Would trolleybuses ever work in the UK?

[SouthEastBuses]

Across Mainland Europe, I've seen and been on many trolleybuses that they have there.

I also know Leeds was planning to build a trolleybus network, the so called NGT, but the scheme got cancelled in 2016.

So I was wondering, seeing that the UK currently has none of such networks - would trolleybuses be a good or bad idea for the UK?

 

[Titfield]

I rather think that developments in battery and wireless (induction) charging have rendered trolleybuses obsolete.

 

[edwin_m]

I've suggested several times in these threads that the trolleybus tends to combine the worst features of the bus and the tram. It can't carry any more people than a motor bus, is subject to rough riding due to road surface and driver steering, also has tyre emissions and higher energy costs per passenger than a tram, but needs fixed infrastructure in the form of overhead wires that are more obtrusive than those for trams. There's a benefit over buses in performance and zero emission at point of use, but as suggested technology is well on the way to delivering the same without needing overhead wires. Probably the main reason to go for one today would be somewhere with steep hills that trams and battery buses can't cope with.

 

[bluenoxid]

Our current deregulated bus market pretty well knocks any chance of trolley buses happening on the head in my opinion. The investment is too substantial in both vehicles and infrastructure.

I agree that steep hills are probably the most likely implementation or a very busy route where charging on the move outweighs the resource/space cost having vehicles sat charging at a fixed point.

 

[SouthEastBuses]

I've suggested several times in these threads that the trolleybus tends to combine the worst features of the bus and the tram. It can't carry any more people than a motor bus, is subject to rough riding due to road surface and driver steering, also has tyre emissions and higher energy costs per passenger than a tram, but needs fixed infrastructure in the form of overhead wires that are more obtrusive than those for trams. There's a benefit over buses in performance and zero emission at point of use, but as suggested technology is well on the way to delivering the same without needing overhead wires. Probably the main reason to go for one today would be somewhere with steep hills that trams and battery buses can't cope with.

Some routes in Brighton would benefit from trolleybuses. The 21, 21A, 22 and 23 especially, considering that they use a steep hill (Elm Grove) where diesel buses really struggle to climb the hill

 

[37114]

I rather think that developments in battery and wireless (induction) charging have rendered trolleybuses obsolete.

I totally agree. If battery technology was still at the level of the 1980s then maybe trolley buses might have had a chance but not now.

 

[Robertj21a]

Some routes in Brighton would benefit from trolleybuses. The 21, 21A, 22 and 23 especially, considering that they use a steep hill (Elm Grove) where diesel buses really struggle to climb the hill

Probably why they used to have trolley buses up there 60 years ago.

 

[Boo_]

No as old tech we are more likely to get fast charging battery buses with wireless charging. and I could see motorways also getting kitted out for HGVs.
They may not even need plates to charge. As could be done by putting it all under and along the road so it will charge as you drive along the road.

 

[carlberry]

Across Mainland Europe, I've seen and been on many trolleybuses that they have there.

I also know Leeds was planning to build a trolleybus network, the so called NGT, but the scheme got cancelled in 2016.

So I was wondering, seeing that the UK currently has none of such networks - would trolleybuses be a good or bad idea for the UK?

Trollybuses were a good idea at the time they were popular so, yes they would work in the UK because they already have. However they died out because they were inflexible in the face of the major road schemes of the 1950s/1960s and, whilst they would have been a good (if expensive) solution over the last decades (for example when South Yorkshire tried them) they're now history. They need nearly as much infrastructure as trams, are as inflexible as trams but have less capacity. Some form of mobile fuel cell (either battery or hydrogen) will be the future for the UK and, once it's become mainstream, it'll start to replace trolleybuses in other places as well.

 

[Vespa]

In London they have BYD battery powered double decker bus running, I've not ridden them myself yet so can't comment on ride quality, but the development is very interesting.

London’s route 94 Goes Fully Electric with 29 BYD ADL Enviro400EV Double-Deckers - Technological Innovations for a Better Life | BYD USA

BYD Europe and Alexander Dennis Limited (ADL) jointly announced today that one of West London’s best-known bus services, route 94, is going fully electric with the delivery of 29 pure electric, 100% emissions-free BYD ADL Enviro400EV double decks. The vehicles go into service this week with...

en.byd.com

I rode on Boston bi mode trolleybus Deisel and electric, I thought was interesting, it was an underground tunnel when I got on to go to the airport once on the surface it switched to diesel, so any argument about limitation is out of the window, in Spain there is a trolleybus system that use batteries to go through the city centre where overhead wires is banned, to get from one set of overhead to the other, battery bridged that gap.

 

[SouthEastBuses]

In London they have BYD battery powered double decker bus running, I've not ridden them myself yet so can't comment on ride quality, but the development is very interesting.

I rode on Boston bi mode trolleybus Deisel and electric, I thought was interesting, it was an underground tunnel when I got on to go to the airport once on the surface it switched to diesel, so any argument about limitation is out of the window, in Spain there is a trolleybus system that use batteries to go through the city centre where overhead wires is banned, to get from one set of overhead to the other, battery bridged that gap.

Rome routes 60 Express and 90 Express too

 

[Boo_]

Look at Leeds and how for last 8 or so years there been nonstop battles.

Leeds' £250m trolley bus scheme rejected

Plans to build a £250m trolley bus network in Leeds is rejected by the government.

www.bbc.co.uk

Plans to build a £250m trolley bus network in Leeds have been rejected by the government.
The Department for Transport (DfT) accepted a report from a planning inspector who said the scheme was "not in the public interest".
Councillor Judith Blake said the city had been "let down" by the decision.
The DfT said its £173m contribution towards the project would be used on other public transport schemes in the city.

 

[randyrippley]

Can trams and trolleybuses realistically share infrastructure?
I was thinking somewhere like Blackpool - run buses along the tram line, charging batteries under the wires, then running under battery power into the town centre and eastwards, or southwards to Lytham

 

[edwin_m]

Can trams and trolleybuses realistically share infrastructure?
I was thinking somewhere like Blackpool - run buses along the tram line, charging batteries under the wires, then running under battery power into the town centre and eastwards, or southwards to Lytham

They built a kerb guided busway along a tramway in Essen, Germany, but the trams are metre gauge and I think a standard gauge 2.65 width (as Blackpool now is) tram might foul the guideway. A road-railer bus has been tried before, but could be difficult for a modern low-floor vehicle. There have been many accidents from over-hasty transfers of such vehicles between road and rail mode in an engineering context, so the demands of doing this every few minutes in a time-critical passenger service could raise safety concerns.

 

[FOH]

One modern recent example is the massively successful line 71 in Shanghai. I use it regularly and it's always packed.
It works because it has dedicated lanes so you can be sure of travel times. The reason that can be done is YaNan Road is 3-4 lanes wide at most point. That however renders it a model unlikely to work in the UK.

 

[Welly]

My Dad remembers the trolleybuses running from Manchester to Stalybridge when he was a lad - they had no heating at all so everyone preferred the diesel buses in winter!

 

[dm1]

In terms of life cycle cost, trolleybuses (in particular in-motion charging (IMC) trolleybuses) are by far the cheapest option compared to diesel buses, and in most cases in urban areas compared to overnight or opportunity charging battery buses.

An IMC trolleybus has a small battery, with about 30km of range (it varies depending on specification) that is charged while operating under the wires and runs on battery otherwise. Generally only approximately 50% of the route needs overhead wires for this to work reliably.

The advantage is that the trolleybus does not need to spend long periods at termini charging (as with opportunity charging) or carry around a very heavy battery which reduces passenger capacity (as for overnight charging). They can be rostered in more or less the same way as a diesel bus.

On the electrical side there is much less strain on the grid, as more or less the same number of buses will be under the wires at any given moment, so the current draw from the grid is fairly constant. Opportunity charging requires either large battery/capacitor banks (inefficient) or strains the grid with very short, very sharp peaks. Overnight charging requires a very beefy power supply to the depots and even then the number of buses charging at any one time is generally limited, causing difficulties with rostering.

The trolleybuses themselves are cheaper than any other form of battery bus and fewer of them are needed (because they don't need to stop for charging).

Finally, as far as capacity goes - it is possible to reliably operate bi-articulated buses as IMC buses, but generally not with diesel or pure battery (power to weight ratio issues). These have almost the same capacity as a smaller tram (about 200 people, ignoring covid).


In short, trolleybuses are far from obselete - and have developed significantly since their withdrawal in the UK. I think especially within bigger cities their reintroduction would work wonders, even with relatively small up-front investments (electrify the main corridors where lots of routes intersect and you can electrify very large parts of the system). There's a reason why Berlin is planning to reintroduce trolleybuses from scratch, and Prague has already done so.

The other types have a role to play, but not in urban centres, but rather on smaller, less frequent routes where vehicles travel less far each day or have lots of dwell time at the termini built in.

 

[radamfi]

Our current deregulated bus market pretty well knocks any chance of trolley buses happening on the head in my opinion. The investment is too substantial in both vehicles and infrastructure.

They would operate outside of the deregulated system, like trams. That's one of the reasons why Leeds was interested in a trolleybus system.

 

[dm1]

Can trams and trolleybuses realistically share infrastructure?
I was thinking somewhere like Blackpool - run buses along the tram line, charging batteries under the wires, then running under battery power into the town centre and eastwards, or southwards to Lytham

Yes, they can. It's easiest on street running sections (or at least sections, where the track surface is flat and surfaced). What is generally done (and this is done all over the place) is that the wires for the trolleybus are offset to one side. Electrically the positive wires are connected and the negative/ ground wire of the trolleybus wire is electrically connected to the running rails, so the entire power supply structure is shared, but the wires are different. (but the wires are generally the cheap bit)

The reason you can't have the positive trolley pole connected to the tram OLE is not continuous (same as for train OLE, wire runs have a fixed length), whereas trolley wires generally have block joints.

 

[edwin_m]

In terms of life cycle cost, trolleybuses (in particular in-motion charging (IMC) trolleybuses) are by far the cheapest option compared to diesel buses, and in most cases in urban areas compared to overnight or opportunity charging battery buses.
...
Finally, as far as capacity goes - it is possible to reliably operate bi-articulated buses as IMC buses, but generally not with diesel or pure battery (power to weight ratio issues). These have almost the same capacity as a smaller tram (about 200 people, ignoring covid).

I'd be interested to see any practical applications that demonstrate these statements, and also comparisons of energy use by a trolleybus and by a tram of the same size. It was reported that the GLT/TVR that ran for a while in France used about 50% more energy than a tram equivalent, presumably because of the inefficiencies of rubber tyres.

 

[GaryMcEwan]

Glasgow had them in the 60s to replace the trams and they were known locally as the 'silent killer'.

In places like Glasgow, I don't think they would work if used in conjunction with normal buses.

 

[carlberry]

Our current deregulated bus market pretty well knocks any chance of trolley buses happening on the head in my opinion. The investment is too substantial in both vehicles and infrastructure.

The same could have been said of low floor buses, electric buses, gas buses etc. If the idea is good enough then legislation, or a subsidy to cover the extra costs, will make it happen.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Inflexibility is cited as a disadvantage, and indeed for the operator it is. But for the passenger it's a great advantage, because if you whack in a load of expensive infrastructure you're far less likely to see the route curtailed or moved away from your house than otherwise. Thus you could reasonably make a house purchase decision based on the presence of a trolleybus route but not a diesel bus route, unless it's an obvious major corridor.

 

[David Verity]

Glasgow had them in the 60s to replace the trams and they were known locally as the 'silent killer'.

In places like Glasgow, I don't think they would work if used in conjunction with normal buses.

There was never a business case made for trolleybuses in Glasgow - the Council was fighting to keep control of its power station and to keep Scottish miners in employment

 

[gsnedders]

I'd be interested to see any practical applications that demonstrate these statements, and also comparisons of energy use by a trolleybus and by a tram of the same size. It was reported that the GLT/TVR that ran for a while in France used about 50% more energy than a tram equivalent, presumably because of the inefficiencies of rubber tyres.

I believe those statements are true versus any other sort of bus; trams are inherently more efficient, but trolleybuses do significantly win out versus battery buses (and they save a lot of weight versus carrying a large battery, with inevitable savings on rolling resistance and resultant reduced tyre and brake pollution) in pretty much every way. That it's nowadays feasible to have a trolleybus with a decent battery mitigates many of the historic downsides of them, as it allows some degree of flexibility that historically wasn't there.

 

[Busaholic]

In terms of life cycle cost, trolleybuses (in particular in-motion charging (IMC) trolleybuses) are by far the cheapest option compared to diesel buses, and in most cases in urban areas compared to overnight or opportunity charging battery buses.

An IMC trolleybus has a small battery, with about 30km of range (it varies depending on specification) that is charged while operating under the wires and runs on battery otherwise. Generally only approximately 50% of the route needs overhead wires for this to work reliably.

The advantage is that the trolleybus does not need to spend long periods at termini charging (as with opportunity charging) or carry around a very heavy battery which reduces passenger capacity (as for overnight charging). They can be rostered in more or less the same way as a diesel bus.

On the electrical side there is much less strain on the grid, as more or less the same number of buses will be under the wires at any given moment, so the current draw from the grid is fairly constant. Opportunity charging requires either large battery/capacitor banks (inefficient) or strains the grid with very short, very sharp peaks. Overnight charging requires a very beefy power supply to the depots and even then the number of buses charging at any one time is generally limited, causing difficulties with rostering.

The trolleybuses themselves are cheaper than any other form of battery bus and fewer of them are needed (because they don't need to stop for charging).

Finally, as far as capacity goes - it is possible to reliably operate bi-articulated buses as IMC buses, but generally not with diesel or pure battery (power to weight ratio issues). These have almost the same capacity as a smaller tram (about 200 people, ignoring covid).


In short, trolleybuses are far from obselete - and have developed significantly since their withdrawal in the UK. I think especially within bigger cities their reintroduction would work wonders, even with relatively small up-front investments (electrify the main corridors where lots of routes intersect and you can electrify very large parts of the system). There's a reason why Berlin is planning to reintroduce trolleybuses from scratch, and Prague has already done so.

The other types have a role to play, but not in urban centres, but rather on smaller, less frequent routes where vehicles travel less far each day or have lots of dwell time at the termini built in.

Bravo, sir (or madam, as I don't know your profile, sorry). It takes courage to even advocate the continued use of trolleybuses in places that still have them, let alone propose they be introduced (or, quite often, reintroduced) in more towns and cities, but there are quite a few instances where this has either happened, is about to happen, or is being seriously considered. Contrary to anything you may have read in this thread already, the cost of starting a new trolleybus route from scratch as opposed to tram or light rail is much lower in most of the world (assuming that the mode doesn't already exist, in both cases) not only on account of the infrastructure involved but because the wholesale digging-up of roads and relocating utilities is unnecessary, thus disruption to the local populace and businesses is much less and doesn't last so long. I will attempt to do some background reading to where these developments are happening, and why, and report back within a day or three.

 

[edwin_m]

I believe those statements are true versus any other sort of bus; trams are inherently more efficient, but trolleybuses do significantly win out versus battery buses (and they save a lot of weight versus carrying a large battery, with inevitable savings on rolling resistance and resultant reduced tyre and brake pollution) in pretty much every way. That it's nowadays feasible to have a trolleybus with a decent battery mitigates many of the historic downsides of them, as it allows some degree of flexibility that historically wasn't there.

I agree a trolleybus will be inherently more efficient than a battery or diesel bus. My concern is the size of the niche between self-powered buses that don't require any infrastructure and are therefore most cost-effective at the low end (and probably getting more so at increasing passenger numbers as technology advances), and trams that are both most energy-efficient and most cost-effective at the high end of passenger flows. This niche may be small and could even be of a negative size!

The relative lack of new trolleybus operations in recent decades, compared with a minor boom in trams, suggests that the trolleybus isn't competitive even in countries where the deregulation issue doesn't muddy the waters. And for most of that period the battery or fuel cell bus wasn't a viable technology, but it is becoming so now.

Bravo, sir (or madam, as I don't know your profile, sorry). It takes courage to even advocate the continued use of trolleybuses in places that still have them, let alone propose they be introduced (or, quite often, reintroduced) in more towns and cities, but there are quite a few instances where this has either happened, is about to happen, or is being seriously considered. Contrary to anything you may have read in this thread already, the cost of starting a new trolleybus route from scratch as opposed to tram or light rail is much lower in most of the world (assuming that the mode doesn't already exist, in both cases) not only on account of the infrastructure involved but because the wholesale digging-up of roads and relocating utilities is unnecessary, thus disruption to the local populace and businesses is much less and doesn't last so long. I will attempt to do some background reading to where these developments are happening, and why, and report back within a day or three.

Edit: Looking forward to the results of this research, which would contradict the views I just set down above.

 

[AB93]

Inflexibility is cited as a disadvantage, and indeed for the operator it is. But for the passenger it's a great advantage, because if you whack in a load of expensive infrastructure you're far less likely to see the route curtailed or moved away from your house than otherwise. Thus you could reasonably make a house purchase decision based on the presence of a trolleybus route but not a diesel bus route, unless it's an obvious major corridor.

But the chances of trolley infrastructure being put in anywhere other than an obvious major corridor must be next to nil?
Certainly the Leeds plans were for the two busiest bus corridors in the city.

And with the bi-mode examples of modern trolleybuses being mentioned above, where away from the core section they can run off the wires, you're left in the same situation.

 

[jumble]

Yes, they can. It's easiest on street running sections (or at least sections, where the track surface is flat and surfaced). What is generally done (and this is done all over the place) is that the wires for the trolleybus are offset to one side. Electrically the positive wires are connected and the negative/ ground wire of the trolleybus wire is electrically connected to the running rails, so the entire power supply structure is shared, but the wires are different. (but the wires are generally the cheap bit)

The reason you can't have the positive trolley pole connected to the tram OLE is not continuous (same as for train OLE, wire runs have a fixed length), whereas trolley wires generally have block joints.

Perhaps qualify this to say that if the trams have pantographs as this can be done if the catenary is designed for trolley poles

 

[radamfi]

Some countries are buying large numbers of battery buses. Is that wise?