ALERT: Gillig Trolley Demo in Alexandria

[Tritransit Area]

The unit we had on demo was from the Poconos, a 30-foot hybrid that cost $650k.

Get the f out of here!  $650,000 dollars for some little 30-foot fake-me-out trolley "replica" based off of a transit bus?!   I cannot BELIEVE that MCTA actually spent that kind of money for that little trolley thingy!

Well, at least it has hybrid propulsion so it can make its way up the mountain.

I'm wondering why Lafeyette's hybrids were so inexpensive, even with the BRT styling.  I wonder if Ride On's pricetag was in the same ballpark.

[aznboy4305]

From my personal experience, hybrids are NOT good for mountains or any hilly terrain. They will actually roll back when you let off the brake on an incline, and the initial throttle lag is so significant that the rollback is very difficult to avoid. Once you do finally get rolling, their power peak is about 35 mph. If you want to go any faster than 35 mph up a hill, you're screwed. But that is just our units, maybe more mountainous customers have different programming.

[79MetroExtraMD]

From my personal experience, hybrids are NOT good for mountains or any hilly terrain. They will actually roll back when you let off the brake on an incline, and the initial throttle lag is so significant that the rollback is very difficult to avoid. Once you do finally get rolling, their power peak is about 35 mph. If you want to go any faster than 35 mph up a hill, you're screwed. But that is just our units, maybe more mountainous customers have different programming.

Yosemite National Park has some Gillig HEVs. Banff Roam has LFS hybrids and that's in a really mountainous area.

[aznboy4305]

You try driving one up a hill, let alone anywhere, and let me know how it goes.

[Tritransit Area]

They will actually roll back when you let off the brake on an incline, and the initial throttle lag is so significant that the rollback is very difficult to avoid.

SEPTA's are the same way. I can't say much about the older ones, since they don't really see hills, but I've noticed that nice roll back.  I tend to think it's an "electric power" thing - you don't have the transmission preventing that.  It's the same with the trackless trolleys.

[Tristan]

35MPH is great speed for a hill - there are buses here that can't break 10 on hills.  Interestingly enough, I didn't notice such problems with San Fran's Skodas or Orion VIIs, and that city has amazing hills.  They probably specified some sort of hill hold on their buses.

[aznboy4305]

That is true, I forgot how slow some buses are back there.

[RailBus63]

That bike rack looks hideous on this 'trolley'.

[Tristan]

That's a 3-bike rack that Tampa wanted.  The unit that Gillig showed off here had a standard 2-bike rack...but, it still looked kinda weird.