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Reliability, too, is uneven, as engineer and transit planner Christof Spieler recently wrote.

Manufacturers of electric buses, Mr. Spieler noted, are “on a fast learning curve, and it shows” — though he said that electric buses, when “fully developed and commonplace,” can be cheaper to operate than diesel options.

The spieler is his brother, Booth, whose vocation seems to be shoplifting.

An American who has lived in England since the 1980s, Spieler has a pantry that’s a wonderland of culinary specialties.

When I spoke with Marlena Spieler, a 73-year-old food writer and consultant based in Hampshire, England, she showed me a pantry chock-full of culinary delights collected and “schlepped” from around Europe.