Leeds trolley buses set to get the go ahead!

[Keg]

Re pure battery powered cars. I know i failed physics but am i right in thinking that the amount of energy required to get a car from a to b is the same be it fuel or electric powered. Therefore even though the car is electric, Ferrybridge or elsewhere stil needs to generate the juice to charge up the car and will still put the same CO2 into the air?. Surely energy is energy and cannot be destroyed just converted?.Somone humour me please...

[Trojan]

Keg wrote: Re pure battery powered cars. I know i failed physics but am i right in thinking that the amount of energy required to get a car from a to b is the same be it fuel or electric powered. Therefore even though the car is electric, Ferrybridge or elsewhere stil needs to generate the juice to charge up the car and will still put the same CO2 into the air?. Surely energy is energy and cannot be destroyed just converted?.Somone humour me please... Depends what they're burning I suppose. They're burning some bio fuel at Drax - I think it's coppiced willow. So it's carbon neutral.

[tyke bhoy]

Not much wrong with that analysis Keg but I think the idea is that while petrol/diesel cars burn fossil fuels and therefore produce CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, other allegedly greener methods of generating electricity exist. The greenest in earth terms would be to use energy not even from the earth (solar powered batteries) but hydrogen and nuclear energy also don’t produce greenhouse gasses.As for the monorail. Yes the one in the Disney area is wonderful but I believe it was either planned at the same time or very soon after the parks were built and its hardly a built up area. Most of it runs through “greenbelt”/open space and with exception of the one at Magic Kingdom which runs straight through the middle of a hotel runs far enough away from all buildings to not be obtrusive to residents/workers. Leeds would have a couple or more problems to start with in that running South of the Railway would be nigh on impossible (under or over the existing embankment that doesn’t return to ground level for some distance east and west of the city centre). Another problem would be putting the infrastructure in on what would need to be some of the narrow but core routes. Park Row, the Headrow (Cookridge Street – Briggate), Boar Lane, Vicar Lane (Headrow – Duncan Street) would all struggle to cope with the existing pedestrian and roadways and a single way monorail (without platforms tops). The success of the free city bus also proves that people wouldn’t want to walk far in Leeds so the monorail would need plenty of platform stops in close vicinity. Finally I believe there was an incident, may have been fatal, which had people trapped on a Disney monorail for several hours recently (last 12 months)

[Trojan]

tyke bhoy wrote: roadways and a single way monorail (without platforms tops). The success of the free city bus also proves that people wouldn’t want to walk far in Leeds so the monorail would need plenty of platform stops in close vicinity. Finally I believe there was an incident, may have been fatal, which had people trapped on a Disney monorail for several hours recently (last 12 months) ermhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw

[raveydavey]

At least we're not getting this:http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-we ... 1/Honestly, what are they thinking?

[blackprince]

Keg wrote: Re pure battery powered cars. I know i failed physics but am i right in thinking that the amount of energy required to get a car from a to b is the same be it fuel or electric powered. Therefore even though the car is electric, Ferrybridge or elsewhere stil needs to generate the juice to charge up the car and will still put the same CO2 into the air?. Surely energy is energy and cannot be destroyed just converted?.Somone humour me please... Hi Keg, give yourself an A* for asking the right questions. Development of electric battery powered cars was stimulated by a law in California ( about 20 years ago if memory serves me right) which placed a deadline for all car manufacturers to produce an electric model in their range if they wanted to continue selling their cars in that state. The whole point of the exercise was to avoid ground level exhaust emissions which were causing photochemical smog in LA. If you were choking on exhaust fumes in LA it makes a lot of sense for the exhaust fumes to be generated in a power station, 50 or a 100 miles away, and dispersed into the atmosphere through a high stack. .So they are green in the sense that they don't cause people to choke in cities. Fast forward 20 years and "green" now means CO2 free. In France, which has about 90% nuclear electricity generation, a battery powered car probably makes sense if you are concerned about lowering your CO2 footprint. Here we still depend largely on a mix oil , gas , and coal for electricity generation ( and will do for the foreseeable future whatever the politicians say) and a battery powered car makes little sense for CO2 reduction. You have to be technically illiterate to think it does ( like the celeb who ran a battery car in oxford and told an interviewer that his house was wired directly to a nuclear power station). There are huge inefficiencies ( ie losses) in burning a hydrocarbon in a power station , to raise steam , generate electricty then transmit it over a distance , charge up a battery , discharge it , & convert it to kinetic energy using an electric motor. I suspect that burning the hydrocarbon directly in a modern car engine is more efficient.    

[Brandy]

raveydavey wrote: At least we're not getting this:http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-we ... 1/Honestly, what are they thinking? LMFAO that's April the 1st material right there lol.

[cnosni]

Brandy wrote: raveydavey wrote: At least we're not getting this:http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-we ... 1/Honestly, what are they thinking? LMFAO that's April the 1st material right there lol. Yeah,but imagine the views.......im imagining..........still imagining.............its no good,i give up

[blackprince]

Gondolas( cable cars ) are a credible mass transit system over shortish distances. I'm surpised more use is not made of them in cities. They cost about 1/3 to 2/3 the cost of light rail ( trams) and can shift more passengers per hour. The infrastucture is just a series of pylons and they can cross rivers or any type of terrain , without the need for expensive trackbeds or bridges. They don't compete for roadspace with other traffic. You could run them down abandoned railways , along canals or rivers , or even in the middle of dual carriageways ( like the leeds trams used to) . Siting the stations in an already crowded city centre could be an issue but with a gondola the stations don't need to be elevated like a monorail.The best thing about a gondola system, apart from the view, is that when you miss one another one comes along 30 seconds later.Seehttp://design.fr/product-design/the-futuristic-urban-gondolas-is-an-efficient-fast-and-safe-public-transit/    

[chameleon]

Extract from our friendly YEP:'The future of the £250m Leeds Trolleybus network is today hanging in the balance after it was left off a list of major transport schemes to win Government funding.Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn demanded clarity from ministers after the scheme was omitted from a list announced yesterday by Chancellor George Osborne as part of his Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).Mr Benn said: "The Chancellor mentioned a number of big transport schemes that he is not cutting, but he was silent on the future of the Leeds trolleybus'Does anyone not think silence is - nothing? Rather than publish a damming list of 'NOs' at the time of the announcements, I think everything on the 'YES' list would be made known as a possitve publicity move after the cuts.Optimism for anything (that's welcome) must be low. This could provide a perfect argument to revisit Congestion Charging to raise funds - and I bet that would come in long before any alternative options for transport are in place!