Vancouver New Flyer Trolleybuses In 1993

As part of a multi-city trip around North America in May 1993 I spent a few days in Vancouver BC Canada where I filmed the New Flyer trolleybuses and the fully automated driverless SkyTrain (as it was called in those days) urban railway / metro / subway.

This film primarily shows the trolleybuses - pure electric buses powered from twin overhead wires that do not emit any tailpipe air pollution.

Some North American cities also call this type of vehicle a 'trolleycoach'.

Vancouver sources its electricity from hydro power stations, which means that the power supplies are 100% clean / non polluting.

Thanks to their physical connection to the power supply grid trolleybuses can benefit from unlimited distance and time schedules - in some cities they are even known to work for 24 hours (and longer) in one shift, stopping only for a few minutes to allow a change of human bus driver!

Trolleybuses should not be confused with battery buses, which are also electric but carry their source of energy on them. This adds weight and restricts how far they can travel before needing to be parked somewhere for the batteries to be recharged.

A way to avoid the down-time when battery buses have to be taken out of service for battery charging is for the buses to be fitted with overhead wire power collection equipment and to recharge their batteries whilst travelling in trolleybus mode. This innovation is known as in-motion charging (IMC). It is not seen in this film but currently (2023) it is being planned for Vancouver. The idea being to replace polluting fossil fuel buses (diesel, CNG / LPG types of gas etc). This concept is especially beneficial where the fossil fuel buses travel for most of their time on roads already equipped with overhead power supply wires and to allow buses to use roads on limited services (eg: peak-hour extensions beyond the daily terminus) where the cost of installing overhead power supply wires can bot be justified.

Also seen in this film is the diesel powered bus that has bodywork somewhat similar to what in the US English dialect is known as a 'Vintage Trolley'. This term refers to a first generation streetcar / tram.