Why the Demise
"Why and what was the reason, for removing trolley buses from UK cities and towns.
I know that trolleybuses are still operating in Europe and elsewhere in the world." peteandbarb@p1808.fsnet.co.uk |
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If you would like an entry here, simply drop me an with your thoughts. |
From: "Irvine Bell" <home@bell.go-plus.net>
The electric trolleybus is a long established form of urban public transportation. It had a heyday
in the 1930s and 1940s as replacement for street tramways. Its fortunes began to decline in the
1950s as diesels became as cost effective and the 'inflexibility' of a fixed infrastructure became to
be perceived as a disadvantage. At that time, decreasing public transport ridership was often just
accepted as inevitable and environmental issues were of little concern. As equipment wore out,
many trolleybus systems were replaced by diesels. Falling markets for trolleybuses and their
equipment increased costs and accelerated the decline.
Outside Britain major oil supply crises in the 1970s reversed the process. Since then, the needs
to improve urban public transport and increasing awareness of environmental issues have
generated renewed interest in trolleybus technology. The technology itself has developed
considerably e.g. the introduction of individual wheel drives permitting the ultimate in low floor
arrangements. Existing systems have expanded and re-equipped and new systems opened. New
trolleybus systems for Rome in Italy and Landskrona in Sweden were announced last year and
Landskrona will open this autumn. A new system in the Moscow region opened recently making
five systems in that region, including the main Moscow system which with about 2000 vehicles
and 500 miles of routes is the largest in the world.
Substantial numbers of trolleybuses have recently been ordered by or delivered to Athens,
Arnhem, Basel, Bern, Bologna, Boston, Dayton, Esslingen, Genoa, Lausanne, Linz, Lyon, Naples,
St. Etienne, Salzberg, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seattle and Solingen, amongst other places.
From: "Gordon Mackley" <electric_tbus@yahoo.co.uk>
There is no doubt that the size of the LT system compared to the rest of the UK made it
inevitable that what London did would affect all other systems, both by direct factors such as
availability of equipment and cost of same and also indirectly by influence.
The reasons for London's dieselisation are complex.
First the economics post-war were different to pre-war. Pre-war, trolleys were definitely cheaper
than motor buses per passenger mile for many reasons including the small maximum capacity of
motor buses [56 to keep within laden weight restrictions] and the high price of fuel [with a
double deck petrol bus doing only about 4.5 miles per gallon] and the lower wages of trolleybus
drivers compared to motor bus drivers. Post war all of these factors changed and the costs were
around equal. No one in authority was interested in the environmental factors at that time and it
was a fact that to change the wiring for any new traffic schemes required a large amount of
paper work at associated high cost to LT [even though the actual costs of the poles and wires
might be fairly cheap].
The other reason [although never really admitted by LT] was that the Chiswick bus people had
spent a fortune producing the 'ultimate' motor bus, the Routemaster. This money had to be
recouped by a production run of Routemasters to replace something. By 1958 [when the
Routemasters were supposed to come on stream] and even by 1959 [when they actually did] the
RT family fleet was not old enough to need replacing [the last ones having been built in 1954
and having only entered service in 1956]. The only vehicles the RM's could replace were the
trolleybuses. So the demise of the London Trolleys and thus the remaining UK systems is the
usual complex mix of ingredients, very few of which applied to the mainland of Europe.
Many systems did close in mainland European cities of course but a detailed research of each is
necessary to identify exactly why some closed and others remained. I suspect in almost all cases
of closure, economics [either true or false] were the reasons.
From: "Bruce Lake" <bruce.lake619@vodafone.net>
In provincial systems, electricity nationalization in 1948 meant that local
operators could no longer generate their own cheap electricity [often from
power stations built for the trams which was getting life expired], so the
cost of operating went up.
At a similar time, petrol-engined motor-buses which could not shift 70+
passengers up any sort of hill, were being superseded by ever-improving
diesel engined buses, whose capacity was rapidly approaching that of a
trolleybus.
Gathering pace during the post-war decade were improvements and changes
which culminated in the 1960's penchant for removing anything perceived as
'old'. One result of which was massive inner-city development, with their
ring-roads, one-way systems and the like, which of course meant escalating
costs for trolleybus overhead moving, just at the time when the above, more
flexible [in this sense] diesel buses became practical.
There were subsidies for buying new diesel buses around this time, and
subsidies on their fuel, neither of which applied to trolleybuses.
Similarly, the post-war boom in private cars meant that revenues from public
transport were declining at the same time.
Councils were being squeezed on their budgets, if only because of the
immense pressures on a multitude of other projects, hence anything that
saved capital expense [or replacement] was seen as justifiable.
We just missed out on Green pressures and oil-dependency worries. The oil
crisis of the early 70's was so close that I recall noises from Bradford
about reversing the abandonment decision almost before all the wiring had
been cut down and the trolleys sold off [although I'd have to check dates to
be certain].
From: "Chris Irwin" <c.r.irwin@talk21.com>
Have just come across your most interesting site.
With regard to abandonment there is no doubt that the nationalization of power supplies, which meant that cities could not "cross-subsidies" power
for transport, had a big effect. Glasgow in particular lost out when their generating plant was transferred to the government.
However, the major factor was the suppliers. They were just not interested. I remember bumping into the Huddersfield Manager about 1963, when we both
gazing in amazement at a section of new overhead on the Inner Ring Road, then being constructed. The amazement was due to the mix-up between the
contractors and Corporation's wiring people, resulting in buses running down the wrong carriageway [i.e. against the traffic] for a few weeks. I did ask him
that as they had gone to the expense of re-wiring quite a bit of the Waterloo route whether they meant to keep the remaining trolleys. No, he said, he would
like to but the final straw was that British Leyland [who had come to own all the trolleybus makers] had just told him to order all spares needed for the next
ten years as after they were made no spare parts would be supplied. So Huddersfield trolleys had to go and ten minutes was added to the Marsden route to
allow for the slower motor buses.
A very good site.