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'UK first' battery powered train slashes fuel costs by up to 50 per cent
(www.businessgreen.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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More than half is still old school
That’s… surprising. Here in Japan, over 26,000 km of the 30,000 some-odd km of track is electrified. Most of the fueled trains are for freight, which only accounts for less than 1% of rail traffic.
What prevented the UK from deploying electrification to that extent? Is it politics or logistics?
Politics. They privatized rail and the private companies don't like doing the investment.
So are battery trains expensive in the long run and have worse performance, and only being used because they're immediately cheaper than electrifying more rail?
Pretty much, yeah. I also believe this is due to the infrastructure being run by different companies than the ones running the trains on them, so there's no incentive to invest in electrification.