Globe and Mail
Trolley buses deserve a rethink
JEFF GRAY
October 27, 2008
Word that the batteries on top of the TTC's barely two-year-old hybrid-electric buses are conking out at alarming rates has prompted political finger-pointing and tough talks with manufacturer Daimler Buses North America about how to fix the problem.
But the real shame in the hybrid affair is that powering a bus with electricity is actually not that hard, and certainly doesn't require cutting-edge 21st-century technology. How soon we have forgotten our humble trolley bus.
Compare and contrast. Our high-tech hybrid buses, which started arriving in 2006, now need their $12,000 rooftop batteries replaced after just 18 months. And even when they are working properly, it turns out that these buses burn only about 10-per-cent less fuel than conventional diesel buses.
Our trolley buses, the first generation of which rolled into service in Toronto in 1922, were 100-per-cent electric, produced zero local emissions, and were quiet compared with roaring diesels, although they depended on unsightly overhead wires for their power.
By the 1980s a fleet of about 130 trolleys, beloved by transit geeks, worked a number of busy mostly west-end routes, as well as up and down Bay Street. They were allowed to die on the vine in the 1990s, after the TTC decided the steep cost of renewing the vehicles and their wires was not justified by what was deemed at the time a marginal environmental benefit.
Steve Munro, a transit activist, points out that Toronto's trolley system, which had been allowed to deteriorate, was euthanized to make way for an environmental fad of the early 1990s: buses powered by compressed natural gas. But, in a situation similar to its current hybrid problem, the TTC soon ended up scrapping or converting the natural-gas buses to diesel, as they turned out to be leaky, unreliable lemons.
Gary Webster, the TTC's chief general manager, said in an interview in his office last week that the transit agency's engineers are working on a "30,000-foot view" of the pros and cons of getting back into the trolley game, which will likely be completed early next year.
Trolley buses, while common all around the world, he said, have a number of drawbacks. For one thing, installing and maintaining the overhead wires is expensive, and the investment can be justified only on busy routes with frequent service.
And while much has been made of the hybrid-electric buses' $734,000 price tag - compared with $500,000 for a conventional bus - a single trolley bus can cost more than $1-million. (To qualify for federal subsidies, the TTC had to buy buses that run on either unreliable natural gas or new hybrid-electric engines, and it chose hybrids.)
Environmentalists will also point out that the electricity trolleys use has to come from somewhere, including the province's dirty coal-fired power plants, Mr. Webster said, adding that the latest "clean diesel" buses produce negligible local pollution, although of course they still produce greenhouse gases.
At the moment, Mr. Webster and the TTC are focused on getting Daimler to fix the faulty hybrids, which remain under warranty. The commission is also trying to get out of a deal with Daimler to have 130 more hybrids - although with improved but unproven lithium-ion batteries - delivered next year.
But the TTC is still expecting another 66 hybrids with the old failing lead-acid batteries - already bought and paid for - to arrive between now and the end of the year.
