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Trolley going over the hill
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Published: October 7, 2009
The imminent demise of overhead wire, externally-powered trolley line construction has been the subject of so many of my columns that a decent respect to the opinions of the readers requires that I declare some technology-related reasons for their predicted obit.
The trolley is on the way out but the streetcar is on the way in -- particularly the hydrogen-powered hybrid streetcar or "hydrolley."
The two big reasons for freezing construction of new trolleys are spiraling construction costs ($6 million/mile) and growing public opposition to stringing trolley wires through otherwise pristine scenic cityscapes.
Replacing existing trolleys just to remove visual pollution is a very low priority. They represent huge embedded costs, very little of which could be recouped if the overhead wire (or "catenary") were taken down and the cars replaced. And where trolleys already exist, the overhead wire is familiar and easy to ignore -- until someone calls attention to it.
During the 1996 Olympics we lived in the host city, Atlanta, and guests from Switzerland stayed with us to see the games. The Swiss were amazed, amused and pretty much aghast to see power poles, aerial telephone cables and CATV plant strung throughout Buckhead, an affluent neighborhood.
We had tuned these eyesores out until the Swiss lit them up for us. After they left we never saw our old neighborhood in the same way again.
Like aerial utility wires, once a trolley wire is up, engineering economics dictates that you'll live with it a very long time.
But in a back-handed way, America's 20th century love affair with petroleum and tires positioned us to leapfrog past Europe. Compared with Europe and Asia, the U.S. has very little existing overhead trolley plant. As recently as 1980 -- per trolley expert Jim Graebner -- there were only seven streetcar systems in the U.S. By 2005, the number had grown to twenty-eight and over fifty additional lines were planned.
That was before the 2008 petroleum price spike and the new Obama Administration's declaration of war on urban sprawl. By now I'd guess that planned U.S. streetcar systems must number well into the sixties.
Here's how America's slow?start advantage works: In Europe and Asia, the existing investment in external overhead power (and trains that use it) is so great that their logical option for getting rid of the overhead is to retrofit existing trains to run wireless between passenger stops, where they are zapped with just enough juice to make it to the next charging stop.
Building these new charging stops, plus modifying legacy train cars to store power onboard, will cost as much or more than the original overhead plant and rolling stock.
And for all that huge outlay, offshore transit operators will get only the cosmetic relief of removing the overhead wire. When updated, their systems will still be a generation behind the state of the art -- onboard hydrogen fuel cell traction.
The U.S. will be able to skip this pricey stop-to-stop technology and go directly to hybrid fuel-cell-and-battery traction. U.S. hydrolleys will essentially be hydrogen hybrid buses on steel wheels, using about 1/7 the energy that rubber-tired vehicles require.
Like light rail, the fixed streetcar route will stimulate dense residential, office and leisure development along the track. Property taxes on this valuable new construction will fund much of the cost of new U.S. lines.
Those parts of Eastern Europe that were too poor to afford electric trams during the Soviet era now stand to reap the U.S.'s benefit: no need to retrofit -- like the U.S., they can jump directly to hydrolley tech. Where smelly diesel railcars are now commonplace, Eastern Europe can make the jump to pristine hydrogen trams for only the cost of the new Green rolling stock.
If the U.S. moves quickly enough, we can supply the old East Block with American hydrolley exports -- spreading our cost of R&D and tooling-up over both home and foreign markets, offsetting much of the cost of transition to the brave new world of high-density urbanism.
There is a good chance that the opening act of this global transition will play out right here in North Carolina. Several Federal transportation agencies involved in planning technology transition have encouraged NC to pioneer hydrolley technology on the proposed Charlotte Streetcar.
In 2007, the Research and Innovative Technology Administration ("RITA") was interviewed on Mike Collins' Charlotte Talks public radio show (WFAE) right after the first-ever hydrolley planning session was held at Catawba College's Center For The Environment. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Transportation's Volpe Center sent the keynote presenter to the Mooresville/Appalachian State University Hydrail Conference in Valencia, Spain.
This summer the Director of the Office of Mobility Innovation in the Research, Demonstration and Innovation Administration keynoted the University's International Hydrail Conference in Charlotte, co-organized by Mooresville.
Transit change is in the air. Cost and visual pollution are pushing the old trolley car over the hill while economics and environmental necessity are making the new hydrolley a "Streetcar Named Desirable."
Mooresville's Stan Thompson is a retired strategic planner and environmental futurist for BellSouth Telecommunications. His column appears every other week in the Tribune. Email him at: HST2nd@aol.com
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