Transitmatters/Sierra Club bus electrification report

[RandomWalk]

The problem with removing the wires is that it will make it too easy for the T to shove service to a different routing. Hard transit infrastructure, like the wires, makes it easier for housing development to focus near transit.

 

[Brattle Loop]

The problem with removing the wires is that it will make it too easy for the T to shove service to a different routing. Hard transit infrastructure, like the wires, makes it easier for housing development to focus near transit.

True. In the Cambridge case, the corridor itself is naturally a transit corridor without easy alternate replacement. A bigger problem there is that they're proposing replacement of the trolleybuses with battery buses, but the number they're proposing is insufficient to cover the service, so they'd get some combination of service cuts or backfilling with diesel hybrids (making the local emissions actually worse than they are now), in addition to losing the 'security' that fixed infrastructure provides. Cambridge has very good reasons for being very unhappy about that proposal.

 

[Brattle Loop]

More from Transit Matters: Regional Rail Electrification: Costs, Challenges, Benefits

Summary


Note there was a secondary thread created and it should be merged into this one.

I'm confused, isn't this thread (and the linked second thread) about buses?