In article ,
Marland wrote:
North America seems to be a bit of a hold out with Toronto ,Philadelphia
and Boston still using trolley poles
on normal services, New Orleans is arguable mainly a heritage operation
that locals happen to use because it is there. San Francisco definitely a
heritage operation.

Toronto's newest cars have both pantographs and trolley poles, but
really need pantographs since the trolley poles can't provide full
power. They're in the process of updating the OHLE for pantographs,
supposed to be done next year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toront...ctrical_pickup

In Boston the main streetcar system, the green line, has used
pantographs since the Boeing LRVs in the 1970s. The Mattapan branch
of the red line, which is only 2.5 mi long, still uses ancient PCC
trolley cars, I gather because it would be very expensive to rebuild
the line to handle the green line cars. The community has rebuffed
suggestions to turn it into a busway. There are two trolleybus routes
from the Cambridge underground station out to the suburbs which
replaced streetcars a long time ago.

SEPTA in Philadelphia has a mix of equipment. The center city
subway-surface lines use Kawasaki cars with trolley poles, but the
suburban Media-Sharon Hill line uses the same cars with pantographs.
They also have one line operated by heritage PCCs, and three
trolleybus routes.

The F line in San Francisco uses an amazing mix of ancient heritage
cars. Despite the ancient equipment, it's a real line that goes
places other transit doesn't.

Haven't been to New Orleans lately.

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