Wirelessly Charged Buses Being Tested Next Year 245
An anonymous reader writes "From the article: 'Bombardier's electric transit technology will be tested next winter on buses in Montreal, followed in early 2014 on a route in the German city of Mannheim. The transportation giant's Primove technology is designed to allow buses to be charged by underground induction stations when they stop to let passengers hop on and off.' This technology while impressive may not make it to the U.S. even if proven successful due to the lack of popularity of public transportation. If they could only get my phone to charge wirelessly."
The article says that the induction charging stuff could also be used to charge trains.
Re:Trains?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting up a third rail or wire overhead incurs costs too. Plus, it's sometimes inconvenient when a train track has a level crossing with 'regular' traffic.
I'd be more worried about the huge magnetic fields being generated to transfer energy from the grid to the bus or train. You need a whopping amount of Joules to move a train, and to charge it in the short time it's waiting at a stop requires even more current. It probably would make for a very good hard disk degausser... (not to mention the danger to credit cards, RFID card and anything else with a wire loop in it)
Re:free energy? (Score:4, Insightful)
And everyone would be much happier.
Re:Chicago is better then other citys and price is (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude. Punctuation - it's your friend. As is grammar and spelling. I still don't know what you mean by the last half of your giant sentence.
Re:free energy? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you carried a coil of wire with the correct circuitry attached you'd be able to charge your cell phone at the bus/train stop as well.
In fact, slipping a coil of appropriately-wound wire into your buddy's back pocket will become a popular practical joke.
Re:Chicago is better then other citys and price is (Score:5, Insightful)
If by private you mean publicly funded infrastructure such as roads, bridges, highways, traffic systems and policing then you are correct. The only thing private are the cars.
No it's not the existence of this vast asphalt and concrete ball and chain that prevents the US from having a good public transportation system.
It is however the fact that land is plentiful outside metro areas and many people prefer to commute. There are a variety of reasons for this. Historically it has been the industrialization of the inner city areas with businesses wanting to be close to the transportation hubs the cities grew up around. This lead to the residential areas moving further away to avoid pollution and activities they wanted to avoid (bars, worker riots, etc). Which turned the inner city residential areas into lower class neighborhoods and eventually impoverished areas.
So now we have huge suburban communities that sprawl across the land and require decentralized transportation as each area may have residents commuting to entirely different business regions. People now choose where to live based on many factors other than where they work (neighborhood, price, schools, amenities like parks or natural environments) but they still need to commute to work each day.
Centralized transportation of any kind is a failed proposition for many US metro areas. At best it could be a long term strategy if attractive housing and amenities can be set up within walking distance so that young workers can have the choice rather than impoverishing themselves trying to afford a downtown lifestyle.