Transit
Powering the streetcars, part 3: The hybrid solution
Previously, we looked at the various streetcar power systems in use worldwide and the visual impact of overhead wires. To summarize, overhead wires are cheaper and more proven, and government attorneys believe DC can overturn the ban on wires in the L'Enfant City on its own. However, NCPC and Congress may try to block such an action unless there can be a reasonable compromise. Is there?
A United Streetcar prototype in Portland.
Many of the streets in the L'Enfant City, such as H Street, won't become ugly simply because of a few overhead wires. As commenters have noted, we already have overhead streetlights, traffic signals, trees and more. However, NCPC may have a legitimate concern about protecting important "viewsheds," such as the radial avenues that emanate from the Capitol or the White House. Likewise, having wires cross the Mall is probably a non-starter, and likely undesirable as well.
Further, as you noticed from reading the overhead wire article, wires are much more visible where routes curve or intersect. A single wire can propel a streetcar along a straight segment of street; at an intersection, there must be more wires, and if a roadway curves gently, the wire requires more closely-spaced anchoring wires to turn it along with the roadway.
Is there a solution? DDOT Director Gabe Klein explained DC's likely approach at a DC Council hearing last week about the 11th Street Bridge. (Fast forward to 55:10.) Klein explained that they're talking to United Streetcar, a Portland-based streetcar manufacturer, which is working on hybrid vehicles that can run on overhead wires but also "drop the catenary" to switch to battery power. These vehicles can operate for up to a mile without the overhead wires. Otherwise, the vehicles are compatible with those made by Czech manufacturer Skoda, three of whose vehicles DC currently owns (and, Klein explained, DDOT hopes to move to DC by the end of the year).
DDOT is also continuing to look into other hybrid technologies, many of which are evolving very quickly. In addition to Alstom's STEEM, which uses supercapacitors, Infrastructurist's Yonah Freemark pointed out SWIMO, another regenerative-braking system using batteries that's already been tested in Japan for over two years.
Ultimately, we'll most likely end up with one of these hybrid systems which uses wires in some areas but also allows gaps in sensitive areas. If the major viewsheds, intersections and curves are the major problems, why not simply leave those out? Here's a map of what the network could look like inside the L'Enfant City, based on the alignments in the 2005 DC Alternatives Analysis:
The purple areas show possible gaps. Every segment on a radial avenue from either the White House or Capitol includes a gap, such as Farragut Square crossing Connecticut Avnenue. There would be no way to see a single wire from the Capitol or White House. Some might not really need gaps, such as Delaware Avenue in Southwest, where you can't actually see the Capitol thanks to the freeways in the way. Likewise, all turns and curved segments get gaps, as does the portion past Congressional office buildings and the Mall.
The longest of these segments is less than one mile, except for the portion from Washington Circle through Georgetown. Georgetown is very unlikely to ever accept overhead wires, and so any streetcar plan that includes a line in Georgetown needs to find an alternative. If the United Streetcar stop can recharge at stations, like STEEM can, that could boost the streetcars over the mile limit. Plus, Georgetown is nowhere near the top of the list for streetcar segments. By the time DDOT is ready to build any line to Georgetown, if ever, the technology may have further advanced.
Another option would be to route any Georgetown streetcar along K Street instead of M. The original K Street Transitway study (PDF), which also recommended creating the Circulator service along K Street that now exists, recommended buses use K Street, under the Whitehurst Freeway, in one direction. Georgetown may well be less resistant to overhead wires beneath an overhead freeway. Such a route would also let streetcars use the underpass at Washington Circle.
DC and NCPC should work out an agreement. DC should promise to protect key viewsheds and otherwise design the system to minimize the visual impact. In exchange, NCPC should drop its opposition to any overhead wires in the L'Enfant City. DDOT can identify the best technology that uses wires in most areas but switches to an alternative power source where needed. An absolute ban on wires will force DC to either build an extremely expensive system or none at all, while unfettered use of overhead wires will indeed mar some of DC's iconic and unique views along major avenues. A hybrid is the most reasonable compromise.
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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by BeyondDC on Sep 23, 2009 10:19 am • link • report
by David Alpert on Sep 23, 2009 10:24 am • link • report
What if the streetcars had hybrid-diesel engines, or some sort of hybrid system in which they could run on diesel in areas where there are no overhead wires? Or even natural gas?
Just an idea.
by Tim on Sep 23, 2009 10:31 am • link • report
Seriously, are our "viewsheds" really more special than those of Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Kyoto, Lisbon, Mexico City, Prague, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Vienna, etc etc?
by Jasper on Sep 23, 2009 10:38 am • link • report
That being said, I think in DC you would need to run a aux engine to power AC. SO there is going to be noise anyways -- and having a hybrid engine is less of a problem.
by charlie on Sep 23, 2009 10:39 am • link • report
If it's only $3-5M more to go this route, and doesn't increase the operating costs too much, great.
If it's $100M more and costs $5-10M more per year, then we need to talk more about how much viewsheds are worth.
@Jasper, repeat it with me, "WMATA is not DC". It's different money.
by Michael Perkins on Sep 23, 2009 10:51 am • link • report
Also, Berlin shouldn't really be on the above list of cities that "didn't see the need" - streetcars are only in East Berlin, and were set up by the GDR which was a dictatorship and couldn't afford to expand the subway like the West did.
by Phil on Sep 23, 2009 10:57 am • link • report
Wouldn't be *be* the same pot of money, Michael, if the streetcar project applied for the same federal grants that WMATA does? Or are they separate pools? I'm not sure on exactly how those FTA grants work.
by Distantantennas on Sep 23, 2009 11:05 am • link • report
Which means they'll be even more effective at killing pedestrians than Metro busses, but less effective than hybrids.
:)
by oboe on Sep 23, 2009 11:09 am • link • report
DDOT has some cash right now. You may have noticed they are about to start the largest capital improvement project they've ever done.
by BeyondDC on Sep 23, 2009 11:13 am • link • report
Um, no. Would you really want to be in a streetcar at noon during the summer here for even 30 seconds without the AC blowing full blast? Talk about a way to eliminate customers . . .
by ah on Sep 23, 2009 11:17 am • link • report
by NikolasM on Sep 23, 2009 11:34 am • link • report
by NikolasM on Sep 23, 2009 11:36 am • link • report
No. Transit money is transit money. If it is spent/invested/wasted on one thing, it can not be used for something else. Regardless of where the money is budgeted.
@Distantantennas it's always sexier to build new stuff than to take care of the things you have.
True. Unfortunately, the US is not known for its overspending in transit. Or in fact its infrastructure. That's why highway bridges collapse, and why it takes 20 years to build a metro line to the airport.
The question is not how much our "viewsheds" are worth. The question is whether they are worth a reduction in service elsewhere.
by Jasper on Sep 23, 2009 12:05 pm • link • report
Not true. Not for DDOT, anyway. State-level DOTs have lots of authority to spend money on whatever mode they want. Most *local jurisdictions* get very limited transit money, because most state-level DOTs choose to allocate most of their budgets for roads. DC however is in the enviable position of being both a local and a state-level government, so they have more authority over how much of their DOT funding goes to transit versus roads.
by BeyondDC on Sep 23, 2009 12:13 pm • link • report
by Steven on Sep 23, 2009 12:38 pm • link • report
I personally think a hybrid system that uses an on-board natural gas generator with an automated refill system at key locations would work wonderfully. Have batteries on-board for brake regen and to scoot across intersections/curve with the gas generator kicking in after a few minutes.
I'm guessing there probably isn't space in the streets cars for a generator large enough to power the unit. United Street car lists as having 4 90Kwatt motors. That is roughly 480HP. I can't see a place to hide that in the current low floor dual direction models.
Maybe the old plow style system isn't too bad. Update it with technology to turn on/off sections that only the streetcar is over and it would be safe.
Whatever system is chosen should be open with multiple vendors capable of implementing.
by shy on Sep 23, 2009 1:15 pm • link • report
Yes. DC is designed around views, and these matter.
That said, I'd actually prefer more visible catenary in some places, and then no wires elsewhere. Even Bordeaux has wires outside of the UNESCO-designated area.
by цarьchitect on Sep 23, 2009 1:21 pm • link • report
by Phil on Sep 23, 2009 1:23 pm • link • report
by ah on Sep 23, 2009 1:25 pm • link • report
But they still can spend every dollar only once. DDOT is not the FED that can print its own money.
@ Steven: What if you were to imbed the wire in some sort of plastic or carbon-composite structure with the wire exposed on the bottom?
Good idea. But useless. It is not the weight of the cables that matters. It is the forces and weights that might act on them that matter. The wires need to be able to withstand strong winds, and be able to carry the weight of accumulated ice after an ice storm.
@ цarьchitect: Yes. DC is designed around views, and these matter.
They sure do. But do they matter more than the alternatives that the money can be spent on? Do we want a pretty streetcar or a functional one? Do we want a wireless streetcar, or do we want reduced service elsewhere in the transit system? Do we want wireless streetcars, or do we want another set of bike paths?
Choices need to be made on how to spend the limited amount of money that is available for transit/infrastructure.
I would also argue that it is hard to argue that the other cities are not built around certain views. I do not want to be denigrating about DC here, it is a very nice city. But it simply does not have a lot of features that make it more special than the cities that I mentioned. They were not randomly chosen. They are on all continents, and are or have been the center of enormous alliances, empires or states.
A lot of them have been the center of "the universe" at some point in time. Amsterdam and Lisbon were highly important in the colonial times. Berlin in two world wars. Cairo, Kyoto and Shanghai were the centers of dynasties more than a thousand years ago. Shanghai and Mexico City are amongst the largest cities in the world. Prague and Vienna dominated Europe at times.
A good chunk of them also have way better transit systems than DC.
All I'm saying is that we better have good arguments to second guess them. You can't say there are no important views in those cities.
by Jasper on Sep 23, 2009 1:46 pm • link • report
True enough. Which is why they can't send every dollar they get off to WMATA.
by BeyondDC on Sep 23, 2009 2:07 pm • link • report
personally, i dont give a shit about the aesthetics of berlin. i live here in dc and love the beauty of my city.
i'd rather have no streetcars than sully the "viewsheds".
and i bet the majority of this city feel the same way.
bitch all you want, but the buses and trains as they are work fine for me. a streetcar is pretty and all and we shouldn't compromise the aesthetic when its not really adding all that much to what exists.
by dcguy on Sep 23, 2009 2:35 pm • link • report
That said, I don't have a problem with streetcars here.
by Phil on Sep 23, 2009 2:47 pm • link • report
At one point (in the 1930's), the system was rather extensive, but abandonments started then (the first "big" abandonment being the the WB&A Interurban to Annapolis and Baltimore (which ran on D.C. streetcar tracks in the District of Columbia - even though it was a separate service) and then the streetcar line along Connecticut Avenue, N.W. which was converted to buses a few years later). The H Street, N.E./Benning Road line was converted from streetcars to buses about 1947.
But the big shut-down came after the 1956 transit workers' strike, when Congress ordered the transit franchise taken from Capital Transit (e.g. Louis Wolfson) and ultimately awarded to D.C. Transit (in the person of O. Roy Chalk). Chalk was awarded the franchise subject to the condition (imposed by Congress) that he convert the streetcar system to buses, which he did. No GM conspiracy in Washington.
Those streetcars operated in the monumental core of D.C., where overhead trolley wire was (and is) outlawed by Congress.
How was the problem solved then? Not with batteries, but with the so-called conduit system, remnants of which can still be seen in Georgetown on O and P Streets, N.W. A "plow" was attached to the underside of one of the trucks on the streetcar, which contacted power rails in the conduit (one "hot" or positive, one ground or negative) and supplied power to the car.
This system worked well for decades.
D.C. streetcars still had trolley poles, since overhead wire was used beyond the monumental core. How was this done? An outbound car would stop at a so-called plow pit, where the plow was removed and the trolley pole raised. For inbound cars, the process was reversed.
An image of car 1540 on the plow pit in Georgetown can be seen here. A map of the system as it existed in 1958 (with the plow pits) can be seen here.
Conduit track is not cheap to build, and the persons staffing the plow pits (a nasty and potentially dangerous job) have to be compensated.
by c p zilliacus on Sep 23, 2009 3:37 pm • link • report
No, it worked well enough for decades.
by цarьchitect on Sep 23, 2009 4:15 pm • link • report
by David Alpert on Sep 23, 2009 4:16 pm • link • report
This is a silly argument, I am sorry. You do not need to care about the aestetics of Berlin. But you can not argue that the sight of cars, trucks, buses, traffic lights, traffic signs and let's not forget all the jersey barriers are not destroying the wide "viewsheds", but a single extra wire would.
You are right that DC was designed for views. But those views have been obstructed in many ways. Someone built the treasury between the Capitol and the White House. Someone replaced the nice gravel street with lanes and lanes full of cars. Someone hung traffic lights. Someone installed traffic signs. Someone posted jersey barriers "for safety" all over the place. We have all accepted those things (some reluctantly). After all that obstruction, and extra wire can not be seen as any significant change. It can not even be the proverbial drop that runs over the bucket.
If you are against street cars, that's fine. Be against. But using the overhead wiring as an argument is plain silly.
by Jasper on Sep 23, 2009 5:05 pm • link • report
Rid the roads of thousands of automobiles, improve the air that is breathed, make the city far more walkable, gain a major and needed East-West transport conduit, attract more tourists, bring serious economic development, compound the value of existing Metro investments, etc. etc. etc.
Only in DC could an 1889 or whatever law block this. There needs to be a true cost benefit analysis. Agree very much with the point about "how much is an unobstructed vista worth." Something, but not as much as the opportunity cost of NOT building a streetcar system. By the way, adding wires is completely reversible. When a better technology comes along, just remove them from those places where they are not wanted.
by skinny on Sep 23, 2009 8:46 pm • link • report
by shy on Sep 23, 2009 10:17 pm • link • report
Charlie - *why* would you need an aux engine to power AC? Do you think it needs more power than the actual wheels?
Steven - Curves and junctions don't have to exist in the system - that's the point of this post.
A clarification - "Regenerative braking" is never the primary power element, it's used to recover a minority of wasted energy (some large fraction of brake energy) not lost to friction, inefficient(air-heating) electronics, noise, and aerodynamic drag. The energy has to get into the streetcar in the first place through a powered catenary/overhead line.
by Squalish on Sep 23, 2009 10:29 pm • link • report
by jon on Sep 24, 2009 4:37 am • link • report
In regards to Berlin's streetcars:
The former East doesn't have them exclusively because the government of the DDR installed them, it has them exclusively because the West Berlin government removed the streetcars in the West.
Prior to the division, and for some time after it, streetcars existed in both halves, and like the subway, crossed the border.
The East chose not to remove streetcars because they were a viable transit alternative for a city whose residents lacked the means (or the permits) to own a car.
Currently, there are proposals to rebuild the streetcar lines in the West. Berlin currently lacks the funds to complete major subway projects. As a case in point, the extension of the U5 from Alexanderplatz to Flughafen Tegel is stalled. A short, one track, shuttle is all Berlin has managed to complete of that project, running from Hauptbahnhof to Brandenburger Tor.
And you are correct about expense. They were certainly cheaper to build than S-bahn or U-bahn extensions. That's one of the same reasons DC wants to build streetcars. The Metro is a bit pricey to construct.
by Matt Johnson on Sep 24, 2009 10:10 am • link • report
TRAMS can also be hybrid gas/electric so they could run both overhead wire and un-wired areas. this also prevents the TRAMS from getting stuck if there is a power outage or downed line (which does happen, and DC does have a LOT of trees). It's worth noting that these SCODA trams don't use A/C in other coutries and A/C can use as much power as the propulsion itself... so it's a major drag. It may be worth having supplementry power for propulsion, especially where overhead wires aren't available.
Besides engines there are also CNG turbines which can be used in locamotives - for example the Honeywell AGT1500 gas turbine engine is the main powerplant of the M1 Abrams series of tanks. The engine can use a variety of fuels, including jet fuel, gasoline and diesel. During the early 1970s, the AGT1500 was developed into the PLT27, a flight-weight turboshaft for use in helicopters. These types of engines would also be a great fit for rail service.
by lee.watkins on Sep 25, 2009 7:14 am • link • report
I've liked riding trolleybuses before, in Boston and SFO, they are quieter, smoother (no low frequency diesel rumble), and a lot of good torque from a standing start.
by Michael Perkins on Sep 25, 2009 8:35 am • link • report
by Sivad on Sep 28, 2009 12:10 am • link • report
Probably the best solution - if Congress cannot be persuaded to revoke the prohibition on overhead wires as far as public transit is concerned - is to use small diesel locos to tow the streetcars through the "no wires" area.
The few hundred yards from the boundary on H Street to Union Station would be a perfect demonstration location.
by Dudley Horscroft on Sep 28, 2009 1:54 am • link • report
Separately, isn't the L'Enfant street plan a National Historic Landmark? If so, then certainly the case could be made that affecting the views, which are key to the design, is detrimental to the landmark, which could inhibit the use of federal funds.
Finally, I don't think the fact that other great(er) cities have chosen to allow this infringement needs to govern govern our choices, one way or the other though good alternatives ideas are always welcome.
by ZZinDC on Oct 1, 2009 4:49 pm • link • report
by Michael Perkins on Oct 1, 2009 4:59 pm • link • report
by George Murray on Jun 16, 2011 11:03 am • link • report
For short off-wire distances the balance lies between batteries and super-capacitors. For longer distances I still maintain that towing (or pushing) a generator trailer is the preferable option - there is no space taken up by an on-board generator or fuel tanks, no noise in the car, and the extra mass is not carried around the whole system, just the longer off-wire sections.
The back end-papers of "100 years of Capital Traction" shows a view of Pennsylvania Avenue with 12 lanes - two for trams, two for loading islands, two for parked cars, and six for moving traffic. Allowing 12 ft per lane, this makes 144 ft. This is more than the 120 ft allowed for simple trolley wire but well within the 150 to 300 ft allowed for catenary suspension. So for cross-Pennsylvania Avenue traffic, the support poles would be out of sight on the cross street, and all that could be seen would be four near-invisible wires up in the air.
And if you still don't like overhead wires, and won't have generator trailers, go for updated conduit - can be very cheap and efficient, especially if London style plough shifts are used - it was the outmoded change pits that killed the Benning Line.
by Dudley Horscroft on Jul 9, 2011 3:00 am • link • report
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