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Saying farewell to the trackless trolleys
By adamg on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 1:36pm
BAC Library journeyed over to the T's North Cambridge yard today to take one last look at the trackless trolleys before the T starts ripping out all the wires next month in preparation for the arrival of battery-powered buses (with small diesel engines for heat) - in a couple of years or so (in the interregnum, the T will run diesel buses). T workers even rolled out a venerable old non-wire-powered RTS bus (on the right) for inspection.
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That’s too bad, it’s a big loss to the communities.
Proud of our DPW salting out
Proud of our DPW salting out there this Saturday day.
North Cambridge
Thanks for the shout out! It was a great event.
Slight correction, most of the photos were from the old Watertown Garage where we made a stop for photos, but the one you picked came from the North Cambridge Car House. This where the Trackless Trolleys are housed and was the start of the trip. :)
Those interested should become members of the BSRA. The trip was only $10 and went down every trackless route and some discontinued parts. https://thebsra.org/bsra/
+1
I've been a member of the BSRA for 28 years. Their annual membership fee (I pay $20 as an associate member) is well worth it.
I hate to see these go
I can understand why they pulled out trolley tracks. But the T should be building trackless trolley infrastructure all over Boston, not tearing it up. The trackless trolleys are quieter, faster, and longer lasting than any bus, including the battery buses they propose. They’re also going to rip out the wires on the Silver Line, sneaking these decisions through with as little publicity as possible. Bad move, MBTA.
cost cutting
Ill renew my comment from another thread about t workers but it applies here too.
This is from decades of "the T has too much money" public mantra. In an effort to 'save those tax dollars' that the public screams the T should be doing.. they are doing away with a fleet that services 3 routes, and replacing it with a fleet that can be interchanged with others across the system.
Same with the mattapan line (and the SL to a lesser extent). Costs of these special garages, maintenance staff, and etc for these special runs of equipment is too costly to maintain.
When everyone complains that the T is a 'miss managed agency with too much money' This is the result of those comments. Add some NIMBY to those 'awful overhead wires' and those things are as good as gone.
And for the record, I don't agree with what they are doing, even more so that the garage is being upgraded to support battery bus technology that still hasn't had its kinks worked out (one report says you get 1/2 run time in cold weather). This is going to be a disaster.
But keep on complaining how bad the T is. and I'll keep reminding people of this. This is a direct cause of not being able to garner public support anymore for expanded T services. Hard to get people to support something that has such a bad reputation.
You can't have it both ways.
23 and out
As a taxpayer you should expect employees to not abuse the T/have ridiculous retirement benefits and still properly fund and pay the employees. They’re not mutually exclusive.
I am happy to see them go
I live in Cambridge, and used to take the trackless trolleys from time to time. They were pleasantly quiet, though a couple of times I got to enjoy the wait while the driver got out and attempted to get the trolleypole back on the wire, the bus blocking traffic the whole time. This happened on nice days; it would have been even more fun during a snowstorm.
However the reason I am glad to see them go is that they are ugly. It's bad enough when there are only a few here and there, but this proposal for massive expansion is a proposal to cover all the cities of the Boston area with a hideous net. Of all the ways in which the industrial revolution uglified the world, the binding of it with overhead wires, like the binding of Gulliver by the Lilliputians, is among the worst. Trolley wires are even worse than phone wires. This is an age of the world that we should be bringing to an end, not extending.
Technology and changes
The trackless trolley system here has existed since 1936 with the beginning of the Harvard-Lechmere line; the Huron Avenue line since 1938, and the Watertown/Belmont lines since 1958. While it's nice to have emission-free transit, it's prone to problems.
Some observations...
1) If there was a huge crowd of people at the downstairs level of Harvard Square station, it meant the trackless trolleys were delayed big time due to traffic or trolley problems.
2) There were a few times the electrical wire system went out, which meant no trackless trolleys were moving and were stopped right in the middle of the street, causing extended delays.
3) The trackless trolleys purchased in 2004 (including the ones operating on the Silver Line) are beyond their useful service life, which is usually 12-15 years. Since the company that produces them, Neoplan USA, went out of business, replacing the parts would be difficult.
4) It's possible to acquire and update the current technology by replacing all the old wires with new wires, and purchasing brand new trackless trolleys with battery backup, but the MBTA feels that the future for the entire MBTA bus fleet will be battery buses, namely to have a singular, interchangeable fleet.
The T is taking a gamble
The T is taking a gamble that battery technology advances fast enough in the next two years that the battery buses will be able to handle a typical daily vehicle assignment (with can cover 200+ miles and 12-16 hours out of the garage). Keep in mind T buses often spend all day on the road, with drivers changing out in the field (i.e., places like Harvard Square) while the buses keep going. With battery buses, this won't happen - buses will have to go back to the garage for charging at the end of the driver's shift, resulting in more labor costs to deadhead buses, more capital costs for more buses to do the same work, etc.
Of course, I don't think the T will come close to meeting their mark of battery buses in service in two years. We'll likely see 3-5 years of diesel buses on the currently electric 71/73.
And, of course, the T is one of the few transit agencies in a position to really study and compare straight battery buses versus trolleybuses which leverage the existing overhead infrastructure as an alternative to straight battery technology - in-motion charging trolleybuses. Unfortunately, at the recent public meeting, the T literally said they will not consider these "because they think they're not the technology of the future." They're hoping a new technology works out without fully investigating the alternatives.
I just don't buy the T's arguments. They say they can't have a "boutique" fleet, but they also admit that the first battery bus fleets will be experimental. They can't have buses assigned to specific routes, but then they will consider left-door equipped buses for the Harvard tunnel. They could have trialed in-motion charging buses and gotten a full life-span out of them (~20 years) before they're even done with converting all of the garages.
They're willingly scrapping infrastructure that in some cases is only about 5 years old just to get rid of maintaining some wire. That's not good management.
Reminder
The reason the T is doing this right now, is that the streets the buses run on are about to undergo major reconstruction. For the next five years or so, trolley buses wouldn't be usable anyway, because the buses are going to have to follow alternate routes.
Long term, there's also an important operations aspect: when a subway is out (planned or otherwise), the T pulls in buses from the neighboring key bus routes to substitute. They can't pull trackless trolleys to do that, though, and the burden falls too heavily on the remaining nearby routes when the red line through Cambridge is down.
Also, they can't get parts for the current fleet because the manufacturer went bust.