A much bigger issue is the complete rewriting of the law regarding what a "public" highway is, if you are going to festoon it with access points for EVs.
One of the biggest showstoppers here will be folk suddenly realising that EV charging might allow an end run around the current principle that you don't own the road outside your house.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I'd be pretty pissed off if an EV charging point appearing outside my house meant I couldn't park there with my ICE car, but matey-boy 2 doors down can, as he has a Tesla Smug.
The width of an embankment is determined by the slip angle of the soil and its height. I would think a canal with water has a worse slip angle. I can't recall canals on embankments anyway. Cuttings or aqueducts... Only place I have seen embankments with water at the top are on the Fens where they are drainage and the slopes are about 30%
A bit of googling reveals that there are canals at the top of embankments, but they are pretty wide embankments if for no other reason than if a train embankment fails at worst one train gets derailed. If a canal embankment fails or a river levee, you get thousands of tons of water smashing through whatever is below.
All other things being equal, the decision as to whether to viaduct/aqueduct, embank, cutting or tunnel railways and canals or run them along contour lines is pure cost analysis.
Both railways and trains represent because of their level natures, low energy costs per tonne mile. Both were originally human or animal powered, but te demise of the canals is I suspect simply a reflection on the limited availability of enough water, and the limits on boat speeds. Hard to see a 100mph canal boat..
As long as governments do not interfere, the optimal solution at te lowest cost tends to emerge.
Can't really see the difference from allowing parking outside your house.
The fact remains everyone who has a car finds somewhere to park it when it's not in use. So you provide charging points there.
I don't want to see the end of IC driven vehicles perhaps more than most on here. But many of the arguments put forward against EVs are nonsensical. Very few indeed make use of the maximum range of their car more than a few times a year.
The biggest arguments against EVs is that they are EVs and rely on heavy unreplaceable batteries which limit their range and charging profile to hours rather than minutes.
Two drawbacks that have no solution in sight at the moment.
Who knows. The ultimate use for HS2 might be to take EVs from Birmingham to London so people can drive around a few miles and then be taken back again, possibly charging en route ?
For myself I think we need an intersection of two technolgies, plus a couple of generations to croak it. Then we'll have a mesh of autnomous EVs that can charge whenever needed, plus a population quite happy to not own a car when they can summon one in less than 5 minutes.
Dave shows that like any supporter of renewable mythology he doesn't understand the difference between peak and mean.
Of course 99% of my journeys are under 25 miles but its the ones that are not that keep me from buying an electric car,
I don't want a house that stands up to 99% of the wind speeds, I want a house that stands up to 100% of them. I don't want to fly in an aircraft that will survive 99% of the turbulence it will encounter or a ship that will survive 99% of the icebergs, or an electricity grid that works 99% of the time.
Oh yes, change is coming but almost certainly not the change you think is coming.
Since your arguments are predicated on the assumption that 'low carbon' will survive another decade.
I am sure that some incident somewhere will result in a massive repudiation of all this green nonsense, or the end of western civilisation and 'climate change' with it. East of the caucasus they don't give a shit about any of it. Until you get to Australia, anyway.
My argument is predicated on the assumption that Covid has only accelerated and not caused the shift away from masses of people needing to drive masses of miles every day. The shift was happening before.
(Same way looking back on media formats, vinyl was in decline *before* CDs were extant.)
Life in 2050 is going to be very different to life in 2000, and
*everything* is going to rearrange itself around that.
In much the same way that in the 1900s, horse and cart were on the way out, and ICE powered transport was in. And no amount of arsing around with anything was going to stop that. Not even the combined choruses of saddlers, farriers, blacksmiths, stables, horse breeders, trainers etc etc.
Less than a year ago, when I was writing as much in various fora, there were a slew of people saying I was talking out of my hole because "I can't work from home". Guess what ? Enough of those people are now "working from home" to have shifted the centre of gravity a bit.
You can take all your 'stuff' with you in the car. No struggling to get to/from an airport with suitcases. And, if you private car has to amke stops every few hours to recharge it's battery then the train might well be quicker. If it's overnight then the actual journey time isn't very relevant
Especially in very easily controllable environments like city centres where it should be relatively easy to ensure seperation of sensible pedestrains and (rarer) cyclists from the autnomous cars. What you really want to do is create a sort of rail-less railway.
If we can crack meshing the cars together, it might be possible to only stop once on a journey - at the destination.
So along as everyone needs to drive reasonable distances *occasionally*, the electric car as the sole form of domestic transport is inadequate.
Only because people were ripping vinyl to cassette tape illegally... That lead to the demise of the free rock concert, and all the decent bands and the rise of cheap shit punk and rap music. A demise that CDs only partially remedied, because CDS were even easier to rip...
In the end we had no decent music at all.
I have always known that many more people could work from home than thought they could, BUT that only emphasises the problem, We don't need commuter trains or cars that get us to work and back. But we DO still need a car to see granny 140 miles away, once a month.
Leccy cant do that yet. Not without a non home recharge
Thais a matter of opinion. And relative cost. If you have to leave your electric car sitting on your drive - all taxeds and insured - AND hire a fuel car to get to Taunton, then it gets more expensive that having the fuel car and dumping the leccy.
That's the dilemma that I have as a retired low mileage person. 99% of my journeys could be electric, but the 1% would be a nightmare in one. And because of the tax/MOT/servicing situation owning two cars would massively increase the cost.
As would be the hassle of hiring one: At least 10 miles to the nearest car hire.
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