I thought this was really interesting. Trackless trams have no rails but look like standard trams. They have an advanced optical guidance system which means they can move around cities with the accuracy of standard trams, but they are much cheaper to put in place, and with less disruption, as no rails are needed.
Trackless trams are neither a tram nor a bus, though they have rubber wheels and run on streets. The high-speed rail innovations have transformed a bus into something with all the best features of light rail and none of its worst features.
It replaces the noise and emissions of buses with electric traction from batteries recharged at stations in 30 seconds or at the end of the line in 10 minutes. That could just be an electric bus, but the ART is much more than that. It has all the speed (70kph), capacity and ride quality of light rail with its autonomous optical guidance system, train-like bogies with double axles and special hydraulics and tyres.
The Conversation.
3 comments:
Ozzy springs to mind from that photo...
"I'm going off the rails on a crazy train"....
This is good news. Buses create pollution, while light rail requires the construction of expensive tracks. In my own city, every mile of light rail track takes about two years to complete. Two years of traffic disruption.
The reason you want tracks is that steel-on-steel rolling friction is way less than rubber on road.
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