Electric Buses

under stable conditions than small mobile plants operating
under continually varying conditions
C.Ability to use energy resources that are impractical or
impossible in vehicles e.g. like wind and water power or
solid fuels

Clearly, when and if, development in storage battery technology, produces batteries that can compete in terms of size, weight, cost, ease of recharging, etc., with say, a tank for diesel fuel, all vehicles could be electric, with all the environmental advantages that would bring.

However, this is very unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future and the only generally practicable system for getting electric power to moving vehicles is via an energy conductor system.

Where vehicles operate a fixed route at sufficient frequency, it is both practicable and economic to provide an energy conductor system. Thus in many railway, and virtually all light systems, electric propulsion via an energy conductor - conductor rail or trolley wire - is the norm.

The same could and should be true for many of the intensive / guided bus routes envisaged in the consultation document.

Thus there would seem to be a very good case, in environmental terms, for actively encouraging the re- establishment of trolleybus systems in the UK. Since the last trolleybuses ran in public service in Britain in 1972, there have been many advances in the technology of trolleybuses, both in the vehicle technology e.g. the introduction of AC instead of DC propulsion systems and in the power supply systems e.g. solid state instead of mercury arc substations and improvements in the design of the overhead wire systems.