Metro plans for electric trolley bus replacement

[John]

KC Metro Transit needs to retire the existing fleet of electric
trolleys (serving many Seattle neighborhoods). Their initial thinking
seemed to be that it would just be easiest to buy more of the diesel
hybrid buses and eliminate electric-powered vehicles. The King County
Council mandated a study that is getting under way. It includes some
public involvement sessions, the first of which will be at History
House in Fremont (790 N 34th Street) on 26 July at 7pm.

The project web page is http://metro.kingcounty.gov/up/projects/trolleyevaluation.html

I'll probably set up a facebook group or page to help publicize this.
If you'd like to help administer such a thing, please let me know
(also whether you'd prefer to see a page or a group).

[Rodney Rutherford]

John, thanks for opening up this discussion.

So, there are currently two models of electric trolleys:

1) Bredas (90-91, articulated, originally tunnel buses with the diesel removed in 05-06), and
2) Gilligs (2002), which replaced the AMGs (900s) which served 24 years, and the generation prior lasted over 30 years: http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/vehicles/retired/amgen900.html

Do the Gilligs really have only 1/2 the lifespan of the 1979 AMGs? Ouch. How did this happen?

As for the Bredas, it looks like they'll at least get ~25 years out of those, which is somewhat pleasantly surprising given their spotty reliability record (iirc).

There is a stunning lack of information on Metro's site about the effectiveness trolley system (esp. in comparison to the alternatives). We should make a list of metrics that should be made available for each alternative in order to ensure the best decision is made:

• cost of operation (per mile, per hour)
• noise emissions
• tailpipe emissions
• energy efficiency (miles per energy unit; energy recovery in braking; etc)
• maintenance costs (vehicle and system)
• reliability

...any other metrics that would be helpful?

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[Credmond]

Reliability in winter months and snow and ice capabilities of both electric trolley and diesel 

Sent from Redmond's iPhone