h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As far as the environment is concerned, buses represent a great step forward. Until about 50 years ago, the main form of public transport within cities was the streetcar. It ran on electric power, not using up any fuel and not giving off diesel or other gas fumes. As you can see, this was both wasteful and polluting, so of course it had to be replaced with the gas-powered bus. That's progress!

Nice case of how a Government's long term policy can be so short-sighted.
The Government in the 50s said: In the future, people will have cars.
If they have cars, they won't need trams and trains.
Therefore, let's be modern and destroy our perfectly good, if a little old now, train and tram system, and then laugh at the people on the continent who keep their trains and trams.

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That's not quite accurate HF - anything which runs on electricity has to get the power from somewhere, which means that the power has to be generated somewhere, and wherever power is generated there is pollution. In the case of electric vehicles, the pollution is simply made somewhere other than where the vehicle runs. Even so, any vehicle which carries more than one person at a time, as most cars do, is a good thing (as long as people use it of course)

Aka the case for nuclear power...

I can still remember the trolley buses of Bradford. The last route ran from where I worked to where I was a scout leader at the time. They could certainly move, but the power cuts in the early 70s did not help.

I can never remember the power supply infrastructure being a problem, or an eyesore other than it was getting old. It did make the system rather inflexible.

While I agree that trams are the way to go on many routes, for others the electric bus is a solution. A combine trolley/battery bus could recharge on the powered sections, say the main roads, and use the batteries to go around housing areas off the main roads.

Obviously the power supply needs to be from a non greenhouse source. The odd windmill looks fine, but the farms are an eyesore. There is one that blots the skyline above Howarth. I too reckon that nuclear is the answer, but rather than a few big units, distributed smaller units. But this is a transport section not power so I will go down that road elsewhere.