Re: Call for restoration of BRT bus route.


On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, Nai`a wrote:

Alvin E. Toda wrote:

It seemed kind of political that the E-route along
which the only silent ...


For crying out loud, Alvin, what was silent about it?

I ride those buses home just about every other night;
they are NOT silent. Not by any stretch of the
imagination.


OK maybe silent is an exageration. I don't know. But
neither do I know whether you are just nitpicking,
exagerating, or the hybrid busses are really that
noisey. You haven't compared them to the regular busses
that you ride. And in fact, if they are that noisey,
then they aren't like any other hybrid that I've been
in.

I've driven several models of hybrid cars-- the Insight
several years ago, the Prius, and the Hybrid Sentra.
Have also ridden in an older Prius. And have talked to
a student at a conference who was part of a team about
20years ago that built a hybrid out of a Nissan station
wagon. The students said their car with a gas turbine
to charge a battery, didn't make too much sound, and
got 80 miles per gallon. The gas turbin didn't drive
the wheels. Don't recall whether the braking wheels
charged the batteries, or whether they were
machanically linked to a fly wheel to store the energy.
I imagine a hybrid whose wheels are driven by electric
motors only would be very silent.

The other commercial cars, I've been in, start to brake
by connecting the wheels to a generator while the
engine starts to idle and turn off when the car motion
stops. The engine stops running at a stop even if the
air conditioner is working. Generally, when the car is
moving, the engine just idles to assist the motors or
charge the batteries. Also the engine is tiny-- IIRC
just about 50 hp or about the size of a small motor
boat.

Don't know what the problem is, but generally diesels
are noisier than gasoline engines. I would expect
that the diesel engine for a hybrid bus would be much
smaller. So it should be less noisy than a regular
diesel. Also, the engine should be going off half the
time during city driving. In fact, that's why hybrids
have so much greater milliage in city driving than
non-diesel busses.

Hybrid engines only turn on when the batteries start to
drain. So in fact, in Waikiki, where visitors don't
like the noise of idling diesel engines at bus stops,
the hybrids shouldn't be on. And occasionally when the
diesels of the hybrids go on, they're mostly idling.
Sure a diesel is a diesel, but have you noticed a
difference in operation of diesel in a hybrid and the
non-hybrid diesel with an engine much larger? If the
engine is noisey and on all the time, then it really
isn't operating like any hybrid car like I've ever been
in.

It's a legacy of Mayor Harris. 

Mayor Jeremy "Forget the Sewers" Harris has enough of
a legacy already, thanks. And that smell is NOT
roses.


Recall that the number of sewer incidents went down an
order of magnitude during his tenure. So the system was
working better. I think it's a bum rap because most of
the effluent is from IIRC one spill and that may have
happen during bad weather when there was not much that
could be done. The state may complain (and it may be
political here), but it really doesn't have a case.

http://starbulletin.com/2005/08/17/news/story9.html

Apparantly, there really is a need for the route. 

No, there isn't. It's $3,600,000 worth of
"Duplication".


Then why is there a petition from 500 riders? Seems
like the dept will be taking up their petition.

BTW, according to the article, there is no other route
like the missing route, although other routes may
service portions of the route. I suppose ridders just
make one or two transfers. But that isn't the same as
one contiguous route. There's no "duplication" here.
Probably the writer doesn't take the Bus, or just
doesn't have time to do more research for writing.

And according to the article, the dept is considering
another route-- Waikiki, downtown, Ala Moana -- as an
express route which seems to be exactly the same as the
E-route that is being considered for re-instating. So
why do you insist that it is not needed?

The real problem according to the article is that by
switching the BRT Bus to another route, they were
better able to service that route. Two other routes
according to the article also do not have enough
busses. The dept really needs to service the three
routes adequately AND reinstate route E. They need at
least three more busses.

--alvin

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