Fleetmaster
Member
Is anyone else seeing the potential benefits of a bi-articulated partially guided rubber tyred opportunity charged battery driven tram like vehicle operating on London streets?
Long ranging routes radiating out from central London, with a possibility of some outer rings.
Out in the boonies, it is essentially just a giant articulated bus. Fast and frequent. A people mover. It is low floor but requires a step from ordinary street level bus stops, with optional ramps at the wheelchair bays.
It can climb any hill a conventional bus can.
In the central core, it is fully guided, using only a narrow gapped cycle friendly central rail, which allows for tram style safe and level boarding at tram style stops and tight turns. This blends in and yet doesn't hog the space within the increasingly car free multi use areas of central London.
Elsewhere, short sections of guidance help it keep lane discipline and make tight turns where required. Obviously you design the route network to minimize this need, seeing it as more of a tram like supplement to the more widespread use of conventional buses, with the advantage that buses and BusTram can share stops and roads.
Optionally, guidance can also be used to make it more efficient to serve major hubs in the outer areas.
The guidance rail requires minimal infrastructure. London can invest in harder wearing concrete running lanes as and when the tarmac is worn away.
There are no overhead wires, although overhead gantry at terminal stops is the most likely way to opportunity charge. Very low cost, easily integrated into other bus or even car/van charging infrastructure.
The transfer between guidance and non-guidance and any pointwork as such would have to be simple and seamless and 99.9999% reliable. Surely not beyond the capabilities of the engineers.
The vehicles would be relatively simple in design and thus easier to maintain than the equivalent buses they take off the streets, which would hopefully make up for any anticipated higher energy or wear related running costs.
Battery running means they can be housed anywhere the buses can reach.
Where conveneint, BusTram only gates and segregated running are a possibility but hardly essential.
Future developments would be designed with BusTram in mind, up to and including rapid transit style flyovers and other cool stuff.
It would require very little from TfL, except perhaps a few more eagle eyed traffic wardens. Giving these vehicles full traffic priority would be uncontroversial I would have thought, given they wouldn't really need to run at a very high frequency before the gains over the conventional buses the replace become evident.
Long ranging routes radiating out from central London, with a possibility of some outer rings.
Out in the boonies, it is essentially just a giant articulated bus. Fast and frequent. A people mover. It is low floor but requires a step from ordinary street level bus stops, with optional ramps at the wheelchair bays.
It can climb any hill a conventional bus can.
In the central core, it is fully guided, using only a narrow gapped cycle friendly central rail, which allows for tram style safe and level boarding at tram style stops and tight turns. This blends in and yet doesn't hog the space within the increasingly car free multi use areas of central London.
Elsewhere, short sections of guidance help it keep lane discipline and make tight turns where required. Obviously you design the route network to minimize this need, seeing it as more of a tram like supplement to the more widespread use of conventional buses, with the advantage that buses and BusTram can share stops and roads.
Optionally, guidance can also be used to make it more efficient to serve major hubs in the outer areas.
The guidance rail requires minimal infrastructure. London can invest in harder wearing concrete running lanes as and when the tarmac is worn away.
There are no overhead wires, although overhead gantry at terminal stops is the most likely way to opportunity charge. Very low cost, easily integrated into other bus or even car/van charging infrastructure.
The transfer between guidance and non-guidance and any pointwork as such would have to be simple and seamless and 99.9999% reliable. Surely not beyond the capabilities of the engineers.
The vehicles would be relatively simple in design and thus easier to maintain than the equivalent buses they take off the streets, which would hopefully make up for any anticipated higher energy or wear related running costs.
Battery running means they can be housed anywhere the buses can reach.
Where conveneint, BusTram only gates and segregated running are a possibility but hardly essential.
Future developments would be designed with BusTram in mind, up to and including rapid transit style flyovers and other cool stuff.
It would require very little from TfL, except perhaps a few more eagle eyed traffic wardens. Giving these vehicles full traffic priority would be uncontroversial I would have thought, given they wouldn't really need to run at a very high frequency before the gains over the conventional buses the replace become evident.
