Thats $3M+ per bus extra for infrastructure! Im sorry, but that bird wont fly!
I like in-route charging and think it has merit, but uh - you're not going to charge a bus in any useful way from "low-voltage" wires unless they're very thick, very heavy, and very expensive. Volts x Amps = Watts is not really a negotiable formula.
So, nightly electric draw per bus is almost exactly the same as average household usage in MA. So, 125 buses would draw the same as 3+K households, if every bus operated every day and charged completely once a day.
I think it's worse than that - per the EIA, average household electricity use in the Northeast is 8200KWh / year. CARB estimates that a 40ft transit bus uses 10000KWh / month. That's a 15x difference, and in essence each bus consumes the power of 15 houses. Especially once you consider that a lot of this will be fast charge, yea. The power infrastructure will be hefty.
Err I think this is the only new part, but why? I get it might be nice as a flag stop so city folks have a nice easy ride to the reservation, but I struggle to see how it'd actually work on the T; I know there's a lot of rural flag stops in the UK but even those tend to be either truly kinda far from anywhere or at least serve a hamlet. Literally the only people who might get on/off here are folks visiting the pond and even then it's on the opposite side from the visitors center and beach. It'd probably have worse ridership than Silver Hill ever did. Also, Concord station isn't that far away; it's closer to 1.5 miles. Granted, the ped infrastructure on Walden St and the latter bit of Thoreau is non-existent, but improvements to that / a bike lane, combined with Concords existing municipal bikeshare program (and possibly expansion to that), is all you really need.Digital_Islandboy said:
Metro-North has us beat.
Fair enough; I did forget about those tiny stations on Metro- North. That said, MAAB would throw a fit at those, but all are at least proximate to a road. I acknowledge it's would be an amenity to have a stop in a recreational area, but I'm not convinced that Walden is where I'd put it, even one of those free standing mini-highs, simply because someone would have to build a hard surface accessible route to it. The pond path decidedly isn't.Metro-North has us beat.
Harlem Line, Appalacian Trail:
Hudson Line, Breakneck Ridge:
They needn't be big productions. They could throw down one of those freestanding 1-car mini-highs and see how it works.
I was assuming one full capacity charge of high end battery packs(60ft buses) and charging inefficiency. Assuming that good battery longevity means never dropping below 20% and that some vehicles would not be used all day but that some may take more than one charge, it's tough to figure exactly what demand would be.
Modern trolleybuses with small onboard batteries to run short distances off wire function fine on our existing 600v system. The efficiencies of modern motors allow for in-motion charging but the batteries can also charge when the vehicle is stopped and using minimal power.
It would obviously be granted an exemption by the MAAB because the station wouldn't be egressing onto a previously accessible surface. Exemptions to the ADA and New York's accessibility regs were granted for both of the MNRR stops (Appalachian Trial was infilled post-ADA, and Breakneck Ridge was fully rebuilt a few years ago) because they were limited-service stops strictly catering to able-bodied recreation. There's no expectation that wheelchair users will be using the long-unpaved pond path, and the MAAB is rational enough to see that.
Somewhere, my 11th grade English teacher is crying.
600V is fine enough, I agree.
I love the idea of a Walden Pond stop too, but the idea of a pedestrian grade crossing to access the farside track seems dicey. MNRR's Appalachian Trail station is single tracked, and it looks like Breakneck Ridge has a pedestrian overpass (along with measures to dissuade pedestrians). The tracks at Walden at on an embankment, so perhaps an underpass could be constructed, but that significantly increases the scope of the project.
This is where I think there would be more of an issue. It's not actually that large of a park. I suppose they could just be that much more assertive about closing things early, even with a larger fraction of passengers arriving by train.
