Sunday 22 December 2019

New in Birmingham 2: Buses with catenary

Been to Birmingham Airport recently?  If so you'll have seen two of these large and unmissable monoliths appear.  These are for opportunity charging new electric buses in use on the long stay car park shuttles at the airport.  Opportunity charging means that buses take on a small amount of charge each time they stop at the bus stop outside the airport terminal.

Close up of the charging equipment.

As long as the bus stops at the correct point (which has been painted on the road) the pantograph style charging equipment drops on to the bus to provide a quick burst of energy.   This is different to electric trains where a train-borne pantograph extends to contact fixed electric wires.
Volvo 9700e bus being charged.


And for completeness, from the rear.

The charging infrastructure (the Opp Charge system) includes a screen, presumably intended to be used to incorporate some kind of departure/real time information, and a mysterious red button.

As well as two opportunity charging points, the airport has also installed two plug-in charging points, which when fully charged should give buses 10-12 hours of operation without the need for further charging (however, I expect they will opportunity charge on every trip to keep them out running for longer).

New in Birmingham 1: Trams without catenary

The next phase of Midland Metro has opened.....three years after the extension down Corporation Street, the tram now extends from 'Grand Central'  - for New Street station, to 'Library', better known as Centenary Square.  And it's catenary free!  The CAF Urbos trams have received batteries which allow them to work through the historic Victoria Square  without the need for visually intrusive overhead wires.

A Midland Metro CAF Urbos tram navigates the junction from Hill Street on to Paradise Street. The Frankfurt Christmas Market is in full swing in the background. 

The first of the two new stops is called Town Hall.  I'd have called it Victoria Square.  Despite being delivered with pink branding for Network West Midlands just a few years ago, Transport for [the] West Midlands (as I think Centro is now called) decided on another rebrand of the public transport network, which has resulted in the trams now being blue.  Trains, historically green, have had to be painted gold. Wasteful!  Oh, and Midland Metro isn't a metro....

The second of the new stops, and new temporary terminus, is Library.  I think it would more logically be called Centenary Square, as it is home to a number of attractions as well as the Library, including the International Convention Centre and Repertory Theatre.  The big wheel behind is a temporary addition in the run up to Christmas.

Between Town Hall and Library the Midland Metro negotiates the inner ring road.  It looks like a sea of cones is going to give way to a sea of potentially quite complicated road markings.    On the pus side the bottom of Broad Street, round the Library Metro stop, looks like it is going to be bus only.

The impact of a West Bromwich Albion home game? Trams are supposed to operate every 8 minutes but on Saturday 21 December headways were all over the place. Presumably there's no event timetable to account for this.

Sunday 15 December 2019

Getting 2.8 million people to Luton Airport every year

Amongst all the noise about the third runway at Heathrow, second runway at Gatwick, possibility of Crossrail 2 or HS3, a long overdue piece of airport/rail infrastructure is quietly taking shape on my doorstep in Luton....

This is Luton Airport Parkway station, opened in 1997.  It is connected to Luton Airport by a shuttle bus, which is initially free but has been charged for the last fifteen years or so, ostensibly to pay for a brand new fleet of Wright FTR buses placed on the service by First.  This has been quietly forgotten as the FTRs were transferred to Swansea, and then a scrap yard, as
older, second hand buses replaced them.
The station opened and shuttle bus operation started when the airport was handling 5 million passengers per annum (mppa).  In 2018 the airport handled over 16 mppa and is expected to meet, if not bust, its maximum permitted of 18mppa in 2019.  Some 15% of those passengers access the airport by rail.  As an airport with a focus on low cost airlines and a heavy [price conscious] visiting friends & relatives (VFR) market, good public transport access is essential.  For completeness, broadly the same number of passengers arrive at the airport by express coach from London. 

The demand for travel to the airport has outgrown the capability to provide it using shuttle buses.  At both ends of the route customers are routinely left behind.   In late 2020 a new rail timetable will be introduced with a half hourly non-stop service between St Pancras and Luton Airport Parkway, which will only increase the number of people choosing rail to access the airport by train. Or at least it would if there was good access onwards to the airport......
Anyone travelling through Luton Airport Parkway over summer/autumn 2019 will have seen a new construction rapidly going up on the east side of the station.  This will be the station for a new automated people mover link between Parkway and the airport terminal.


Whilst to the south the track construction is well under way.
The station under construction, viewed from the west.

And viewing from the north.  The foreground will become an interchange between Luton Airport Parkway and the people mover.

The track towards the airport rises over the A1081 (between the airport and the M1) with a bit of art on the actual bridge itself.

The contractor building the station and new interchange has illustrations on their hoardings showing the works taking place.

There will be a new access to the platforms at Luton Airport Parkway.  This includes lifts and escalators to each platform: escalators were not included in the original station bridge to platform construction, whilst the platform 2/3 lift has been out of service for as long as anyone can remember.
Ain't worked for ages.

Soon to be surplus to requirements.
The automated people mover to be installed is a Doppelmayr Cable Car (DCC)  It's not a monorail!  The DCC was first used at Birmingham Airport to replace its MagLev (admittedly with a bus shuttle for many intervening years).  It has since been rolled out in several airports around the world as well as in Las Vegas where it's known as the Mandalay Bay Tram.   My perception is that the technology is very very simple, which reduces the number of things that can go wrong.  This is essential when 24/7/365 operation is likely to be required (both the Birmingham and Las Vegas applications are effectively 24/7).  

As a cable car it is two trains independently operated, which also means that when maintenance is required, a single train service can be operated.  My only concern was that the trains are specified to be more akin to the Mandalay Bay five-section trains rather than the Birmingham Airport two-section trains, and am pleased to read that they will be four section, capable of operating every four minutes.  The nature of train arrivals does mean that demand will be very 'pulsed' towards the airport but that's a problem every such system faces around the world.

As I say, probably five years overdue at Luton and is a step change in the quality of public transport to the airport.  We don't yet know how it will be charged or if free: like the current shuttle bus my feeling is that it will be integrated in to the National Rail fare structure.  

I wonder if this system will be enough if Luton gets its second terminal and 32mppa......