More About Archie

By Katharina and Salla.

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Streetcars / Trams / Light Rail

They’re awesome, yet problematic. In the early 1900s, Los Angeles had an extensive streetcar and light rail network (the red and yellow cars), but it was dismantled, like in many other american cities in the thirties, forties and fifties. One of the reasons was a conglomerate of car manufacturers and oil and tire companies that bought the streetcar companies, trashed their vehicles and changed them to buses. Of course, there were many other reasons as well, and it’s a subject far too large to handle here.

Turku, Finland’s old capital and currently fourth largest city, had trams as well but they were dismantled in the sixties. A large investment in the track and electricity network was lost, new buses had to be bought and the roads had to be reinforced to carry the buses. It was the irresistible zeitgeist that the automobile would be the future – ironically, only a few years before the oil crisis.

Thankfully, Helsinki never did that. There were awful plans of putting a highway overpass right in the scenic main market by the seaside and other absolutely horrible things. It is sometimes very hard to understand that time. Making a huge graffiti to a beautiful Jugend building is next to nothing compared to some of the architectural and city ideas of the sixties.

What New?

That was the past. What about now? Well, Turku has been pining for the streetcars for a long time, and now it seems the inland city of Tampere (Turku’s arch rival no less) that never had trams is actually planning to upstage Turku in building a network. Both have populations of about 200,000.

And in multiple US cities, tram networks are being brought back. Los Angeles has built it anew and is expanding it, although it’s still far smaller than what it was in the old times.

What are the issues?

Well, tracks cost some, compared to buses that can run on roads, but tram tracks are actually not that expensive since they can be laid on roads, can make sharper corners than heavier rail tracks (trains, metro) and don’t require over/underpasses. And the “default” alternatives, cars and buses need roads and affect other traffic as well, so the difference might not be large. In Helsinki, trams are actually the most profitable of the city’s transportation sectors. They cost very little to run. Trams are also more flexible than heavier rail systems in a city development timescale (5 years) because the new tracks are quite quick and cheap to lay down. You can also leave old tracks in place without them doing any harm, to keep them in reserve in case they will be used later again.

What about the utility factor problem? Buses can have a larger network and transition a bit better from line to line. But still, most vehicles stand outside the rush hour. But it’s the same issue with everything, personal automobiles included.

Technology

It’s curious that newer trams in Helsinki actually seem to be noisier than older ones. This, I gather is from different technology – the new ones have high torque motors right in the wheels, and are designed for modern international rails that have ample lead-in to corners, meaning the sideways acceleration starts slowly. In contrast, Helsinki’s tracks are old, have sharp corners with no lead in. And sometimes the tracks are even uneven because of cobblestones, like in the senate square. This means that the older Finnish trams from seventies and eighties and the recently “stop-gap” purchased old Mannheim trams actually travel smoothly while the 2000:s Bombardier low floor trams bang really hard and are in constant need of repair.

One weird thing about trams is that they are very heavy. 30 tons for a vehicle carrying 100 people is a lot. Since the investment cost is high already and it will last for a long time, wouldn’t it make sense to actually spend some extra on structures and construct them out of aluminium and/or composites? Of course, since trams are operated much longer than for example buses, fatigue issues must be taken into account very carefully. You could then do with smaller motors, less reinforced tracks and many other beneficial things that would then reduce the cost. It seems trams, like local passenger trains have some mental legacy from the old czar era steam trains when everything was constructed of mild steel and weighed absolutely humongously – so that when a freight train or a building and a passenger rail vehicle collide, the passengers survive unharmed. Yet these trams move among ordinary traffic with “flimsy” buses and ordinary motor cars (that at times are crushed like soft drink cans in collisions with the heavier rail vehicles). Hence the high impact survivability traditions make less sense for rail vehicles moving among road traffic and could actually result in less safety overall.

Another alternative to the tram is the trolley bus. You still avoid pollution and fuel cost compared to buses and avoid the need to build a track compared to tram. The trolley buses might not last as long as trams and they have an image problem though – they’re seen as Eastern or Southern European and a poor man’s alternative. I haven’t studied the subject that much.

Ideas

Use large pultruded* carbon fiber tubes to construct a triangular truss space frame, reinforced by a carry-around at the door openings. Separate the wheels from the motors with axles (jointed axle or a cardan) and use very accurately tailored suspension (possibly with active components for varying loads) to ensure very low vibration levels. Use separable high impact plastic panels on the outside and inside, attached with a large number of very sturdy fasteners.

Modern frequency converters and high torque permanent motors are a natural choice of course.

This should result in a light, quickly accelerating, silent, easily maintainable, reliable and low operations cost tram. It’s also going to cost a lot to buy, but since trams are going to be used for thirty or even fifty years, it pays itself back in a fraction of that time.

The space frame construction can be customized easily by varying the number of frame triangles, and the number of panels can be varied as well. The door reinforcements and doors need to be standard components though. They potentially need metal or in-place cured composites.

*: the pultrusion industrial process results in very straight fibers that can handle both tension and compression. A good use for the expensive carbon fiber, compared to layups where the strength is much less.

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Nuclear District Heating for Helsinki?

Nuclear plants operate at only a few hundred degrees Celsius, so they don’t have very high thermal efficiencies. Thus only a small part of the nuclear energy is changed into electricity and most is lost with the coolant fluid, about two thirds. Could it be used for something?

Traditional coal plants have long given their waste heat for district heating (and some cooling in the summer too!). This “free” energy is distributed as hot high pressure water in large pipes. It works great, especially in dense areas. This reduces coal usage quite a bit if you compare it to heating with coal electricity, or oil usage if you compare it with heating with heating oil.

In Russia special nuclear power plants, especially for isolated cities included provisions for large amounts of district heating. Though this means that the plant needs to be quite close to the city for it to be effective. It’s not done in the west. Could it work in Finland?

The power company Fortum is probably building a third unit to the Loviisa power plant complex some 100 km east of Helsinki, and it’s proposing to Helsinki that the new unit could provide a gigawatt of cheap district heating for the city. But Helsinki at the moment owns its own power generation company, Helsingin Energia (Helen), and is sceptical of the idea. Helen’s coal plants provide the current district heating and there are rules about the maximum size of a plant in the grid – if over 40% of the district heat would be provided by one plant, when it went down for some reason., there could be a catastrophe.

A 100 km long very large hot water tube system might also be very expensive. There exists a roughly 100 km long  fresh water tunnel carved in rock, providing water to Helsinki from lake Päijänne, so there is some expertise regarding such large scale subterranean building.

Another way of thinking about nuclear heating is to generate normal electricity but use it to power a heat pump at the heating location. This can increase the heating power as much as five fold – ie 5 kW of heating for 1 kW of electricity. This requires no district heating pipe infrastructure but the heat pumps are expensive. They are becoming more common in less dense living areas though and are a good way to reduce electricity use if they replace direct electric heating. They also increase peaks since the five multiplier can drop to two when it gets much colder outside – because the temperature difference that the pump works against is larger.

Political ties

Helen is a very good business for the city and its profits lower the local tax rate quite a lot. Those fools in the neighbouring city of Espoo sold their own power company abroad, started playing in the stock market with the money and have lost quite a bit. (And that was before the recession!)

Helen is also a stakeholder in the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant that is being built in Eura, in Western Finland, they’ll use part of the electricity that will be generated there. The consortium leader, Teollisuuden Voima, is a competitor to Fortum.

There seems to be no love lost between Helen and Fortum.

History

Nuclear power plants have been proposed for city part heating, one was even in operation in Sweden. It was built securely inside rock, but it was shut down after a mishap. There were plans to put such a small nuclear plant in the Malmi northern suburb of Helsinki in the sixties or so, but that plan was cancelled. Also, in the past, the large Granö island in front of Helsinki’s east side neighbour Sipoo was charted for a nuclear power plant, but it was cancelled and in the end only Loviisa and Olkiluoto were built. Now that the western part of Sipoo has been grabbed by Helsinki, some have proposed to dust off the old plans and put a reactor on the island. 🙂 At one point when no plants had been built yet in the country, Inkoo, some 50 km west of Helsinki was also one of the possible plant locations. The pipes from there would have been easier. There already exist quite large power grid connections in Inkoo because an emergency coal plant is located there. It could be one compromise site for a small nuclear plant – far enough but not too far.

Sources: personal communications with various people, an article in Tekniikka and Talous (in Finnish) and Finnish Wikipedia on Finnish nuclear history and air heat pumps.

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Viking Mariella Blackout

Viking Line’s Mariella passenger and car ferry was drifting without steering capability between 00:30 and 01:00 (24 hour notation) near Utö in the Gulf of Finland on saturday morning 2009-09-19. YLE and HBL have more. There apparently was some spare power on so it was not a total blackout. This made the papers while the previous incident with Eckerö Line Nordlandia made it only to Hufvudstadsbladet (thumbs up to them!).

There was little traffic there then, but that’s just a matter of good luck.

This is dangerous, there are usually about a thousand people on board in these ships, and the Gulf of Finland is a busy traffic area, so vehicles without steering capability could collide easily.

Tallink / Silja Line sail still without such an incident.

Now would be the time to up the official supervision hugely – not after a real accident happens!

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Eckerö Line Nordlandia

I’m back. And what a trip it was! I’ll only comment the end till now:

Today, thursday, 16. of July, I took the perhaps 1000 people carrying Eckerö Line Nordlandia ferry from Tallinn to Finland, crossing the 80 km wide Gulf of Finland. It left at 17:00 and estimated time of arrival was 20:30.

Medical Emergency

There was a medical emergency on board. A coast guard helicopter was called and it arrived much later when the ship was already visibly close to Helsinki. Perhaps an hour away? I can always check the date of the photos and videos later (tomorrow). There was a long time between the announcement and the helicopter actually being visible. I think one person was winched down from the heli, as well as some equipment. Much earlier, not much after leaving Tallinn, I (and many others) had seen a fainted woman being transported on a wheel chair in the main ballroom, and many speculated it was her who was the medical emergency person. I do not know yet.

I will upload video of the helicopter hovering tomorrow. It was quite close to some of the deck structure. I think it was a pretty small one, Bell Sky Ranger or related model. Definitely not super Puma or any modern enclosed rear rotor one.

Blackout

Later, when approaching the Ruoholahti western harbour, the ship experienced some electrical problems. I was already on the car deck and most of the lights went off. Many lights on ships have inbuilt batteries that keep them on for some time even when the power goes off so it didn’t get dark really. I just thought it wasn’t anything big. If I remember correctly, the lights came back on, went back off, then came to stay back on.

Then I remember hearing distinct strong rattling sounds. I thought it was the sideways propellers for maneuvering, but it turned out later that they probably were the anchor chains being dropped. The ship didn’t shake at any point so I don’t think there was any contact with anything. (I’ve been on a ship (much smaller though) that hit underwater rocks, and it jumped up strongly, and also sounded a lot different.)

Since I still was waiting for my friend who was the car owner and had the keys, I was getting impatient and went back up a few floors (one pneumatic door didn’t work but the adjacent did, I don’t know if this was caused by the blackout or not) and phoned him (it’s impossible to find anyone on such a ship). He said he was at the stern and we weren’t going to land anytime soon. So I went there. And finally there were announcement on the speakers on all the languages (Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, English) that they are experiencing electrical problems, are anchored in front of the pier and are waiting for tugs to come help and it’s just an inconvenience.

We could literally see the pier about 200 m in front of us from the rear of the ship while waiting for the tugs to tend our disabled ship in. It had already turned around to back into its slot behind the faster green Tallink ship (that would have cost doubly for us, but would have left later and arrived earlier!), when the blackout apparently hit. A dangerous situation.

Eventually two tugs, Hektor and Protector (or some such) arrived and ropes were thrown and we were put safely to the intended spot on the pier and could go to land.

Conclusion, Speculation

It could have been much more dangerous though. I’m not clear what maneuvering capability remained during and after the blackout.

If it had happened for example when crossing paths with some tanker or other ferry in the very busy gulf of Finland, a large accident could have happened in a very short time frame. I also don’t know what would have happened if it had hit the pier with a swinging motion. It is always very potentially dangerous when a vessel becomes unable to maneuver.

I think this is a serious incident and should be investigated thoroughly. It’s good that there are mandated safety systems on ships like lights with batteries, anchors etc. They were definitely helpful in this case.

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Paramotoring Over The Wintry Helsinki

Some pics from some guys who travelled to here from midwest  Finland. It doesn’t look that glamorous since the weather is cloudy. At least a proper winter this year (last winter there was practically no ice at all.) Some of the pics are from Espoo too (the neighbouring city where I currently live).
The snow kinda enhances the colors of those old houses. Modern architecture is often quite ugly compared to those pleasant roughly mid 1900:s plastered brick buildings – that are all slightly different.

You can also see some coal plants which have district heating coupled to electricity generation.

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A Possible Effect of Global Warming

Michael Tobis has discussion on sea level rise. Everybody should probably know how the IPCC sea level estimate doesn’t include ice sheet dynamics and thus is open at the top end of the scale.

I remember here in Helsinki a long time city official telling how he organized lectures on global warming around 1989 and drove limitations on zoning on low lands. The reluctant system ended up with zoning suggestions.

Which then were completely ignored since the city and developers made a lot of money from coastal development. I lived for a few years in an area built around 1995 at quite low level, perhaps 2 meters from the average sea level. The actual height maps (everything is mapped to pinpoint accuracy here) are in fact secret!

But many newer buildings are clearly built almost right into the water – There’s one commercial building right next to the technical university, it’s right next to the shore and the cellar is clearly below sea level, separated only by a thin rock neck. They must have built it like a ship. The two newest buildings at the technical university themselves have very low footings and are located in a very low lying area, there’s flooding right next to them every few years when a consistent particular wind direction raises sea level in this part of the Baltic. Low footing means easy access for disabled or elderly people and carriages and transport, but it also has such problems. There was even the water management laboratory building – which ironically had a cellar that flooded almost every year. The laboratory has since been moved elsewhere.

On the other hand, the ground is still rebounding from the ice age here, it’s about 3-5 mm per year in Southern Finland and 9 mm on the midwest coast – perhaps roughly halving the effect of global warming in the south and deflecting it altogether in the midwest (though rivers could well form new lakes inland). You can see old villas having piers reaching to shallow muddy reeds that once were open water. The coasts in Finland are generally very shallow but there is a lot of small scale “bumpiness” in the terrain. Further south like Germany or southern England the ground is actually sinking to balance this rising in the north. The official term for all the shape changes is glacial isostatic adjustment (earlier called postglacial rebound). The largest scale phenomenon is in Canada, but those areas are not populated like in Fennoscandia (Scandinavia + Finland).

But back to the development issues. The zoning and building profiteers are different from the actual people who live there who have to deal with the building tens of years after building. This is another case where responsibility somehow doesn’t transfer – the buyer doesn’t know to demand quality or doesn’t have a way of getting anything back anyway for problems that show up much later.

The system drives for very short term thinking.

Bad development and housing is a huge additional cost for a nation. This doesn’t just mean location, but stuff like insulation or water proofing where you can save a little in initial cost by doing it sloppily but rack up much bigger costs in the long run.

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