There seems to be a lot of opposition to trolleys:
-They have supposedly been banned from Manhattan south of 59 Street for a very long time - why?
-I get the impression that a lot of people oppose them without taking into consideration as many advantages/disadvantages of trolleys and buses as possible. One of the things about buses that absolutely irritates me is this:
"Consistent market research and experience over the last 50 years in Europe and North America shows that car commuters are willing to transfer some trips to rail-based public transport but not to buses. Typically light rail systems attract between 30 and 40% of their patronage from former car trips. Rapid transit bus systems attract less than 5% of trips from cars, less than the variability of traffic."
5% is just dreadful to me.
-It is supposedly expensive to pay for electrical power to power electrical trolleys, but what about our dependence on oil? Unless I missed something, we still depend heavily on oil from foreign nations with which we have had several political problems in the past, right or wrong?
-MTA supposedly does not have money to maintain trolleys and buses; it can only do one or the other..oh wait, it was even said that it is not economical to maintain a 100% trolley/trolleybus fleet. How, if electric trolleys do not create ramp lines like motor buses do?
-Are we worse off if we have electrical trolleys that do not cause ramp lines when they have to go back to depots at the end of the day but cannot be used to form a trolley bridge (the trolley version of a bus bridge) in the event of a disaster such as Hurricane Sandy, or if we have motor buses that cause ramp lines when they have to go back to depots but can be used to form a bus bridge? What about the fact that electrical trolleys have a longer lifespan than motor buses?
-Do trolleys provide better working conditions than buses?
-Trolleys seem to provide better riding conditions than buses and offer more interior room for people and their cargo (no wheel wells under any seats, unlike buses).
-It has been said that trolleys cannot circumvent obstructions as easily as buses can. I have a few things to say about this:
+Double-parked vehicles blocking offset bus lanes/offset trolley tracks. (I want to focus on offset lanes/tracks.) It was said previously that since people know that it is physically impossible for a trolley on tracks to circumvent a vehicle blocking the tracks, they feel guiltier about blocking a surface rail vehicle than they do about blocking a non-rail vehicle.
+Utility work. If some agency chooses to do utility work in a way such that a trolley track is blocked, we have to figure out how to get the trolley past the blockage. But, this can be achieved using sidings if the road is wide enough. They could use two lanes for tracks on some parts of Nostrand Ave north of Farragut (except b/w E Pkwy and Sullivan Pl) if they removed all legal parking for personal automobiles (keep loading zones for trucks) from the west side of Nostrand north of Farragut.
I was thinking about a configuration where they put one trolley track where the offset bus lane currently is and had the express trolleys use that track only, stopping at express stations where there are curb extensions, just like the curb extensions that are at SBS bus stops now; and use turnouts to allow the local trolleys access local trolley stations, which would not have curb extensions. This would be just like the present local bus stops.