In Motion Charging Trolleybus as an Electric Bus Solution

Arnd Bätzner provides consulting and government advisory on the alignment of multi-modal transit systems with the built environment and strategic land use planning. Focus areas include the integration of shared, demand-responsive transport with high-capacity modes, the role of data in autonomous driving, and bus electrification.

Arnd did part of his Ph.D. research on leveraging walkability in Hong Kong, Singapore and Jakarta. He chairs the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport’s strategic advisory board and is a previous chair of the UITP Trolleybus Committee.

Li Jingya has a master degree in international business at the  University of International Business and Economics in China.

She is a manager in the Strategy, Reform and Development Department of Beijing Public Transport Corporation, one of the world’s largest bus operators with a fleet of over 34000 vehicles (including over 1400 registered in-motion charging trolleybuses). She is responsible for international communication, industry research, and strategy making, working as a core member of the team that drafts the company’s 14th five-year development plan.

Dr. Wolfgang Backhaus is managing director of Rupprecht Consult and President of trolley:motion.

After his graduation in Geography in Economics and Sociology, he worked for the research institute Centre for Learning and Knowledge Management and Department of Information Management in Mechanical Engineering.

Later he became head of the research unit «Knowledge Management», finished his PhD on network management for learning regions and co-ordinated several EU research projects on information and knowledge management.

At Rupprecht Consult he led for many years the Collective and Intelligent Mobility (CIM) team being responsible for innovations in public transport and as coordinator and manager of several European projects on Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning with a focus on electric public transport and automation, e.g. ELIPTIC, LOW-CARB, EfficienCE and TROLLEY 2.0. He is co-author of the SUMP 2.0 Practitioners Briefing and Topic Guide on Planning for Road Vehicle Automation and Electrification.

He is a certified change manager and consults public transport authorities and companies in managing change, e.g. re-organisation and transformation processes towards carbon-neutral bus systems.

Thomas J. Potter is a Senior Transportation Engineer with Norconsult AS and is based in their offices in Bergen, Norway. He is a railway and public transport engineer with a focus on electric buses, light rail systems and vehicles with over 35 years of experience in the field. He is and has been involved in many international projects sharing his experiences with other cities concerning the planning, design and introduction of new light rail systems and acting as a trainer at several UITP transport management courses.

He received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from MIT and his M.Sc. in Systems Engineering, Transportation from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied under Professor Vukan R. Vuchic. From 2001 until 2012, he was the Chief Engineer of Bybanen, the new light rail system in Bergen, Norway, which opened in June 2010. The project was recognized as Worldwide Project of the Year at the 2011 Light Rail Awards. In addition, he was Project Manager for the procurement, delivery, testing, modification and maintenance of the vehicles for the system, the Variobahn, supplied by Stadler Pankow GmbH which was awarded the Red Dot Award for Design in 2011.

He worked for Sporveien developing technical specifications for the next generation of light-rail vehicles for Oslo. He is also providing technical advice to Hordaland, Rogaland and Buskerud concerning the introduction of electric buses and the introduction and expansion of trolleybus services using in-motion charging.

Thomas is an American who has lived in Norway since 1987. He has spent most of that time promoting, analyzing, defending and designing the technical aspects of the light rail project, first as a consultant to the City of Bergen and later as the Chief Engineer for the project.

He has also been a consultant to other cities considering or planning the implementation of light rail systems in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Canada. He has been a member of both the TRB and UITP Light Rail Committees, as well as a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Norwegian Society of Graduate Technical and Scientific Professionals (TEKNA). He is a founding member of the Nordic Light Rail Association (NLRA) and was awarded the NLRA Light Rail Prize in 2017.

Jan Barchanek is 45 years old and was born in Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic. He was graduated as the traffic engineer. He is working at Prague Public Transit Co., Inc. as manager of Bus Operation Unit, he is responsible for 1.200 buses and nearly 3.000 drivers and other personnel in bus operation. Main areas of his job are operational management, quality management and projects of new technologies in bus operation. He is responsible for bus electrification projects in Prague including restart of trolleybus operation. He has been active at different international projects since 2003 (CIVITAS, SPUTNIC, COST TU 603 BHLS, EBSF, 3IBS, ZeEUS, ELIPTIC, ASSURED, E-BRT2030). He is member of UITP Bus Committee since 2011 and since 2015 had participated as a lecturer in UITP training programmes. He is also active in Czech Public Transport Operators Association.