Every single cyclist dreams of electric busses, believe you me.
Huffing nitrogen stationary-bus-fart oxides turns any public road here straight into an express lane to lung cancer, without even the courtesy of a nicotine rush.
I laugh when people say cycling is healthy. Not in London. Nooo sir. Between the long term certainty of whatever smokers like to aim for, and the short term gamble of “brain-on-asphalt syndrome”, it’s a bloody joke.
Electric busses can’t rule the streets soon enough.
There where a lot of edge cases to those calculations. Including very short short commute times, specific locations within cities, background physical activity, traffic accidents etc.
Further, while 1% of cities may cross their air thresholds at their assumption levels those are the largest cities. So far more than 1% of the population would be worse off.
It's just the news glossed over the very real downsides mentioned in the study.
The benefits of cycling outweigh the harms of the pollution, almost everywhere. The pollution is still harmful, though, and lowers your lifespan compared to not having as much pollution.
As a London pedestrian I am fully in favour of electric buses.
The NoX fumes are horrible for pedestrians too. Especially when the buses are stacked one after another, idling.
I seriously can’t believe the government refuses to act on the diesel disaster. Tens of thousands of people die from diesel exhaust complications per year, but they don’t care.
Ironically Mrs Thatcher (former chemist) questioned the dash to diesel instead of clean burn engines back when the policy of favoring diesel over petrol was being discussed.
This reminds me of 'dieselgate'[0], it's not just buses. One does wonder why the government hasen't acted on a diesel ban (or some action) when it's clearly a risk to the public.
Seconded if you have ever been cycling behind a badly maintained diesel buss and had to stop because of the fumes half way up a hill you will empathise.
A friend's Renault Zoe EV has a 'whoosh' noise generator which thankfully can be disabled in the fusebox.
To me it would be more sensible to only trigger a noise generator upon feedback from the parking sensors, instead of polluting the environment with constant sci-fi noises.
Is there any research to back up your claim? What are the chances of getting cancer from this? Is there even a direct link? Is it better in aggregate to be an unfit bus rider or a fit cyclist?
There's actually the opposite evidence; it's worse to be in a vehicle than walk or cycle, and there's a few studies that say that the benefits of cycling outweigh the pollution exposure.
Most smart people driving in London are going to leave their car's climate control on the "recirculate" setting whenever possible. That gives you a more-or-less closed environment, running cabin air back through the car's filters rather than sucking in dirty air from the street.
But cyclists and pedestrians have no such luxury - they're breathing in the filth whenever they're on, or near, a busy road.
By using the "recirculate" setting you avoid bringing in polluted air from outside the car in the first place, so it certainly does help. Just return to fresh air when away from busy roads and polluted areas.
And paper filters do, of course, remove dust and particulates, which are part of the problem. Just not things like NOx and volatile organics. And depending on the filter, it may not be effective against really small (eg PM2.5) particles.
From a personal sample of one, I cycled 4 months on routes used by busses and developed a smokers cough - I've never smoked. I'd be surprised if that wasn't a lung cancer risk. I stopped after that. The worst fumes were from diesel busses though this was a few years back and they have probably fitted less polluting ones now.
I don't think it's healthy at all to ride on London buses, especially in a hot summer when the buses have all their windows open. The air seems really bad inside - you can smell it and feel it in your lungs.
Bringing in electric buses will not decrease these pollutants. They will also not remove enough of the other half of the pollutants. The change needs to be far wider and harsher.
Anecdotally, regenerative braking on an EV reduces brake pad wear by somewhere around 50-80%. It's rare to have to replace brake pads in an EV, or even to see them significantly worn.
On urban buses, which are constantly starting and stopping, I imagine it could be even more.
If EV companies were confident in their engineering, one could design a system with entirely electric braking.
No brake pads required. Simply dump the energy into the battery (or a big heater for the excess when the battery is full or too cold to charge)
Obviously, you can't have a failure in the electrical or control system or you can't brake anymore, so that part will have to be designed with much more redundancy than it is in todays vehicles.
"In urban environments, brake wear can contribute up to 55 % by mass to total non-exhaust traffic-related PM10 emissions" [1]. (The "abrasion processes which result in direct particulate matter (PM) emission are tyre, brake, clutch and road surface wear, with other potential sources being engine wear, abrasion of wheel bearings and corrosion of other vehicle components, street furniture and crash barriers.")
When a vehicle regeneratively brakes, the brakes aren't engaged. Instead, the transmission connects to a generator, which resists the vehicle's motion as it converts kinetic energy into electricity.
Braking dust comes from brake pads rubbing against brake disks. Electric vehicles slow down by running the motor in reverse and recharging the battery, therefore don't use the brake pads and brake disks as much, especially at higher speeds where the brake dust problem is the worst.
Regenerative braking is using the electric motor as a generator for a time during braking. So you're not dealing with pads and rotors wearing down, at least not as much.
What do you mean "They will also not remove enough of the other half of the pollutants." Surely they will remove 100% of those, plus most of the brake dust.
It's true that there will be an increase in road / tyre dust due to the extra weight of batteries, but I'd be very surprised if this was as much as was saved elsewhere.
The Curbed article states that in Shenzen half a percent of the bus fleet is still diesel, but that half percent contributes 20% of the pollution. Can't wait for more electrics.
A peripheral benefit of electrified buses would be regenerative braking.
I've lost count of the amount of times that grubby, dusty brake pads have led to screeching that makes me feel like my ears are about to bleed, when buses have come to a standstill beside me. I once even wrote to TFL about the problem, weird little man that I am. Never received a response.
You're not the only one bothered by that. I find school buses and small delivery vehicles to be the worst on that, given the frequent stops and starts and minimal maintenance they receive. The city buses here are marginally better but not by much.
Any comparison of noise generated by these buses? Of changes in the on-time rate due to changed handling/acceleration? How much smoke did the diesels put out?
Your car maintenance you'll typically spend 4 hours for an annual service, at $50 per hour. Total: $200
A bus in a depot uses in house staff ($25 per hour), and since all the busses are identical and they're probably performing the same service on 5 at a time, probably only works out to an hour per bus. Total cost $25.
Thats so small compared to the salary of the driver who drives it around normally, maintenance cost might not be a significant part of the equation.
A key difference is that diesel can “recharge” a bus in a matter of minutes, so buses simply queue up at a pump and then drive off. With electric, it takes a few hours overnight, so they had to install a long line of charging points right down the middle of the garage.
... Anyone here know why swappable batteries haven't taken off for fleets?
In Gothenburg, where Volvo is increasing the trials of electric buses, there are charging stations at the end of lines. So the bus charges roughly 10 minutes, twice per round trip.
As an aside, riding them is very nice -- the noise level is very low.
Would also make sense to help when the batteries start to wear out as mentioned. And swappable batteries could help a stuck bus out if it accidentally has a faulty battery that drained too fast. Makes sense in many aspects.
> and being of considerable utility, they are remarkably undamaged. It seems that sticking chewing gum in things only applies when the vandal feels they wont personally lose out
(assuming this is actually true, and not another in a long local tradition of overly rose-tinted journalistic views of our grim North Sea shithole)
Four months continuous in Germany, only reason I came back was mum’s Alzheimer’s getting to the point of needing more care than my family and inlaws could provide themselves. When she gets too bad for me to be of any use, I’m off again.
I’ll miss chips and the NHS. I’ll miss my friends. I won’t miss the country — especially not in the current toxic political situation.
And that’s why I never bought a place in Merthyr Tydfil despite being famously affordable, and also why I moved out of Aberystwyth when I graduated despite it looking pretty and being a good place for really long quiet countryside walks.
High unemployment in an area sucks even when you personally have a job. Given nothing will stop Brexit, I wish I could say I thought Westminster cared enough to provide replacements for EU support of the poorest regions of the UK… but, and this is mere opinion, I don’t think it can see past Kensington nine days out of ten.
Noise levels can be pretty bad in big UK cities too. Especially London. Too many extra-loud modified motorbikes, too many overflying Heathrow planes. But yes, British people are for the most part polite!
Oh yes. My trips to countries such as Thailand, Italy, Holland, Japan, Denmark, the US (Pittsburgh, LA, NY) and Spain can never end quickly enough.
The thought occurs to me that you've only visited France and whatever they're calling Czechoslovakia this year.
Whereas as someone who spends quite a lot of time each year in Spain and Italy, and dearly love both; have family in one and a partner from the other - we are both quite glad to return to Britain after a few weeks away.
She, particularly, sees the downsides of her home country quite quickly. I have a bit more tolerance, but there're elements of a certain flavour of society missed. For us, anyway.
Oh, and I visited Czechia (whatever) for the first time last year and was smitten... but I was only there for a couple of weeks. Not really enough time to form any useful - or, indeed, completely useless - comparisons.
OK, sorry, this comment supposed to be a bit of light-hearted fun and I particularly didn't expect to stir up the hornets' nest of "BUT IMMIGRANT'S" (though I should know by now that those people can see immigrants in everything).
Anyway, if you can read this, please flag my post, and give it a downvote while you're there, and perhaps dang will delete it. I hope so. It's too late for me to do it myself. Apologies.
You are the one making that comparison, not me, and that's only for asylum seekers. Net migration to the UK is still near historic highs, with migration from outside the EU actually increasing, and the predicted exodus of EU migrants far smaller than was forecast. The UK is still a dream destination for many migrants.
For some reason a points based system is deemed OK for Australia etc, but when the UK looks at the same it's not long before the accusations of racism start flying.
Most of those (1) couldn’t speak French, (2) had contacts in the UK and a desperate human need for strong social connection, (3) believed, rightly or wrongly, that any contact with French authorities would result in their applications being rejected and them being forcibly returned to Syria/Afghanistan/wherever.
Source: Girlfriend did supply runs to The Jungle. She also found the place shocking in comparison to a literal slum in Nairobi.
But also: compare the size of that camp (~6500) to the ~million (at peak) who had asylum in Germany.
Just down the road from Waterloo Travelodge which is quiet, cheap and a good base for central London explorations should anyone be visiting. While in that part of the Great Wen, don't miss Roupell Street around 5pm.
Every single cyclist dreams of electric busses, believe you me.
Huffing nitrogen stationary-bus-fart oxides turns any public road here straight into an express lane to lung cancer, without even the courtesy of a nicotine rush.
I laugh when people say cycling is healthy. Not in London. Nooo sir. Between the long term certainty of whatever smokers like to aim for, and the short term gamble of “brain-on-asphalt syndrome”, it’s a bloody joke.
Electric busses can’t rule the streets soon enough.