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141 comments on HYDROGEN - grease to the elbow of Scottish power?
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I found out about the contest after it was closed.
My proposal:
- Run all makeup air for the stations through dehumidifers that also cooled. This lowers humidity and lowers the temperature a bit. Comfort zones increase (wider band) as humidity drops.
- On cold winter nights (say after midnight weekdays) blow quantities of outside are through the tunnels for several hours. This will remove some of the acculmulated heat from the rocks that a century of heat (people + electricity) has added. It may be near freezing in the Tube for those few riders late at night and aftereffects for early morning riders.
- Go for lower energy for lighting. MAXIMUM efficiency. Lower light levels where safe. Start pumping less heat into the Tube.
Best Hopes,Alan
This BBC story covers using the ground water pumped out, to cool the air in the tunnels.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5058362.stm
http://www.cibse.org/pdfs/Cooling.pdf
Re: modal shift to buses, didn't York achive this first with their park and ride scheme, of course having a medieval city centre and city wall (not to mention the river) limits your options.
No congestion charge, just park and ride schemes and not moterised access to the city centre.
Cycling - It is often the 10% that are more than five miles (like the commute to work) which are non-discresionary.
Isn't the density of the sprawl sufficent to justify light rail or other public transport, (it is not low density sprawl) of course, adding public transport at the planning stage would have been ideal. But that goes for other amenities too.
I have several differences with current government transport policy, their views on light rail and road charging are just two.
Banning cars in Central London just wasn't going to work. They have restricted them to an extraordinary extent as it is, and they are only about 20% of peak traffic.
The congestion charge was the stroke of genius. The national congestion charge will come, but only when the traffic problem gets almost insuperable. Traffic grows roughly in line with GDP, so give it 20 years or so and severe traffic congestion will be something like 25% of UK road space, 50% of the time.
The problem with air con on the Tube is you can't put it on the cars, (the tunnels are too small).
Maybe you can air con the stations but most of that would be lost down the tunnels (which are not air tight).
Cycling will be the way forward in London, and other places. Because cycling has no CO2 impact, and cycling has nearly no congestion impact.
It's the only feasible way to expand the capacity of the system. Other than buses, but buses without their own right of ways don't cause switching.
To make a subway work financially, on Toronto metrics, you need 20,000 people per square mile. A British suburb is less than 5,000 people per square mile-- light rail you would need . 10,000.
What the government is saying is that it will not fund the ongoing operating losses of light rail systems. That is why there has been a halt on constructing new ones. Note the Wimbledon system in south London has disappointed against traffic projections.
You can do it economically with buses, but as you say people don't like taking buses, and won't if they have an alternative. Milton Keynes being the case in point-- if you don't have a car, you are really cut off in MK.
Brits are not North Americans-- the idea of living in tall apartment blocks in the city centre does not appeal. I know a lot have been built more recently, but even if downtown Manchester has a population of 15,000 now, from virtually zero 15 years ago, this is still a small fraction of the population of metropolitan Manchester.
and I suspect most people are buying those flats to get a 'foot on the ladder', not to live in them forever.
You are not trying to air condition the underground, but to dump excess heat, here ground water at 12C seemd ideal, as does just using convection to dump heat to the atmosphere by drilling vertical shafts (where practical) and letting convection solve the problem. You can always heat the carrages in the event of the underground becoming too cold.
I am still skeptical that cycling will ever become the dominant form of transport, but when practical facilities should be improved for cycleists, and they could be allowed in public transport zones.
You metrics assume certain factors, if we modify those factors (like restricting access via private car), or just raising the cost of motoring and lowering the cost of public transport, we can influence the metrics that justify public transport. But dense high traffic routes are the obvious targets for high quality frequent public transport (and that does not mean Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in my view).
The densities choosen for new developments are quite high (I don't have the figures).
The first step may be to expand existing rail routes etc and increase capacity and frequency on the railways, examine the underperformance of some light rail schemes light rail and further disincentivise private car use in urban centres through restrictions rather than congestion charges.
One way or another we need to make public transport cheap and convienent, and Rail/Light Rail offers the best opportunity for switching.
Many new towns appear to lack any public transport infrastructure. I am thinking of the one just outside Edinburgh, and Cumbernauld (both on M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow). They are souless.
Look at the Leeds Supertram, they rejected it (in favour of suggesting a BRT scheme), on the grounds that costs had doubled. But that was costs not adjusted for inflation.
Needless to say 12 years of inflation explained the increased costs, and the enabling legislation expired.
Ground temperature is almost constant, year round.
What is not constant is the heat generated by the machinery, people and the heat taken in from the outside air. Every Tube line has open air bits.
We would have to drill new tunnels, which is virtually a physical impossibility.
Tube air temperatures are, broadly, the sum of outside temps + electrical use + body heat.
The concept is to cool the rock around the Tube for, say, 1000 hours/year each year and, at a minimum, stop the increasing temperatures and hopefully reverse the process slightly.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Lowering the lighting levels any further would be entirely unsafe.
The best white LED's available commercialy struggle to get 40 lumens/watt. Lumiled's best is 120 lumens at 3.7W
Fluorescents get over 90 lumens/watt. Standard T5 triphosphor fluorescents from Osram get 2600 lumens at 28W
Best Hopes,
Alan
Alan
Osram SOX-E 91WBY32D RWL1 gives 17000 lumens for 90W in, that's 189 lumens/watt
I thought low pressure sodium was in the 150 lumens/watt range (>100 lumens/watt does not set an upper bound). Perhaps technology has improved. Good if so :-)
Alan
Since maintenance is an issue in London, I do not expect that they are any better.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Frustratingly, even in the rebuilt stations, they are not, AFAIK, thinking energy conservation.
1/2-1/3rd of lighting power consumption, I presume you mean. The big draws are still electric traction, elevators and air circulation?