De bonne idée pour le transport en commun au Québec.

Le Monorail TrensQuebec comme entreprise nationale de transport.
http://www.trensquebec.qc.ca/

Congrès de circonscription et Assemblée générale annuelle de Prévost

Bonjour,

Aujourd’hui se tient l'assemblée générale annuelle de Prévost.

Suivre ce lien pour l'ordre du jour

Nous allons proposer les propositions d’amendements suivant au programme du parti québécois:

1. Pyrolyse des déchets
1. Recyclage à 100 % de tous les déchets. Plus d'information ici.
2. Transport en commun rapide avec savoir-faire québécois
1. Plus d'information ici
3. Banque du Québec pour financer ces projets d'infrastructures.
1. Plus d'information ici

Vous êtes les bienvenus pour appuyer ces projets et participer à notre réussite collective.

Merci,

Simon Filiatrault

Nouveau concept de monorail pour un transport rapide

Source:

• Air de nos campagne
• Cyber Presse, LeSoleil pour un entrevue
• Site du projet TrensQuebec

Le petit bout de film que montre Pierre Langlois fait rêver. On y aperçoit une structure discrète de monorail longeant l'autoroute 40, entre Québec et Montréal. Des cabines de 60 passagers y glissent à la vitesse vertigineuse de 250 kilomètres à l'heure.

Chaque cabine est alimentée par 16 moteurs-roues, une invention de Pierre Couture que l'on connaît mieux pour sa création du moteur-roue d'Hydro-Québec.

Ce moyen de transport n'est pas sujet aux aléas du climat. Pas besoin de le déneiger puisque les moteurs-roues sont complètement recouverts. Le ventre des cabines flotte à 10 mètres du sol, au-dessus de tout obstacle.

Le physicien et conférencier Pierre Langlois a déjà pris le TGV en France, où il a habité pendant quelques années. Il reconnaît qu'il a adoré son expérience. Lorsqu'il est question d'importer cette technologie au Québec, toutefois, le scientifique en lui fait un très, très long pas en arrière.

«Il y a eu deux ou trois centimètres de neige en France, cet hiver et c'était la panique pour le TGV. Imaginez une bordée de 50 centimètres», plaide-t-il.

C'est que le train à grande vitesse, comme son nom l'indique, roule rapidement, soit 360 kilomètres à l'heure. Mieux vaut n'avoir aucun obstacle sur les rails.

Mais c'est loin d'être là le seul argument qui fait pencher Pierre Langlois en faveur du monorail de Pierre Couture.

De passage au Collège Laflèche, hier, dans le cadre des Grandes rencontres, où il est venu expliquer l'importance de libérer la civilisation de sa dépendance au pétrole, le physicien et auteur y est allé de comparaisons étonnantes entre les deux technologies.

Un monorail roule certes moins vite qu'un TGV, soit 250 km/h au lieu de 360. Toutefois, explique-t-il, le monorail, grâce à ses 16 moteurs-roues, prend à peine 20 secondes pour atteindre sa vitesse de croisière et guère plus pour se mettre en arrêt à destination. Le TGV, lui, pendra 8 minutes pour atteindre ses 360 km/h et tout autant pour s'arrêter.

Au bout du compte, ces 16 minutes d'accélération et de décélération font en sorte que seulement 4 petites minutes séparent le monorail du TGV pour parcourir la distance Québec-Montréal. «Et si l'on arrête à Trois-Rivières, le monorail arrivera bien avant le TGV», renchérit M. Langlois.

Avec un monorail, ajoute-t-il, pas besoin de couper le paysage en deux. Grâce à des pylônes à tous les 60 mètres, le monorail peut franchir tous les obstacles: routes, rivières, viaducs.

La superficie des terrains à exproprier pour installer les pylônes ne représente qu'une fraction des expropriations qu'il faudrait imposer avec le TGV, fait-il remarquer.

Contrairement au TGV dont le trajet se limite à une ligne droite entre les deux villes, le monorail possède une souplesse extraordinaire. Il pourrait facilement s'amarrer sur les côtés d'un pont pour aller desservir l'autre rive.

La cerise sur la gâteau, c'est le coût de construction. Au Québec, l'implantation d'un TGV se chiffre à 28 millions $ du kilomètre, rapporte le conférencier. Pour le monorail, il en coûterait à peine 8 millions $ du kilomètre. «C'est donc 2 milliards $ de dollars pour le monorail contre 7 milliards pour le TGV», fait valoir M. Langlois. Presque 4 fois moins cher.

Nissan Leaf electric car compared to a Golf TDI clean diesel

I saw an interesting video that is making some wave on the internet and I wondered if I would buy this type of car?  Would it be practical, what would be the pros and cons?

First the video. I hate those kind of video that manipulate your sense of responsibility.


So, does it really help saving the planet to buy those cars?

Let see the numbers side by side between a TDI and LEAF. Disclosure: I own a Jetta TDI and love it.



So in the end, will it save the planet?
You have to consider that the total cost is more for a Leaf for 160,000 km. Since the impact on the environment is proportional to the total cost of a system it make sense to say that the impact of the Leaf will be greater.  You also need to consider the impact of building those batteries and disposing them after at the end of their life.

Personally I would still buy TDI today.  I hope that this will change with the following improvements:

• Better batteries, based on carbon nano-tubes and ultra-capacitor
• Faster charging time
• Longer autonomy on a charge

UPDATES:

• While commuting the other day with a friend to work, it came to mind that the best way to save gas, money, the environment and many other things is to car pool. In my case, I have cut in half my travel expense by car pooling.  On top of that, I have a friend to talk about the challenges we face as a race.

• I stumble upon this article that list all the "rare" elements that goes in the construction of a hybrid car.  We love our gadgets, but all those elements need to be mined, extracted, refined, used and after the live of the car, recycled of disposed of.  All this mean cost and an impact on nature if not done properly.  We have to understand that while technologies are good, the more complexity you put in a system, most of the time it means more energy expense attached to it.

Diesel "greener" than battery cars!

This is not new to me, when I bought my TDI, I calculated the overall cost and came to the conclusion that my TDI would cost less than those hybrid model. This is now confirmed by a study: source

From what I see of the following study, they did not take into account the battery cost, replacement every few years and environmental impact of those complex batteries and technologies. Yet, TDi cost less!

Diesels greener than battery cars, says Swiss gov report

Get a TDi estate not an EV, and save the planet!

By Lewis Page

Swiss boffins have mounted an investigation into the largely unknown environmental burdens of electric cars using lithium-ion batteries, and say that the manufacturing and disposal of batteries presents no insurmountable barriers to electric motoring. However, their analysis reveals that modern diesel cars are actually better for the environment than battery ones.

The revelations come in a new report issued by Swiss government research lab EMPA, titled Contribution of Li-Ion Batteries to the Environmental Impact of Electric Vehicles. The Swiss boffins, having done some major research into the environmental burdens of making and disposing of li-ion batteries - to add to the established bodies of work on existing cars - say that battery manufacture and disposal aren't that big a deal. However, in today's world, with electricity often made by burning coal or gas, a battery car is still a noticeable eco burden:

The main finding of this study is that the impact of a Li-ion battery used in [a battery-powered car] for transport service is relatively small. In contrast, it is the operation phase that remains the dominant contributor to the environmental burden caused by transport service as long as the electricity for the [battery car] is not produced by renewable hydropower ...

A break even analysis shows that an [internal combustion engined vehicle] would need to consume less than 3.9 L/100km to cause lower [environmental impacts] than a [battery car] ... Consumptions in this range are achieved by some small and very efficient diesel [cars], for example, from Ford and Volkswagen.

Actually quite a lot of the new diesels are in the better-than-battery ballpark, according to UK government figures. The notional battery car considered by the EMPA analysts was a Volkswagen Golf with its normal drivetrain replaced by a battery one: but it seems that you would be doing slightly better for the environment to buy an ordinary new Golf with a 1.6 litre "BlueMotion" injected turbodiesel - which would be a lot cheaper. That would consume 3.8 l/100km, not 3.9.

So would a new Mini Cooper D hatchback or a new Ford Focus, actually. And if you could bear to go for something a little smaller - VW Polo rather than Golf - you'd be streets ahead on the environmental front, down as low as 3.4 l/100km with more than 15 per cent of the car's in-service emissions clipped off compared to the 3.9 l/100km battery-car baseline. As the Swiss boffins tell us, it's the in-service energy use and emissions which count most.

You could even treat yourself to a small estate car - the Skoda Fabia - and beat a battery Golf by a large margin in terms of eco-credentials, according to the EMPA analysis.

Of course, battery car lovers will argue that's not the point. Swiss electricity is already largely generated by carbon-free nuclear and hydropower plants (carbon-free provided you don't count all the concrete used to build them, that is). These and other technologies not yet much used (solar, wind, tidal etc) may one day put the battery car far ahead of internal-combustion ones in terms of carbon emissions.

And if nobody buys battery cars now, they'll stay expensive and scarce forever, so it's still possible to view the act of buying one as green even today when they actually do more damage to the environment than the right internal-combustion model.

But if you just want to emit less carbon right away, it seems you should buy a modern eco-diesel rather than an electric vehicle.

China produces first home-grown maglev train

When are we going to start building those in north America?

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China's first home-grown sample maglev train has been completed, making China the third country able to design and produce the trains after Germany and Japan.


This maglev train has a maximum speed of 500 kilometers per hour. It is expected to take its pilot run on the maglev line in Shanghai during this year's World Expo.

Wu Xiangming, Engineer, Maglev Train Dev’t Project’s expert Group, said, "This is the first domestically-designed and produced maglev train in China. We own the independent intellectual property rights. We will make a pilot run to test whether the train has any flaws.

Maglev trains are the fastest mode of ground transportation in the world. The vehicle contains materials that are used on airplanes.

China used to import maglev technology from developed countries, but after years of learning and innovation, the country has now mastered the entire range of production from building the rails to developing the control system.
Dai Ganchang, Engineer, Aviation Industry Corporation of China, said, "We had a deal with Germany. They introduced technology to us and we digested it. Currently, we only import some parts from Germany. The design and manufacturing are totally home-grown. "

China's first maglev line officially opened at the end of 2002 in Shanghai. The trains were imported from Germany. The line has transported a total of 23 million passengers since its introduction. It travels at a speed of 430 kilometers an hour.

Source