MBTA is now making clear that they want to scrap electric trolley buses in silver line tunnel and north cambridge and replace them with “enhanced” hybrids abs someday with battery electric buses. This is a step backwards and should be stopped.

They complain about the downsides of the current aged trolley bus fleet and overhead wire infrastructure without acknowledging or looking into the fantastic upsides (1) of modern trolley buses that can go off wire for 2/3 of trip, and (2) simply choosing to upgrade/replace wires

I haven’t seen any references by MBTA to other systems that do very well with electric trolley buses and the new in motion charging off wire capabilities of modern trolley buses. They are simply not interested.

By adopting the newer IMC bus technologies they could eliminate some overhead wire pain points, never again have a trolley bus stuck and could expand the current network tremendously without much more wires.

They are green washing this by calling new hybrids “enhanced” to disguise the fact that they run on diesel, and by talking about full battery buses in the future. Despite that their battery bus pilot did not go well.

They MBTA currently has buses that are 100% electric and they want to scrap it without looking at other modern 100% electric network solutions that have great success in other cities.