The potential use of existing public transport electricity supply infrastructure for future multimodal electric urban mobility schemes has been considered at an event organised by UITP, The International Association of Public Transport in Brussels. The move towards more electric mobility in urban areas will require major investment in the supporting electric grid and charging infrastructure, and existing systems used by trams, metros and railways could potentially be leveraged for wider...

Derogatory phrases such as “Beeching the Butcher”, or “Beeching’s axe”  tend to appear in Britain whenever there is a reference to the wide ranging proposals he made to cut back the country’s rail services fifty years ago. Yet few who quote his name have probably actually read the Beeching report, The Reshaping of British Railways, in the half century since it was published. The dusty copy from the Institution of Civil Engineers’ library in London...

T There’s little disagreement that electrification is the best power system for most railways. But what should be done about branch lines where the business case might not be as clear as that for mainline railway electrification? Without it, through trains from the mainline need to be diesel powered even while travelling the majority of their time under the wires – and diesel trains are less efficient and less reliable than electric ones. Two contrasting approaches in the UK give...

JR Central has put its latest-generation Shinkansen train, the N700A into service from Tokoyo to Osaka. The 300km/h 16- car tilting trains seating 1323 passengers feature a number of improvements, including LED lighting (which is around 20% more efficient), bogie vibration detection, enhanced ATC, sound absorption throughout and improved brake discs which reduce braking distances by up to 10%. The 13 new trains also feature a new cruise control system, the fixed speed running device, which...

It’s 50 years since the publication in 1963 of two pivotal reports on British transport: The Reshaping of British Railways by Dr Richard Beeching, and Traffic in Towns by Colin (later Sir Colin) Buchanan. Both represented sea changes in the accepted transport wisdom of the time. What do they tell us today? Beeching’s report said that the then railway network was a financial basket case, with too many little used and loss-making secondary routes. It called for a focus on core routes...

Chinese electric bus specialist BYD and Bulmineral Ltd of Bulgaria have signed an agreement to create a 50:50 joint venture company, named Auto Group Motors, to produce electric buses in Europe. This is claimed to be the first electric bus JV company in Europe and the first overseas electric vehicle JV for BYD. BYD, which is the worlds largest all-electric bus manufacturer, will manufacture pure electric buses in Breznik, Bulgaria, targeting both local markets in Bulgaria and elsewhere in...

The UK Technology Strategy Board is launching a funding programme for business-led innovation to stimulate the development of fuel cell and hydrogen technologies, with two new competitions: ‘Building Fuel Cell Manufacturing and the Supply Chain’ (up to £5 million) and ‘Supporting European Collaboration in Fuel Cells and Hydrogen’ (up to £1 million). The second project has the aim of encouraging collaboration with potential European partners to enable the...

The European Bus System of the Future project is an initiative of the EU Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. Running from September 2008 to September 2012, it was a four-year project with an overall budget of E26 million (E16 million co-funded) and coordinated by UITP, the International Association of Public Transport. The project was seen as a major opportunity for bus manufacturers and operating authorities to transform the image of bus...

I t might be a conventional heavy rail infrastructure operator, but Britain’s Network Rail has been doing some very unconventional thinking about what sort of vehicles could run passenger services on its tracks. Railways don’t have to be operated by trains, it acknowledges. Blended mode technologies like guided buses and tram-trains might be just as appropriate, and even trains themselves might operate differently to today’s conventional understanding. Network Rail’s...

Wireless charging systems for buses are already in use in the Italian cities of Turin and Genoa. The UK’s first electric bus service to use inductive wireless charging is to be launched next summer in Milton Keynes. The project will see eight all-electric buses replace diesel vehicles on route 7 operated by Arriva. Rather than having to have their batteries recharged at the depot, the vehicles will use inductive charging technology to recharge on the street. Power transmitted from a...

A trio of 11m-long Optare Versa EVs now entering service with Travel De Courcey in Coventry are the largest battery-powered electric buses currently running in the UK, with a passenger capacity of over 50. They are being supported in service by two ABB Terra 51 fast-charging stations, designed to charge their batteries to full capacity in under two hours. The system offers the company the ability to recharge the batteries during the day during a layover, as well as overnight. This provides the...

A demonstration run by the UK’s first hydrogen-powered locomotive was a feature of the seventh International Hydrail Conference on July 3-4, hosted by the University of Birmingham and sponsored by the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research & Education. The 260 mm gauge locomotive had been built by the university’s students and staff to compete in the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ inaugural Railway Challenge contest. Built mainly from off-the-shelf components, it is...

CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive in China has unveiled a prototype light metro trainset which uses supercapacitor energy storage to operate without an external power supply. Developed in conjunction with Chinese Academy of Engineering, the trainset has underfloor power pick-ups which are used to charge the roof-mounted supercapacitor unit from a fixed supply while the train is stood at a station. Charging takes 30 sec and can power the train for 2 km. Energy regenerated during braking is...

The future of public transport in Britain will be more electric, the UK government has decided, as it begins the process of catching up with mainland European thinking on public transport power supply. It has given the go ahead to substantial electrification works on the country’s rail network, and a commitment to fund plans to reintroduce the first electric trolleybuses in the country, since the last one was withdrawn from Bradford in 1972. While European mainland railways are...

New buses from manufacturer VDL have achieved claimed significant additional weight savings which reduce fuel consumption, so cutting costs and improving operators’ environmental impact. The Transport Publics 2012 exhibition saw VDL displaying its Citea Light Low Entry model, which is an innovative, low weight concept for a low-entry single deck bus designed for both city and intercity transport. New methods of construction have resulted in a very low weight, leading to considerably...

Energy  use in transport is currently far from being sustainable. Across Europe, energy consumption for passenger and freight transport has increased in line with the rise in transport demand over the last few decades, putting heavy pressure on fossil fuel resources as well as increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Transport is the only sector where energy consumption and CO2 emissions continue to grow, and it is now responsible for around 25% of total EU greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions....

We’re a pretty insular lot – us Brits that is. And I reckon we’re particularly insular in transport thinking, and how we make the best of our railways and improve their sustainability. For years we swallowed the Government’s mantra that rail electrification was not an important idea, whilst everyone else around the world was busy electrifying like it was going out of fashion. Were we right and the rest wrong? I don’t think so, and the wheel has turned full circle....

A range of innovative concepts have been emerging to provide rail based transport solutions for areas of low demand over short distances. The fruits of both individual inventors and large companies looking for the next technology, they have featured smaller, alternatively powered vehicles capable of running on both existing and new track for journey lengths of 2kms or so. The quest has been to find economical and attractive links to the main rail networks that can replace conventional branch...

The announcement by the UK Department for Transport (DfT) that it is to press ahead with a long-mooted pilot scheme to test the Tram-Train concept in South Yorkshire finds it hard to explain why the government really thinks a trial of an already proven technology is necessary. After all, systems where the line between a tramway and a suburban railway has been blurred to achieve a new form of connectivity are now well established in Europe, and even in the UK. Perhaps the British project has...

The public transport industry makes surprisingly little numerical play on its carbon credentials, but carbon calculators can demonstrate to potential users that by taking public transport they are doing something virtuous. Some public transport websites do provide personal carbon calculators which allow users to compare the carbon impact of their journey with that of the same car journey. Both the UK Department for Transport’s Transport Direct website and Germany’s DB travel...

With dense populations and small footprints, urban areas offer one of the most fertile grounds for promoting sustainable transport, yet transport operators and local politicians seem often to fail to make best use of this opportunity. The rising cost of fuel is making car users think about other journey options, and young people postpone getting a licence or a car. This is a big opportunity for change. Good network design offers opportunities for public transport to improve its environmental...

There was considerable media coverage earlier this year when the UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders published its 2012 New Car CO2 Emissions Report, and announced that the automotive industry was playing its part in combating climate change. According to SMMT’s figures, a new car bought in the UK is now 18.0% more efficient than the average car in use in the UK. A new car in 2011 emitted 27.2% less CO2 than one did 15 years ago while CO2 emissions from all cars in use...

At Arriva’s UK bus division, a £1.5m programme is being initiated to reduce use of energy and utility resources. The programme has been driven primarily by the need to look across the business to minimise costs in response to challenging trading conditions. However, the new focus is also designed to deliver significant environmental benefits. Financial payback on the programme is expected within two years, demonstrating the value that targeted investments in environmental...

By 2021, the world’s automotive industry will be producing some eight million hybrid electric cars a year, according to industry expert Dr Peter Harrop.  It will be only a part of what Harrop, who spoke at New Transit’s Electric Futures event in London in April, expects to become a US$260bn-plus market for electric vehicles, including many buses. He is the chairman and founder of consultancy and publisher IDTechEx, which specialises in electric vehicles, printed electronics and...

The vision of smart electric energy transfer to public transport vehicles in short bursts as they operate in urban areas may be close to being realised. Certainly that’s the belief of  pioneers like Conductix Wampfler who have been trialing the IPT Charge system  in Italy for 10 years, and demonstrating that the technology establishes electric buses as a real option. Advocates believe that for local public transport in particular, the electric bus is the mode of the future being...

Smarter lighting across vehicles and premises has caught the attention of transport operators seeking to reduce costs as well as carbon emissions. Rolling stock leasing company Porterbrook trialled an LED-based lighting system on a suburban train in the West Midlands during 2009. It monitored ambient lighting and adjusted lighting levels accordingly, estimated to save 129 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, through reduced electricity consumption, if rolled out to the rest of the West Midlands...

It is a win-win situation when the engineering, commercial and marketing departments of passenger transport organisations can find common cause in their business objectives, and a shared message to present to the public and political decision-makers. But the idea of ‘going green’ is increasingly providing just that opportunity - with improved economic and environmental credentials going hand-in-hand. Applying smarter thinking about how bus and rail systems are designed, equipped and...

Public transport has long traded on its green credentials and the lower carbon emissions which attend to passenger journeys on buses, trains, trams, and other sustainable modes, compared to similar trips in the private car. But, it is not enough to stand still in this area, not least because the fuel efficiency and other eco-credentials of new cars are improving rapidly, and the motor industry is already strongly promoting new cars as a greener choice too. In a difficult economic climate...