More on Coventry's Very Light Rail

One new snippet of information from the video below: the 220 metres test track was installed in only 2 months!  So, a kilometre could be installed in 10 months if you are using just a single installation team, perhaps faster, as they learn how to do it.

Light rail systems always take ages to build.  The reason for that is because you have to build a reinforced concrete bed for the track, and move all the utilities under the road to build that bed.   With the VLR, the concrete bed isn't needed.  In fact, the track is prefabricated, and you need to just remove the top 30 cm (1 ft) of the road surface to install the track.  Because installation is so fast, a municipality could commit to building 1 or 2 miles a year, finish the track required, and have a network soon after construction begins.  Each year thereafter, the network could expand.  With heavier light rail, because of the construction difficulties, a whole line has to be built and completed before it can be opened.

[See my first piece on the VLR, here]

From Geoff Marshall's YouTube channel.

Coventry's very light rail

Sometimes you see an idea that is so clever you wonder why no one thought of it before.  Coventry's proposed very light rail is one of those.   

It has been designed from scratch to minimise costs, with the aim being to allow large towns and small cities to have a tram network.  

First, it has no overhead wires, but runs on batteries which are fast charging.  The tram will be able to run 20 km (12.5 miles) on one charge.  Overhead cabling is expensive, and in historic city centres, unsightly.  

Second, the track is prefabricated.  It is relatively lightweight, and shallower than conventional tram track, designed to be only 11 inches (30 cm) deep.  That way the need to relocate cables, water pipes and gas pipelines is minimised or eliminated.   The track is made off-site, is seated on prefabricated slabs, and is clipped together; it can easily be moved, or even temporarily lifted to facilitate work on utilities.   Constructing the track is the biggest part of building a light rail/tram system.  This technique dramatically reduces costs, and also speeds up construction 10-fold.   Some new tram networks have taken 10 years to build, with massive disruption while they were being built.

The trams themselves will be lightweight, being made of a mixture of steel, aluminium and composites:  

VLR vehicles weigh no more than a tonne per linear kilometre.  Hence, whilst a heavy rail vehicle typically weighs 44 tonnes and can carry 100 passengers, a similarly loaded 11-tonne Coventry VLR vehicle carries 50 passengers. This lower weight reduces infrastructure costs which is a key area for driving down railway costs.  [Read more here]

All these innovations will allow the tram track to be built for about £10 million per kilometre, between one half and one quarter the cost of a conventional light rail.

The track is where the significant cost savings come in. Sitting beneath today’s roads is a crisscross of utilities – gas, water, internet – which can be extremely costly to relocate. This means traditional urban [light] rail can cost anywhere between £25m and £50m per kilometre – with £100m not unheard of in some city centre locations.

The new track, designed from scratch in partnership with WMG and Ingerop, will sit just 30cm into a road surface, minimising the need to move utilities. As a result, Coventry City Council estimates the new track could cost closer to £10m per kilometre to install. [Read more here]

Each tram is about the size of a bus, 11 metres (36 feet) long, 2.65 m (8 ft 8 inches) wide, and 3.17 m (10 ft 5 inches high), and will hold up to 56 passengers.

Why a tram network instead of a bus?

In recent years it has been recognised that due to climate change, air quality, and congestion, there needs to be a shift from cars to public transport.

The permanency of rail tracks encourages clustering of housing, businesses, and leisure facilities along urban routes, whilst improved transport links in rural areas help boost productivity and level up disparities. However, such situations do not necessarily generate high passenger numbers so the challenge is for such rail routes to be financially sustainable.

Nick pointed out that recent developments in technology such as lightweighting, batteries, fast charging, 5G, digital manufacturing, and autonomous operation have made a new mode of affordable rail-based transport possible in the form of VLR which “does what it says on the tin.” [Read more here]

The video below shows a test run.

I consulted the following sources for this article:

The Coventry VLR vehicle – Affordable light rail – part two

The Coventry Very Light Rail Scheme

Coventry Very Light Rail

About Coventry Very Light Rail

Coventry Very Light Rail Set for City Centre Demonstration

VLR – Very Light Rail: A new urban mobility concept in Coventry

Public investment vs wasteful subsidy

 See my pieces on trams.

Carbon emissions by mode of transport

I got this from Mastodon.  I haven't worked out yet how to link to a Mastodon post.  BTW, my Mastodon account is: @Nigel_Purchase@mastodon.au

I'd walk to the shops, but my knees are too sore.  Sad.

Fly, drive, or take the train?

 From the BBC

What are aviation emissions?

Flights produce greenhouse gases - mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) - from burning fuel. These contribute to global warming when released into the atmosphere.

An economy-class return flight from London to New York emits an estimated 0.67 tonnes of CO2 per passenger, according to the calculator from the UN's civil aviation body, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

That's equivalent to 11% of the average annual emissions for someone in the UK or about the same as those caused by someone living in Ghana over a year.

Aviation contributes about 2% of the world's global carbon emissions, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). It predicts passenger numbers will double to 8.2 billion in 2037..

And as other sectors of the economy become greener - with more wind turbines, for example - aviation's proportion of total emissions is set to rise.

How do emissions vary?  

It depends where passengers sit and whether they are taking a long-haul flight or a shorter one.

The flight figures in the table are for economy class. For long haul flights, carbon emissions per passenger per kilometre travelled are about three times higher for business class and four times higher for first class, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

This is because there's more space per seat, so each person accounts for a larger amount of the whole plane's pollution.

Taking off uses more fuel than cruising. For shorter flights, this accounts for a larger proportion of the journey. And it means lower emissions for direct flights than multi-leg trips.

Also, newer planes can be more efficient and some airlines and routes are better at filling seats than others. One analysis found wide variation between per passenger emissions for different airlines.

For private jets, although the planes are smaller, the emissions are split between a much smaller number of people.

For example, Prince Harry and Meghan's recent return flight to Nice would have emitted about four times as much CO2 per person as an equivalent economy flight.

The increased warming effect other, non-CO2, emissions, such as nitrogen oxides, have when they are released at high altitudes can also make a significant difference to emissions calculations.

"The climate effect of non-CO2 emissions from aviation is much greater than the equivalent from other modes of transport, as these non-CO2 greenhouse gases formed at higher altitudes persist for longer than at the surface and also have a stronger warming potential," Eloise Marais, from the Atmospheric Composition Group, at the University of Leicester, told BBC News.

But there is scientific uncertainty about how this effect should be represented in calculators.

The ICAO excludes it, while the BEIS includes it as an option - using a 90% increase to reflect it.

The EcoPassenger calculator - launched by the International Railways Union in cooperation with the European Environment Agency - says it depends on the height the plane reaches.

Longer flights are at higher altitude, so the calculator multiplies by numbers ranging from 1.27 for flights of 500km (300 miles) to 2.5 for those of more than 1,000km.

In the chart above, the high-altitude, non-CO2 emissions are in a different colour.

How does travelling by train compare? 

Train virtually always comes out better than plane, often by a lot. A journey from London to Madrid would emit 43kg (95lb) of CO2 per passenger by train, but 118kg by plane (or 265kg if the non-CO2 emissions are included), according to EcoPassenger.

However, the margin between train and plane emissions varies, depending on several factors, including the type of train. For electric trains, the way the electricity they use is generated is used to calculate carbon emissions.

Diesel trains' carbon emissions can be twice those of electric ones. Figures from the UK Rail Safety and Standards board show some diesel locomotives emit more than 90g of C02 per passenger per kilometre, compared with about 45g for an electric Intercity 225, for example.

The source of the electricity can make a big difference if you compare a country such as France, where about 75% of electricity comes from nuclear power, with Poland, where about 80% of grid power is generated from coal.

Can driving be better than flying?

Yes, if the car's electric - but diesel and petrol cars are also in many cases better options than flying, though it depends on various factors, particularly how many people they're carrying.

According to EcoPassenger, a journey from London to Madrid can be done with lower emissions per passenger by plane, even accounting for the effect of high altitude non-CO2 emissions, if the car is carrying just one person and the plane is full. If you add just one more person into the vehicle, the car wins out.

Coaches also score well. BEIS says travelling by coach emits 27g of CO2 per person per kilometre, compared with 41g on UK rail (but only 6g on Eurostar) - though again this will vary depending on how full they are and the engine type.

People moved per hour

From Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative.

They've left out monorails, but my guess would be they'd have the same capacity as bus rapid transit (BRT) double lane and light rail.  And, a chart of cost per kilometer vs capacity would also be interesting.

Electric busses cheaper than diesel

From Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF)

Air quality is a growing concern in many urban environments and has direct health implications for residents. Tailpipe emissions from internal combustion engines are one of the major sources of harmful pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulates. Diesel engines in particular have very high nitrogen oxide emissions and yet these make up the majority of the global bus fleet.

E-buses have much lower operating costs and can already be cheaper, on the basis of total cost of ownership, than conventional buses today. The TCO of all electric bus configurations that we modelled improves significantly in relation to diesel buses as the number of kilometers traveled annually increases. For example, a 110kWh battery e-bus coupled with the most expensive wireless charging reaches TCO parity with diesel bus at around 60,000km traveled per year (37,000 miles).This means that a bus with the smallest battery, even when coupled with the most expensive charging option, would be cheaper to run in a medium sized city, where buses travel on average 170km/day (106 miles).

[Read more here]

TCO comparison for e-busses and diesel busses with different annual distance travelled
Source: BNEF

TCO means total cost of operation.  For individuals, the "sticker price" of EVs is a negative, even though the total operating cost of EVs is lower than ICEVs.  But for car or bus fleets, the cost of ownership is converted into a monthly lease, and if the lessee is a government or semi-government body, the interest rate implict in the lease agreement will be low because of low risk of default. 

E-busses are already cheaper than diesel busses.   As battery costs decline this advantage will only get better.  And that's before we start in on air pollution.