An Innovative Convoying and Power Management System for Public Transportation

Continuous development of power management, control systems, and communication technology allows to break conventional barriers between different public transportation systems such as tramways, guided rails, electric buses. In this work, the authors propose an innovative public transportation system that introduce two synergic innovations: battery operated buses are equipped with a pantograph that allows current collection or fast recharge under a standard catenary for tramway systems, providing for the reuse of existing infrastructures. To minimize line occupancy and optimize costs of installed systems, buses are designed to share tramway lines as a dynamically configurable convoy also allowing vehicle to vehicle recharge/power exchange.