The Vilnius municipality, when purchasing new trolleybuses, announced that these are next-generation vehicles. Because they can travel part of the route without using the contact network – the charged battery allows covering up to 30 kilometers, and the batteries charge while driving on the contact network.
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The municipality stated that this would speed up trips by almost 7 percent. Because the autonomous mode helps smoothly overcome obstacles on the road and bypass them on streets without a contact network. Autonomous mode not only allows extending routes but also replacing diesel buses with trolleybuses on overlapping routes.
Readers: why don’t trolleybuses use the “antennas”?
However, readers notice that trolleybuses in autonomous mode (i.e., without “antennas”) do not necessarily drive bypassing obstacles. For example, on T. Narbuto, Kęstučio streets, Constitution Avenue. These streets have a contact network. Therefore, trolleybuses without “antennas” are surprising.
“We were driving through Žvėrynas. Suddenly, I heard a strange sound above the trolleybus – it disconnected from the contact network. I thought it was broken and that time would be wasted. But the trolleybus kept going,” notes a reader.
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Evelina Gaurilčikaitė, communications project manager at the company “Vilnius Public Transport,” says that drivers, assessing the situation, disconnect from the network at their discretion:
“Currently, intensive repair works are underway on city streets, during which we maximize the use of autonomous trolleybuses. We note that autonomous trolleybuses can disconnect from the contact network at any public transport stop. However, the back current collectors automatically connect only at places where shelters are installed.
Because of this, it can be noticed that even under the contact network, autonomous trolleybuses travel without current collectors, as in many cases they drive this way until automatic connection points”.
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