Battery is silly for buses, IMO. Invest in streetcars (electrified fixed-route buses) and be done with it. Streetcar lines represent continued investment, and are therefore more attractive to developers, unlike bus routes that can be changed on a whim. And they've been around for longer. Cut the red tape on building them and on zoning if you want to see serious results.
Tram lines really only make sense for very high capacity routes; even in cities with huge tram and underground networks, there’s still place for buses.
I addressed that. High price is an artificial problem caused primarily by red tape, from tariffs to environmental studies to rolling over to NIMBYs over neverending hearings. We had electric streetcars in small towns in the early 1900s in the US. Small towns in other countries have them today.
Buses suck. People don't like riding them as much as trains and streetcars. Bus lines do not attract the same kind of investment that streetcars can. Attracting denser development along routes improves ridership AND tax base, which helps balance out the cost.
I think we will massively regret BEV as the solution to ICE vehicles. They don't handle temperature extremes well and I believe people are overly optimistic about recycling them.
IMO it's totally fine for buses to keep using ICE for many years to come. There are orders of magnitude fewer buses than cars, they are already pretty fuel efficient, and everything that makes public transport more expensive is very bad in my opinion.
If we had zero cars in a city, but 10k diesel buses, the city would still be better than if it had 100k cars and 500 electric buses. I'm making up these numbers, of course.
Point being: sure, electrify everything eventually, but let technology improve and let prices go down to the point that it makea sense for public transport.
Right now, an extra diesel bus would do more good than replacing a diesel bus with an electric one in many cities.
Seattle's streetcars have been changed on a whim, check out the Broadway extension. Just because they've laid tracks doesn't mean nimbys can't prevent them from running.
