Could Melbourne ditch its overhead tram wires?
A growing list of cities around the world, including Sydney, are building wire-free tram lines, powered at ground level to avoid cluttering the streets with catenary.
One rail industry leader argues Melbourne should follow Sydney’s example and gradually remove the wires that power the city’s 250-kilometre tram network.
Bryan Nye, chief executive of the Australasian Railway Association, said technology had recently emerged that made removing Melbourne’s extensive web of overhead tram wires a realistic proposition.
“I think eventually, within 10 years, you won’t find anywhere that’s got overhead wires,” Mr Nye said. “I think if you wanted to modernise the network in Melbourne you certainly wouldn’t be doing it with wires, you’d look at some of the alternative technologies.”
Sydney plans to go wire-free on parts of its $1.6 billion light rail network, which is due to open by 2020.
Other cities that have installed wireless tram lines in the past decade includes Bordeaux and Reims in France, Seville in Spain, Nanjing in China and Dubai.
Fairfax Media visited Reims last month, where a new 11-kilometre line through the city includes a two-kilometre section of wire-free track powered using a “third rail” running along the ground.
The technology, Aesthetic Power Supply from French company Alstom’s system, is being considered for Sydney.
Alstom’s Christian Messelyn, who led the eight-year project in Reims, said the third rail was put in “to preserve the old town’s aesthetic appeal”.
However, Mr Nye said the third rail system was a “very expensive option” and instead championed new Chinese technology called the supercapacitor, a battery unit “about the size of a milk carton” that sits beneath the tram and recharges at tram stops.
“It solves so many issues – I mean the challenges in Melbourne of getting power to the network are huge,” Mr Nye said.
Yarra Trams and Public Transport Victoria plan to build or boost 16 electrical substations around Melbourne to cope with the greater energy demands of the 50 new E-Class trams that are currently being introduced at the rate of one a month.
The supercapacitor powers two new tram lines in Guangzhou and Nanjing in southern China.
State-owned company China South Rail exhibited the supercapacitor at an international transport industry trade fair in Berlin last month. The trams are able to run for up to four kilometres per charge, the company said.
Graham Currie, chair of public transport at Monash University’s School of Engineering, said wire-free tram lines could be beautiful, but Melbourne’s network had other more pressing problems.
“There’s far more important things we should be doing,” Professor Currie said. “The important game here is getting trams to be reliable and [in] a reasonably competitive mode, compared to the car.”
Adam Carey visited Berlin and Reims as a guest of Alstom.
This story first appeared in The Age
