement (again a long time) is needed. I have no idea where that very few companies idea comes from.
Buses on the other hand use standard ICE engines which have a lot of maintenance. Engine, transmission, or entire bus replacement is much more frequent. Rubber tire on asphalt, both of those items wear. They can use roads, but if it’s a brt there are dedicated lanes so it takes up pretty much as much room as a train.
Finally you have drivers. A train can be very long with one operator, much lower cost.
I have no idea where the very few companies idea comes from.
Taken from the book I cited in the last comment: A rail system, by contrast, tends to be locked into a permanent dependence on one or two suppliers of rolling stock. While buses tend to use truck engines where the spare parts have over time come to be produced by alternative low cost producers on a massive scale, the manufacturers of rail technology tend to remain monopoly suppliers of their spare parts, as the market for them is far more limited. These monopolistic conditions tend to drive up the operating cost of rail rolling stock. There are only a few major rail manufacturers in the world today (i.e., Alstom, Bombardier, Hitachi, Kawasaki, and Siemens). The scale required to set up local rail manufacturing is unlikely to be achieved in most lower income nations. Instead, manufacturing (and the associated employment) will be based in higher income countries, such as France, Canada, Japan, or Germany. When a city such as Bangkok purchases its rail metro vehicles, the carriages arrive almost fully fabricated (Figure 2.1). This tends to make the vehicles far more expensive.
And it makes sense, as cars are more common than trains. That also seems to increase driver’s salary, as it is easier by volume to find/train a driver for a bus than one for a LRT, given same capacity, and a LRT and BRTs have comparable capacities per vehicle.
These 2 mini-chapters talk further about costs of BRT, LRT and HRT, with several references and data based on real-world operations: Capital Costs and Operating costs
Well I laid out the fundamentals of why it’s wrong. Very very very wrong. No you’re not locked into one or two suppliers, there must close to a dozen that I’ve seen. It’s a competitive field.
Engines again, ICE engines wear out fast relatively speaking. That’s the nature of them. Even diesels. Electric engines are robust as fuck. There aren’t a lot of wear parts. I forgot to mention that the cost of diesel is way more than the cost of electricity, not even accounting for the cost of carbon.
There is the point that there is little local manufacturing for whatever country is buying them, but that does not mean by default that prices are high. That just means no local manufacturing for the local economy.
And it makes sense, as cars are more common than trains. That also seems to increase driver’s salary, as it is easier by volume to find/train a driver for a bus than one for a LRT, given same capacity, and a LRT and BRTs have comparable capacities per vehicle.
Oh jeez.
You have to train bus drivers just like you have to train train drivers. In either case they are in the same or similar unions so will be paid similarly.
A LRT can have over a thousand passengers per train (that’s multiple cars coupled together just to be clear). You aren’t getting that in a freaking bus. Like wow. The ONLY way you can say they are comparable is if you take a ridiculously short train and an extended bus, and even that the train will have more. AND that’s the whole point, you can couple train cars together. You can’t do that with buses. This just shows you either aren’t discussing in good faith or you have incredibly bad information. I’ll give you one out that the current trend is shorter and more frequent trains (and current trend of low floor lowers capacity), which I think is a mistake that we will regret in 20 to 30 years because like it or not we need to design for rush hour.
And with that I am out. Just wow.
This comes down to high initial cost just because that’s how it works and then lower operating cost.
Rail is a very big upfront investment, but it lasts for longer, all but eliminates the need to actively handle fuel, (you still need a few diesel locos to deal with maintenance) and have an effectively unlimited fuel range.
Buss Rapid Transit (thanks for making me google that btw) is not a bad idea, but since that is basically a trackless tram with way worse capacity and higher pollution, I don’t really see the point other than a temporary lines to determine viabillity of a new tram line.
I know you are about to dig into me regarding the pollution and the range of busses.
So, let me break down my argument.
Pollution, a bus has a much shorter service life than trains and trams, they also have a much lower capacity, this means that you not only need more busses at the start, you also need to replace them much more frequently. This includes hybrids, battery busses, trolly busses and any other kind of bus. So that is using way more resources over time, and causes way more waste over time.
Out of the busses I mentioned above, I want to put special focus on battery busses.
THEY BE HEAVY, MAN!
Battery busses are idiotic, the batteries weigh a shitloaf and it has already caused issues with both roads and busses, where the new busses our local transit authority bought have been banned from driving the route they were supposed be used on due to road and bridge dammage from their weight.
Heavy vehicles cause vastly more dammage to roads and infrastructure than lighter busses.
They also have limited range and need to be recharged at a stop, this also reduces their usefullness, as they are locked in to charge.
“But what about fast charging?”
Sure, that exists and is working, while significantly increasing the wear on the batteries, thus reducing the life time further.
That means we gotta built reproccessing facilities for old batteries to get rebuilt, which means disassembling big batteries with a huge energy potential, and work with toxic substances creating a lot of health risks: https://www.alsym.com/blog/lithium-based-batteries-are-toxic-from-start-to-finish/
This means that reprocessing will either be expensive (reprocessing domestically with oversight) or cheap and unethical (outsourcing to countries with less oversight where labour is cheap and and safety standards are not always followed).
Hybrid busses makes more sense since they have a smaller battery to assist the normal engine, this means that the batteries does not run the entire bus constantly, but they vastly bring down fuel emmisions, and are way less heavy, the batteries lasts longer causing less waste.
Trolly busses is the best bus, light, unlimited range, causes less waste and is over all a fantastic way to implement busses.
What remains is the capacity problem, trains and even trams are way, way more space for passengers, so you need fewer vehicles and last way longer so you don’t need to replace them as often, which is even better.
Hey, excuse me for the late answer, I was a bit busy, and wanted to have more time to read your comment.
Rail has some downsides with respect to maintenance: very few companies manufacter them, so maintenance costs are far higher. The required use of specialized tracks Aldo make these operations more complex, while a BRT can use normal roads if needed.
For me, underground metro systems are the better solution, then BRT then light rail, but this depends a lot on the realities of the cities: geography, budget, political will, etc.
I’m currently reading The BRT planning guide, and have been enjoying it. I think you’ll do as well, as it discusses some nuances of public transport systems in specialized tracks (BRT, light rails and heavy rails) with real life examples, in a very friendly way for non-experts. I used to think metro is the obvious solution, but the book has been really opening my mind of a more complex reality. It has a slight bias in favor of BRTs tho, but the discussion is very interesting anyway.
I’m not the original commentator. Rail has very low maintenance. The electric motors are robust AF and last a long, long time. Steel wheels on steel track have very little wear. Rail is common so maintenance is not exactly specialized. There are plenty of companies that make rail cars when eventual replacement (again a long time) is needed. I have no idea where that very few companies idea comes from.
Buses on the other hand use standard ICE engines which have a lot of maintenance. Engine, transmission, or entire bus replacement is much more frequent. Rubber tire on asphalt, both of those items wear. They can use roads, but if it’s a brt there are dedicated lanes so it takes up pretty much as much room as a train.
Finally you have drivers. A train can be very long with one operator, much lower cost.
Taken from the book I cited in the last comment: A rail system, by contrast, tends to be locked into a permanent dependence on one or two suppliers of rolling stock. While buses tend to use truck engines where the spare parts have over time come to be produced by alternative low cost producers on a massive scale, the manufacturers of rail technology tend to remain monopoly suppliers of their spare parts, as the market for them is far more limited. These monopolistic conditions tend to drive up the operating cost of rail rolling stock. There are only a few major rail manufacturers in the world today (i.e., Alstom, Bombardier, Hitachi, Kawasaki, and Siemens). The scale required to set up local rail manufacturing is unlikely to be achieved in most lower income nations. Instead, manufacturing (and the associated employment) will be based in higher income countries, such as France, Canada, Japan, or Germany. When a city such as Bangkok purchases its rail metro vehicles, the carriages arrive almost fully fabricated (Figure 2.1). This tends to make the vehicles far more expensive.
And it makes sense, as cars are more common than trains. That also seems to increase driver’s salary, as it is easier by volume to find/train a driver for a bus than one for a LRT, given same capacity, and a LRT and BRTs have comparable capacities per vehicle.
These 2 mini-chapters talk further about costs of BRT, LRT and HRT, with several references and data based on real-world operations: Capital Costs and Operating costs
Well I laid out the fundamentals of why it’s wrong. Very very very wrong. No you’re not locked into one or two suppliers, there must close to a dozen that I’ve seen. It’s a competitive field.
Engines again, ICE engines wear out fast relatively speaking. That’s the nature of them. Even diesels. Electric engines are robust as fuck. There aren’t a lot of wear parts. I forgot to mention that the cost of diesel is way more than the cost of electricity, not even accounting for the cost of carbon.
There is the point that there is little local manufacturing for whatever country is buying them, but that does not mean by default that prices are high. That just means no local manufacturing for the local economy.
Oh jeez.
You have to train bus drivers just like you have to train train drivers. In either case they are in the same or similar unions so will be paid similarly.
A LRT can have over a thousand passengers per train (that’s multiple cars coupled together just to be clear). You aren’t getting that in a freaking bus. Like wow. The ONLY way you can say they are comparable is if you take a ridiculously short train and an extended bus, and even that the train will have more. AND that’s the whole point, you can couple train cars together. You can’t do that with buses. This just shows you either aren’t discussing in good faith or you have incredibly bad information. I’ll give you one out that the current trend is shorter and more frequent trains (and current trend of low floor lowers capacity), which I think is a mistake that we will regret in 20 to 30 years because like it or not we need to design for rush hour.
And with that I am out. Just wow.
This comes down to high initial cost just because that’s how it works and then lower operating cost.