Have those battery powered streetcars proven their long term reliability and sustainability?
Considering the abysmal performance of the e-buses, I would be extremely wary of battery powered streetcars. And frankly I don't see the point. You won't be getting any additional flexibility because they still need the tracks.
If one looks at Detroit QLine it is wieless from the arena to the south of the line. The wireless section has 2 stations in each direction since they are the side of the road with chatgers while the rest of the stations don't have them to allow for topping up or need more powering that takes from 20 seconfs to 5 minutes depending on the need. The end station is a charging station.
It is wire north of the arena to the last north station.
It is wireless to the carhouse. Between the last station and the carhouse there is an charging station. The LRVs are plug in at the yard overnight.
Milwaukee has a wireless section at the south end with a charger at the end station and wire from the 3rd station to the north end.
Nice is wireless though the plaza area and wire rest of the route. It takes 10 seconds to do the change over.
I haven't seen in person other systems using batteries but been told there are charging stations along the route to top off if needed and charge at the end of the route.
As for buses, they have charging stations at the terminals and end of the route in Europe. Brampton is doing this as far as I known as I have seen the charger at the east end of hwy 7 as well at Mount Pleasant terminal along with the photo of Mount Pleasant
Manchester UK are converting their LRVs to batteries and will remove the ovrhead once all LRVs are converted.
As for doing this with TTC LRVs one only look at how long it took TTC to convert the existing OS to the current system to see TTC will take decades to go batteries that it will take one or two feel replacement before it is completely wireless.
The city should make it a requirment the wires be place underground when development takes place but Toronto hydro will be the major reason it will not happen. Look at St Clar when the ROW was being build how they fright not to do it as there was still life in the wires and poles until order to do so by council regardless the life cycle of the system, Even installing it was a fight.
If Europe can be 100% by 2030 with a few by 2035 due to size, there is no reason we cannot be 100% by 2040 or sooner. There area fair number systems in Europe now fully converted with a fair number this year. They are a few systems in NA that are at about 50% converted now with a number shooting for 2030 or sooner.
