1972:BRITAIN PHASES OUT LAST TROLLEYS
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BUT THEY WILL BE BACK, SUGGESTS DEREK MOSES
TWO EVENTS of considerable significance to the public road transport industry occurred in Britain last month.
First, the prototype of a new breed of small electric buses, powered by lead acid traction batteries, entered experimental service with Leeds City Transport following demonstration in London to the Department of the Environment and the Press.
Secondly, a few days later, and embarrassingly close to Leeds, officers and council representatives of Bradford Corporation took part in ceremonial rides on the last trolleybuses to be operated by Bradford City Transport, and, indeed, the last to operate in public service in Britain.
The object of the battery-powered electric bus is to provide quiet, efficient, and above all, pollution-free transport in city centres, in an attempt to improve the environment. These qualities all belonged to the trolleybuses which have gone to their death (or preservation by transport enthusiasts).
While the capacity (26 passengers including 17 standing), range and speed of the battery bus are severely restricted, doubledeck trolleybuses could accommodate up to 80 seated passengers and had unlimited range, so long as they did not run out of overhead wires.
My aim here is not to write a dirge on the trolleybus — in many parts of the world it is still alive and well, and, not infrequently, flourishing — but to ask why, in Britain, it has been allowed to die, and to speculate on its return to service within the next three to five years.
Ecology Suddenly, during the late 1960s, warnings from many scientists that the world was on the road to self-destruction, unless urgent top-level measures were taken to stop pollution, struck home. Song writers have turned from anti-war to anti-pollution subjects, the Duke of Edinburgh expressed concern about our future, and 1970 was proclaimed International Conservation Year.
During that year, the newly elected British. Government set a good example by establishing the Department of the Environment, embracing transport with housing and local government and other government departments whose actions had a direct bearing on the environment. "Ecology" (science of plants and animals (man) in relation to their environment) became very much the "in" word.
It was against this somewhat alarming background that the development of electric buses for city centre operation was encouraged. Yet during the period 1969 to 1972, trolleybus operation in Bournemouth, Cardiff and Reading, and since the formation of the DoE, in Walsall, on Teesside, and finally, in Bradford, has been allowed to cease.
Meanwhile, British designers are working hard to try and evolve a type of batterypowered bus which will overcome most of the disadvantages encountered so far, and, alas, are still incorporated in the Crompton Leyland Electricars buses (CM March 17). Mercedes-Benz and MAN have undertaken extensive studies to produce a viable battery-electric bus, and in the United States, similar experiments are taking place.
Great play is being made by the Electric Vehicle Association of the reported Japanese breakthrough with controlled output on zinc-air batteries, which, if adaptable to automotive vehicles — and it is a big "If' — will increase battery life by 10 to 12 times that of lead acid batteries. Surely the answer is to continue with the proven method of electric traction for public service vehicles until a satisfactory alternative can be found.
Russian statistics Public transport plays a major role in the Communist countries of Eastern Europe, where the level of car ownership is very low. For some years the authorities have been forging ahead with the construction of new trolleybus routes, not to mention tram routes. One of the principal reasons has been the environmental issue, and reduction of pollution from road vehicles to the minimum.
The following statistics apertaining to Russia, reproduced in Modern Tramway, March 1972, and reprinted from the December 1971 issue of Science and Life, speak for themselves. They compare the three principal modes of urban transport in 1960 and 1970 in the Soviet Union:
Sceptics may think that "all this is verl well, but the situation is different in pros perous countries where there is a higl level of car ownership". Is it? The large the number of cars on the road, the greate the need for a strong public transpor service operated by pollution-fre vehicles, and measures to persuade motor ists to switch to that form of transport Rapid transit is one mode of transpor much discussed, and often operated b electric trams — or rail coaches, as they at often defined today. There are many situr lions where the transport needs do ra justify a rail-oriented rapid transit systen however.
San Francisco example It is very fashionable to ask what Nort Americans are doing about these matters and the answers often confound one's imaf of a car-saturated urban society almo devoid of any form of public transpot Even much maligned Los Angeles lir express bus services operating on its ne work of freeways, the imaginatively stylt Freeway Flyers.
San Francisco is rapidly becomir recognized as the world's most pollutic conscious city. The construction of tl Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) railway San Francisco and the neighbourir counties of Alameda and Contra Costa now well known in transport circles. common misconception is that the trams San Francisco itself will be swept am: following the completion of the BAR system, leaving diesel buses and the famo cable cars to provide surface feeder st vices.
A surprise is in store for people of th belief who visit the city. The San Francisl Municipal Railway, known locally as t "Muni", has a wide network of busl trams and trolleybuses, in addition to t famous cable cars. A recent batch of die: buses has proved very unpopular wi local residents — so much so that plans scrap the trams and trolleybuses have h to be thrown into reverse! San Francisca will soon be riding on a rehabilitated trollt bus system. Trolleybuses are also found in other arts of North America — Philadelphia, lexico City and Toronto, for example. oronto is gradually building a subway tpid transit system, and two lines are now perating, the first since 1954 (the first anadian rapid transit line). Meanwhile ams and trolleybuses serve other parts f the city.
Some of the fringe tram routes may ose, and one is to be converted to trolley as operation. However, plans are in hand w new rolling stock on two trunk tramway Rites, but the rehabilitation of some of the cisting trams will have to wait until July, hen the rehabilitation of the city's trolleyises is expected to be completed.
lationalization
The start of the decline in the fortunes of le British trolleybus can be traced to the itionalization of the electricity supply dustry by the post-war Labour Governent, which removed the control of ectricity generating stations from authorioperating trams and trolleybuses. rolleybuses had not even reached their ;nith, and the short-lived Glasgow olleybus system had yet to be introduced, it the writing was on the wall.
With electricity tariffs going up beyond e control of municipal operators, British 3lleybuses caught the terminal disease hich ended with the last rites performed in -adford on Sunday, March 26 1972. any British trolleybus routes had been nipped with overhead wires in the early )st-war years, with new vehicles troduced at the same time. In some ses the trolleybuses replaced trams; in her cases they replaced buses, or opened ) services to new housing estates.
Readers might quote the trolleybus erhead equipment as one good ecological son for not having trolleybuses! The raphernalia of poles and wires necessary keep the running wires in place on corners and at junctions has often been described as an eyesore. This may be true, though it has not deterred San Francisco's environmental-conscious transport planners.
Overhead equipment which eliminates pollution from the buses it powers is preferable to the build up of fumes from diesel-powered buses caught in city traffic jams. De-wiring of the trolley poles which collect the current is another disadvantage held against the trolleybus. Modern developments in overhead line construction have simplified the complex wiring supports, while devices attached to the vehicles themselves can reduce the risk of dewiring to the minimum.
What has really killed the British trolleybus has been the high cost of replacing the overhead wiring and the buses themselves, which have usually become due about the same time, together with the escalating cost of electricity supply. As systems have closed and the ranks of trolleybuses reduced, so has the cost of spares escalated, and their availability shrunk. Short of Government aid or directives, the end became inevitable.
If 1960 had been Conservation Year, it might have been a different story. However, the tram is all set to make a comeback in Britain (though under a different name, of course); it should never have gone. Blackpool, whose seaside tram route and inter-urban to Fleetwood survived the anti-tram plague, is all set to launch o-m-o tramcars onto this 14-mile route, converted at a reported cost of £10,000 per car. I wonder which conurbation will become Britain's San Francisco, and relaunch the trolleybus?