London's Opportunity Charging SRM Bus
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- čas přidán 26. 07. 2024
- About the two SRM type buses which were built to demonstrate the Volvo OppCharge overhead pantograph opportunity charging system in London but (because of a change of Mayor of London) now travel as ordinary diesel-hybrid buses.
This film includes footage from the launch of these buses, opportunity charging in use in the English towns of Wolverton and Harrogate plus these buses in London on bus route No.37 - both from the street and riding one of them. The bus has a very distinctive sound...
The benefit of opportunity charging is that the bus can travel for much or even all of the time as a battery-electric bus, thereby helping to lower urban air pollution.
The SRM type of bus is a two-door single staircase version of the New Bus For London / New Routemaster buses introduced by Boris Johnson whilst he was Mayor of London.
That noise on the SRM Lower deck would really grind at you driving one of them all day !
Why was it so noisy?
The video made it sound loud
Imma call this the usb bus from now on 😂😂
another nice little video...thanks for uploading
Thanks for watching
There really should be more of these!
No
@@xc_03 Yes
@@8834 absolutely not, they’re terrible buses with a weird looking design at the back they should be scrapped
@@xc_03 Did you literally just describe the new routemaster buses?
Looks so much better than the New Routemasters, only "problem" is that the doors are not like the original routemaster doors which isn't really a problem but doesn't suit the aesthetic well
Great video! 👍🏻
Very beautiful!
I know right, indeed trash buses
Speaking of the B5LH Chassis, We already have a handful of single deck versions (Bodied by MCV) in service in Singapore. Impressive, smooth and well balanced ride if I had to say.
Excellent video. Many years since I went "up to town". Gives me a superb insight into these new vehicles. Not sure about the cluttered lower deck interior but I love that wonderful moquette and the overall colur treatment to panelling. Some strange irritating pitched noises on the lowerdeck for me
Good show
Nice.
Opportunity charging is being tested with ten 40 ft vehicles in New York City using two rival systems (five each) with 15 additional 60 ft buses on the way.
I do not know much about these trials but would not be surprised if one of the systems being tested is the same as this bus. I understand it is also being tested in Montreal, Canada.
My favorite type of bus
Just came here from watching a video of a Dennis Dart Spryte
This is genius! Great for the environment too :)
Cool
At 7:20 you can see there is a decorative section of the bodywork near the stairs that would also be ideal for running cables through for the charging system, but at 7:42 there is an inconsistent gap between the left hand side windows that looks like it is there only for the charging cables. I'm sure the cost to run an additional few metres of cables down the off side and underneath the lower floor wouldn't be that much more and it would look better than having unevenly spaced windows on the left hand side of the upper deck.
These buses come to me every single day. That bus is 183 Pinner love lane to Goldens Green 24hrs week be route sadly I only go on the Scania omnicity double decker
Same
I like hybrid electric buses in London and other cities. It’s good that London is going greener with buses being modified to run on battery powered and possibly London could have hydrogen powered buses.
I understand that the Bamford Bus Company (who took over from Wrightbus) are very keen on hydrogen buses and have built at least one demonstration hydrogen double decker
My only problem with London buses is that we will always need double deckers because seating is limited to the back of the bus on these new ones. I just wish they would pump air freshener throughout the buses as they get smelly in London. Ride a bus in Jamaica and you won’t smell any B.O.
That buzzing/humming from the electronics is extremely annoying and would drive me nuts in a very short period of time. The lower deck layout looks very poor and wasteful of space. Not impressed.
It might be that my camcorder's sound system made it sound a little louder, even so it was easily heard and yes would annoy some passengers. What I do not know is whether it was normal for the buses - I will need to track down and ride the other bus to find out.
The reason for the lack of space for seated pasengers is due to the legal requirement to have disabled access. Of course, the basic design of bojo's folly doesn't lend itself to sensible modification for this purpose and it doesn't help that the bodies are built by the dreadful organisation which gave us the worst buses I have ever experienced both as driver and passenger i.e. the absolutely dreadful RW class Dodge/Renault minbuses. The sensible thing to do would be to bring back trolleybuses. We cannot afford to pander to the minority who don't want to see wires above the streets - it happens everywhere that trams and/or trolleybuses are operated. The choice is wires above or a dead planet, which do you prefer ?
@@althejazz I agree. I'm surprised bus companies haven't reverted to such a brilliant idea that was simply forgotten about. Plus in theory, trolleybuses apparently only need wires for 2/3 of the route. Also when you were talking about the worst bus in history I thought you would say streetlites lol.
@@CitytransportInfoplus Went on a hybrid bus in Sweden and when it was in electric mode, it was silent. No buzzing. They need to improve massively in these buses.
Already popular in Hamburg, and up and running, as usual UK is last in the queue - you can also tell the Patriarchal dominated scene too with it being referred to as 'Son of Routemaster'
NextSound ‘Patriarchal dominated scene’ 😂. If you are triggered at the name of a bus then you should go off to Hamburg and leave😂😂. Is it not that women are getting preferential treatment when most people refer to vehicles as ‘She’. E.g. ‘She is a great car’ ?
It's running in Harrogate though
Surely something like the ADL E400XLB Volvo B8L would be more suitable for London? Especially with extra seating and capacity available on the peak routes?
There is a BCI one
Is that a triple axle bus? For some reason (maybe because of extra complexity? or TfL have avoided triple axle buses - even though this would solve the axle weight limit and make battery buses more viable.
@@CitytransportInfoplus Yes mate they are the new tri-axle buses that have recently entered service with Lothian in Edinburgh. Here is a photo of one on the Alexander-Dennis website.
www.alexander-dennis.com/media/84472/enviro400xlb-4.jpg
It shows the 12.8 metre example but the Volvo B8L is available in shorter length chassis where these full length buses would not fit on some routes in London.
Wonder what Beno will think of this
You dunno he filmed them midi solos metroline have and those knackered out demo prototype hybrids
Well he finds them rather interesting
@@GenericLifts yup
Are there rare to get sometimes because I might ride on one.
yes, very rare - only two buses on a long-ish route; I used the London Vehicle Finder web page (lvf.io) to discover where the buses are, even so I had to wait a while for one that was travelling in the direction I wanted to travel to arrive
Oh :(
Nice video, but this feels like a flawed compromise to me, having to have an engine AND that massive battery box ruins the lower deck capacity, especially as the regular B5LH lower deck is already a bit compromised at the back. I'm not surprised it wasn't followed up with larger orders, and now pure electric double deckers are entering service anyway.
I don't know what bus is called so please tell me
Its a SRM - there are very few of these in London - just eight, if I remember correctly
Thanks for sharing.
Would it be cheaper and easier to use trolleybuses with batteries which recharge from the overhead lines? With batteries the whole route would not need overhead.
As I understand it, it would not. First it would be a struggle to get approval for installing those overhead lines in most places (some neighbours will hold it up for as long as possible), and secondly the battery and charging tech is improving fast enough that by the time you've got it going it would be obsolete and probably using a system that only a very few cities use (thus increasing costs) instead of using buses, batteries and charging stations that use whatever industry standard will emerge.
Prague is installing trolleybus wires over (I think) about 40% of the route for what is known as 'in-motion charging'. This is the solution that I favour the most, because it gives the buses almost unlimited distance, means the bus does not need so many batteries and means the bus does not have to spend time out of service top-up charging. But the people who run London's buses do not favour this - as otherwise we would have been using it for several decades!
I also much prefer capacitors to batteries, as capacitors will last the life of the vehicle, they are better at absorbing energy (ie: when slowing down) and are less like to catch fire (lithium-ion batteries need careful treatment - if they ignite will burn so hot that they melt some metals). Also, some types of battery use noxious chemicals which will poison the environment if not treated carefully when they are worn out.
The problem with capacitors is that they have less energy density that batteries, which means that they store less energy and need more frequent recharging. This is probably why there are very few capabuses (capacitor buses)
@@GustavSvard I doubt many residents would actually complain about trolley wires being installed, especially since saving the environment has become a much bigger concern for Londoners (apart from those snobbish upper class residents that like to complain about anything to do with transport). I would think that many London residents would accept the fact that it's basically for our own good if we want efficient zero emissions vehicles. Also, now we have street lights to help carry the wires (as seen on the Croydon Tram), something that wasn't common back in the 1950's when we first had trolleybuses and more flexible pantographs are being made, so the wires will not need to cover the entire road anymore thus not nearly as many wires will need to be installed as you'd think.
There is no need for this opportunity charging. Electric buses and hydrogen buses already have a decent range.
I bet its coz of Boris we cant have New Bus for London Styled buses anymore this is why the SRM B5LHC hasn't entered service...
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if this one is on Khan (just as the bendy bus replacement was Boris). I think that getting the new Routemasters was a terrible idea but as the bus is already developed and there’s the opportunity charging battery bus, it would have been a good idea to test out that technology alongside...
yea new routemaster is terrible but the shortmaster is good and as this is pretty much an electric bus but a hybrid i think company's should get more
very much because of Khan, and party political politics; I also wonder if BYD might have convinced TfL that opportunity charging is a bad thing.
i think opportunity charging is a good thing tbh we could see more electric buses just quickly having a charge at bus stops or bus stations
Boris?!? No! He created this style and would have wanted more of his own of course!
It’s Sadiq that would have put a stop to this. He’s rivals with Boris, he doesn’t want to use rival designs, I think that’s pretty self explanatory....
Very disappointed at the bottom deck
ADL and BYD is better than this ？
That hybrid encroaches too far into circulatory space downstairs there, here's hoping its design soon be scrapped 🍺. So what must initmidate operators there about pure battery buses? Or must transits there have _become_ just as dopey for crooked corporate ploys as they are here?
Yes, the battery pack does intrude somewhat, but on a low floor double decker they have to go somewhere.
Ditching its engine's 1 answer; I'm wondering why the caution toward full-tilt battery buses, it's not like having to augment your traction by chains'd ever happen there, or must battery draining from being stuck in traffic be the real danger, for example.
By the way, promised fuel-cost saving prooved c r o o k e d here, hybrids being ⅙ costlier than to run plain diesels.
Let's keep it simple or do we want to go back to overhead trolleybus wires? There's no need now. electric buses have enough range.
The problem with batteries is that they weigh so much and take up so much space that to stay within the legally mandated axle weight limit the passenger capacity is reduced.
So, I would welcome battery trolleybuses which use in-motion charging as a way to allow buses to carry a full complement of passengers and reduce the amount of space taken by the batteries!
@@CitytransportInfoplus Thanks. I understand what you are saying but I don't think you fully understood my points. Yes batteries are heavy but now they give the buses all the range they need for their routes plus a little more range than actually needed. They are fully self-contained units and only need plugging in overnight( night buses plugged in during the day of course) and they do not need any external equipment. in addition there is no need to clutter up streets with wires or anything else. I remember and loved the trolley buses when i was a kid but we no longer need anymore street clutter. Also battery technology is improving all the time and now, as I'm sure you know, we have hydrogen buses as well and there may be other fuel types coming alone. Thanks again for your reply and best wishes.
yes I understood what you said, but it only applies to some routes. I understand that on the two routes which have just introduced double deck battery buses (134, 43) the buses cannot travel a full day without recharging - so careful scheduling is needed to ensure that each bus is only out for part of a day.
btw, Prague, Czech Republic, is bringing back trolleybuses and is wiring about 40% of the route - these trolleybuses have batteries which are recharged whilst 'in-motion' (ie: travelling as trolleybuses) and this allows the rest of the route to be unwired. Rome, Italy has just opened another trolleybus route but because it had such a bad experience with batteries on a different route its new trolleybuses still use diesel power when on unwired roads.
Sadly yet another example of a half job. A good idea certainly for opportunity charging, would certainly benefit full electric buses too.
First
thanks for watching
@TheRenaissanceman65 first comment