How did Pittsburgh initiate it's Light Rail construction? (design, engineers)

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by jetgraphics

Importing 70% and more of our oil consumption is not sustainable. And buses, whether natural gas or diesel, won't resolve the problem in the long run.

First, you ignored electrified buses like trolleybuses (more on that in a moment).

Second, the U.S. is likely to become a natural gas exporter in the near future. So converting buses to natural gas would indeed directly subtract not only from our importation of oil, but also in general from our net importation of energy.

Energy efficiency comparisons of transportation:
strickland.ca - transportation energy efficiency (fuel consumption) (http://www.strickland.ca/efficiency.html - broken link)

Interestingly, this source actually discusses trolleybuses, which you edited out. This is the actual comparison presented in your source, with what you edited out bolded:

Maximum efficiency (passenger-miles per gallon equivalent):
Rail 2000
Trolleybus 750
Diesel bus 280
Toyota Prius 240
Scooter/light motorcycle 150
Smart fortwo cdi 100
Ford Explorer 100

Typical efficiency
Rail 600
Trolleybus 290
Diesel bus 78
Scooter/light motorcycle 75
Smart fortwo cdi 74
Toyota Prius 72
Ford Explorer 21

So yes, on linear routes where expected volumes are high enough, rail is the more efficient choice (more on this below as well). But buses can in fact provide significant efficiency gains over personal transport, particularly as you move up from diesel buses to buses which are at least partially electric (hybrid buses and dual-mode buses would fall somewhere between diesel buses and trolleybuses on these lists).

Transferring 100% of inter-city truck traffic (impractical) to electrified railroads, plus electrifying all (not 80%) of the existing rail traffic, would take about 100 TWh/year or 2.3% of total US electrical demand. Electrifying 80% of railroad ton-miles and transferring half of current truck freight to rail would take about 1% of US electricity. 1% is an amount that could be easily conserved, or, with less ease, provided by new renewable generation and/or new nuclear plants.

That's a fine argument that has nothing in particular to do with what we are discussing since it is about intercity freight hauling, not local passenger service. By the way, barges are even more efficient than rail for freight hauling.

In any event, I'd support transferring a lot of intercity passenger service to electrified rail from highways and airplanes, but it wouldn't make sense to do 100% in that case either. But that is a different topic.

The infrastructure used by buses and automobiles is a huge drain on the resources of the nation. There is a constant stream of reports of the dangers of eroding bridges, roads needing repair, pothole patrols, and so on. Worse, the traffic congestion in major metropolitan areas requires building more and more highways - which is unsustainable.

But we nonetheless now have a huge embedded road infrastructure which buses can efficiently leverage, even accounting for maintenance costs and not planning for any more significant expansion of that system. And we will still maintain much of that infrastructure for the conceivable future anyway, because you just can't run rail right up to everyone's house. So we will still at least have local streets for automobile use for a long time to come, and that in turn means buses can use those local streets in combination with things like Busways to provide efficient rapid transit in places where rail will not be viable.

In the bigger picture, though there are substantial capital costs for rail based transportation, those costs can be amortized over a far longer period of time. Rail beds have a far longer lifespan than paved roads. Their load carrying capacity dwarfs pavement. The scalability of rail is far better than automobiles and buses. The amount of surface area required to support rail is far less than any other land based transportation, capable of carrying equivalent passenger and cargo loads.

But if you can't realize enough return on the route in question because your expected volumes never get close to capacity, none of that matters: you still won't recover your capital costs. In other words, these factors just explain why rail is a better option WHEN expected route volumes are above a certain threshhold, a point I wouldn't contest.

But below that threshhold, you will still have a range of lower-volume routes where buses are a more efficient alternative to cars, and a range of still-lower-volume routes where only personal vehicles make sense. And when you don't simply edit trolleybuses and other at least partially electrified buses out of the picture, it becomes quite apparent indeed that this middle ground (routes where buses can beat cars on efficiency but expected volumes are still too low to justify the capital costs of rail) is pretty wide indeed.

[Pitts64]

Remember the Sky Bus in the 60s.. It was a failure because of the tires.. Rail is so much more efficent...

[Drover]

Originally Posted by Pitts64

Remember the Sky Bus in the 60s.. It was a failure because of the tires.. Rail is so much more efficent...

Ah... no. If you want to know why the skybus failed, read this report (http://www.industrystudies.pitt.edu/papers/skybus.pdf - broken link). If there were a list of 100 reasons why the skybus failed, "tires" probably wouldn't even make the list.

Doesn't Morgantown still use something similar to Skybus?

[BrianTH]

As I linked above, trolleybuses are in operation all over the world, and have been in use for over 100 years. It isn't some whacky scheme, just a mode that for whatever reason is somewhat uncommon in the United States, although not completely absent--they are running them in Boston, San Francisco, Philly, and Seattle. There used to be a lot more trolleybuses in the U.S., but they were largely wiped out when streetcars were also wiped out.

By the way, trolleybuses can actually outperform both diesel buses and streetcars in hilly terrain, which is part of why San Francisco uses them (they are also the quietest mode of local transit--potentially too quiet, in fact). So if trolleybuses and dual-mode buses took off in Pittsburgh, I could see at least a few trolleybus lines expanding out beyond just the Busways, such as along the proposed Rapid Bus routes.

[Impala26]

Originally Posted by Drover

Ah... no. If you want to know why the skybus failed, read this report (http://www.industrystudies.pitt.edu/papers/skybus.pdf - broken link). If there were a list of 100 reasons why the skybus failed, "tires" probably wouldn't even make the list.

Doesn't Morgantown still use something similar to Skybus?

I agree with you here. Skybus was killed by politics, not by it's design or technology. There are numerous examples of systems throughout the world that use rubberized vehicles.

And yes, you're thinking of the Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit. If it were cost-effective, I think Pittsburgh's inner-suburbs could stand to benefit. However, this would likely be labeled as "Skybus Part Deux" and from what I've read the Morgantown system was more expensive than anticipated.

Originally Posted by BrianTH

By the way, trolleybuses can actually outperform both diesel buses and streetcars in hilly terrain, which is part of why San Francisco uses them (they are also the quietest mode of local transit--potentially too quiet, in fact). So if trolleybuses and dual-mode buses took off in Pittsburgh, I could see at least a few trolleybus lines expanding out beyond just the Busways, such as along the proposed Rapid Bus routes.

I believe on at least one other occasion I've said that I would be in favor of Pittsburgh investing in new bus technology in lieu of say, a limited modern or "historical" streetcar system. One of the appealing aspects of streetcars and other light rail is that they are "apparently" clean and that they are much quieter. If however, the city chose to operate fully electric buses or trolleybuses, it would reap all the potential benefits of a streetcar system with less investment in new infrastructure.

[Pitts64]

Originally Posted by Drover

Ah... no. If you want to know why the skybus failed, read this report (http://www.industrystudies.pitt.edu/papers/skybus.pdf - broken link). If there were a list of 100 reasons why the skybus failed, "tires" probably wouldn't even make the list.

Doesn't Morgantown still use something similar to Skybus?

Well I got that info from my customer who was one of the Westinghouse engineers who designed and built the Sky Bus... The rubber tires were too resistive compared to steel rail... It was doomed from the beginning...

[BrianTH]

Well, that's that, then--we just formed the Pittsburgh Trolleybus Coalition.

I'm actually only partially joking. My understanding is that one of the reasons trolleybuses are much more common outside the U.S. is that the relatively higher pricing of diesel in many of those places makes them much more competitive economically. We could be heading to a similar situation in the U.S., although I also think natural gas hybrids could be very competitive in Pittsburgh if Marcellus Shale really takes off and batteries get cheaper/better.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Pitts64

Well I got that info from my customer who was a Westinghouse engineer who built the Sky Bus... The rubber tires were too resistive compared to steel rail...

It is certainly true that is a large part of why rail is more efficient on high-volume routes. But again, lower capital costs mean there are situations in which trolleybuses are going to be viable while rail is not.

[Pitts64]

We use to set our clocks by the Frankstown trolley stopping at Penn ave and 40th street... It was a wonderful system, so fast and efficient. I understand GM put the screws to it...

[BrianTH]

Oh yeah, ripping out all that rail was a tragedy. We wouldn't even be having this conversation if that was still in place.