Hydrail conference could spark new jobs here

The Fifth International Hydrail Conference in Charlotte next month will focus on an issue that could draw 200 or more manufacturing jobs to Mooresville, building wireless urban streetcars with no need for overhead power.

Streetcars -- urban transit vehicles that run on rails embedded in city streets -- are making a big comeback in the US per APTA, the American Public Transportation Association. According to a 2006 study, some 80 municipalities -- including Charlotte -- now have or are planning streetcar lines. That's up from seven in 1980.

But almost all existing streetcars are "trolleys" -- powered externally from overhead wires that are urban visual clutter and extremely expensive to build and maintain.

That may be about to change.

Overseas at least four major transit system builders have recently introduced wireless streetcars: Alstom of France, Bombardier of Germany, Sunwin of Shanghai, China, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Japan. All are still externally powered, drawing and storing current from points along the line to propel the vehicles between stops.

But there is a dramatically different way to make streetcars wireless, hydrail experts say: Store power onboard as hydrogen gas and produce electricity as needed, using fuel cells. Eliminating overhead power can cut track construction costs by as much as $4 million per mile while freeing cityscapes from visual clutter, they argue.

Since May 2008, the Mooresville-South Iredell Economic Development Corporation, the Town of Mooresville, Iredell County and the N.C. Department of Commerce have been in discussions with Dale Hill of Proterra LLC in Golden, Colo., to build his East Coast transit vehicle production facility in Mooresville.

If Proterra comes here, a major product is likely to be the "hydrolley" or wireless, hydrogen powered streetcar.

Hill will be among the speakers at the June 11-12 hydrail conference at UNC-Charlotte, arguing why and how overhead streetcar wires should be eliminated, beginning with new line construction.

In November 2007, Hill came to Mooresville, met with Mayor Bill Thunberg and CATS and looked at potential plant sites. Then in May 2008, he wrote to the state, county and town, describing his proposed plant and opening discussions as to what might be required to bring it to Mooresville. Those discussions are still in progress, made more complex by the volatile national economy.

Hill chose Mooresville as his first site choice after reading about the town's interest in the hydrogen economy and hydrail vision for the North Corridor rail line from Charlotte. Employment could run from 200 at opening to perhaps 500 by 2015, Hill said.

In Colorado, Hill's companies designed and manufactured the hybrid-electric 116-passenger buses for the Denver Regional Transit District.

"The Proterra plant is just exactly the kind of industry AngelouEconomics pointed us toward back in 2006," said Mooresville's Thunberg. "If we attract Dale Hill, it will mark a beginning like the early days of Lowe's and racing."

The main subject of the UNCC Hydrail Conference -- using hydrogen technology to phase-out wire dependent streetcars -- has also attracted the U.S. Federal Transit Authority's Walter Kulyk, who is director of the Office of Mobility Innovation. The FTA helped fund a Proterra hydrogen fuel cell bus that will soon enter service in Columbia, S.C.

This year's International Hydrail Conference focus on eliminating overhead trolleys is to raise the issue in order to reduce the risk that trolley systems begun as wired lines might have to write-off large investments if the much less expensive wireless hydrolley emerges mid-project.

The design transition to wireless hydrolleys from fuel cell buses, which have been in use around the world six years or more "...is not rocket science," as Hill told the Charlotte City Council last fall. They go much further on the same amount of energy because steel-on-steel has just one-seventh the rolling friction of rubber tires, he said.

For more information about the hydrail conference, or to register, visit http://www.hydrail.org