| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Time to reconsider the west london tram scheme | |
| Posted by: | Chris Veasey | |
| Date/Time: | 08/08/10 14:52:00 |
| The trams 'stopped' here as elsewhere because they were replaced by a more cost-effective and flexible form of elctric road-based public transport - trolleybuses. The last one of 'those things' (as you so objectively put it) primarily because the all-powerful oil lobby succeeded in geting London Transport to take a big step backward - in fact LT had commissioned Shell Oil (of all people) to advise it on the matter! - astonishingly such an 'independent' advisor recomended scrapping the world's largest trolleybus network in favour of diesel buses - with consequences we've suffered ever since. Trolleybuses don't have to be attached to an 'overhead cable', they have twin booms that touch and glide along twin overhead wires. They didn't and (on the numerous and growing modern systems worldwide) don't 'keep falling off' - occasional 'dewiring' incidents (as they're termed) are just that in the hands of competent professional drivers - occasional - in fact London transport trolleybus drivers used to have their wages docked for any de-wiring incident - and result in no significant interruption to the vehicle's progress - remedy is a task of moments, and is nowadays performed automatically by the driver without leaving his/her seat, rather than the old-fashioned British method of the conductor getting out and doing it with a long hooked bamboo pole. If you still think (from your evident position of complete lack of fist-hand knowledge and experience of them, unlike many of us) they're 'a rubbish way of travel' perhaps you should ask the transport authorities and the travelling public in the likes of Rome, Athens, Lyons, Salzburg and many others where modern trolleybus systems have been successfuly installed and are being successfully operated in recent years. |