Railway 2.0 » Other Transports

Mayor Roland Ries interviewed about sustainable mobility

Railway 2.0 — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 06:00:30 +0000

Roland Ries, French Senator and Mayor of Strasbourg has been interviewed by Sustainable Mobility. He explains is vision for the future of transportation.

More interviews on Sustainable Mobility site.

An animated map of Auckland’s public transport network

Railway 2.0 — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:00:21 +0000

An animated map of Auckland’s public transport network from Chris McDowall on Vimeo.

Nice animation from Chris McDowall for Sciblogs:

[...] The animation begins at 3am on a typical Monday morning. A pair of blue squiggles depict the Airport buses shuttling late night travellers between the Downtown Ferry Terminal and Auckland International. From 5am, a skeleton service of local buses begins making trips from the outer suburbs to the inner city and the first ferry departs for Waiheke Island. Over the next few hours the volume and frequency of vehicles steadily increases until we reach peak morning rush hour. By 8am the city’s major transportation corridors are clearly delineated by a stream of buses filled with commuters. After 9am the volume of vehicles drops a little and stays steady until the schools get out and the evening commute begins. The animation ends at midnight with just a few night buses moving passengers away from the central city. [...]

[via Inside Transit]

Volvo displays first tangible application of road train

Railway 2.0 — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 06:00:22 +0000

Here, at Railway 2.0, we are great supporters of rail transportation. Nevertheless we have always had a respectful look to the evolution of different means of transport. Especially when they borrow principles coming from trains.

It is the case of the road train (also known as platooning), whose development has been sponsored by the European Commission within the framework 7 programme, named SARTRE: Safe Road Trains for the Environment program.

I will not bother you with descriptions of the program itself, its story and achievements. You can find them on the website.

Briefly:

The introduction of platooning on normal roads with private vehicles will achieve environmental benefits (with an estimated 20% emissions reduction), safety benefits (reduction of accidents caused by driver action) and a reduction on congestion (smoother traffic flow with potential consequential increase in throughput).

The real news is the first public demonstration of how the system works and behave on real life. Volvo unveiled last week a video showing one of its car diligently copying a truck movements autonomously.

More about the news on BBC.

Photo credit, here.

Another video explaining the aim of the programme, here.

A new Routemaster bus for London

Railway 2.0 — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 19:00:42 +0000

On 11 November 2010, a life-size mock-up of the Mayor’s New Bus for London was unveiled at the London Transport Museum’s Acton depot. A prototype will be delivered late next year with the first five buses set to be ready for passenger service in early 2012.

The Mayor of London unveiled the design for the New Bus for London on 17 May 2010.

The New Bus for London has a pioneering, futuristic design that features:

Extensive use of glass to highlight key features and produce a light and airy feel inside the bus
A glass ‘swoop’ at the rear and offside to pick out the two staircases
An open platform at the rear, shared with the Routemaster of old, which can be closed off at quiet times and which allows the reinstatement of a hop-on hop-off service
Three doors and two staircases for smoother, speedier boarding and access to the upper deck.

Moreover, the bus will be equipped witha diesel-electric hybrid drive system which will reduce CO2 emissions by 40%.

A datasheet of the bus is available (pdf file).

Learn more on new Routemaster bus on Wikipedia or Great London Authority web.

Photo galleries on Flickr and BBC News.

Fraunhofer AutoTram: electric tram + bus of tomorrow

Railway 2.0 — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:45 +0000

Electric and hybrid vehicles will take over the cities: cars, bicycles, buses and streetcars. New concepts are needed for individual and local public transportation. In the large-scale project “Fraunhofer System Research on Electric-Powered Mobility“, researchers are developing solutions for mobility of the future. The first results have now been presented.

Closing time: the passengers are patiently waiting at their bus stop. Over and over, whenever a bus stops and pulls away again, they are subject to the smell of exhaust fumes. This scenario could soon be a image of the past . The city traffic of the future will be different: buses will not be the only vehicles propelled by electricity, hydrogen or a combination of hybrid propulsion methods. One of these vehicles of the future is the AutoTram®. As long as a streetcar and as agile as a bus, it combines the benefits of both vehicles: with no need for rails or overhead contact lines, the “bustrolley” rolls on rubber tires and follows a simple white line on the road surface.

In the large project “Fraunhofer System Research on Electric-Powered Mobility,” it serves as a research platform. The vehicle is part of the overall Fraunhofer System Research effort, a research cooperative involving 33 Fraunhofer institutes. “We want to offer workable solutions and advance electric-powered mobility in Germany. With our two research platforms – the AutoTram® and a passenger car – we are demonstrating that the new components can interoperate well,” says project coordinator Professor Holger Hanselka. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding this project with a total of EUR 44 million from the Economic Stimulus Plans I and II for a period of two years. The project is broken down into four areas of focus: Vehicle concepts; energy generation, distribution and conversion; energy storage technology; and technical system integration and social issues. After a year spent in extensive research, the first results are now available.

[More in the press release]

Hereafter, you can have a look to the agility and driving precision of the AutoTram.

Are trolleybuses more sustainable than LRV?

Railway 2.0 — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:00:51 +0000

Among the neverending list of blogs I follow, Low Tech Magazine is one of the most interesting and challenging, keeping in mind my predilection for railways.

Some of the theses exposed in its posts goes sometimes towards the necessity of shifting to railway and high speed in particular. Therefore I consider this blog as a second, different point of view on rail questions (and not only) and I appreciate that because it let me think. Its last post considers trolleybuses (but there’s also a reference to trolleytrucks) as a low cost alternative to LRV (Light Rail Vehicles) in the cities due to the lower costs derived from converting a fleet of motor buses into electrical ones with the only infrastructure investment of a catenary. Moreover some benefits come from the lower maintenance costs and energy savings. This system inherits the benefits of a not track guided transport together with the flexibility of an energy source such as electricity that can be stored, regenerated and applied to electric motors. Nevertheless rubber tyres make the system less noisy.

As a matter of fact if we need more capacity the choice should advantage LRV, the article anyhow represents a way to discuss about a valid alternative to urban transit combustion engines solutions.