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The Bus That Rides Above Traffic
An anonymous reader writes "China is the new tech king. They're developing a new, two-lane bus system that travels over traffic below. It's claimed to cost 10% of a subway system and use 30% less energy than current bus technologies." This one has been boggling my brain. I can't see how this is a good idea or safe. But it sure is awesome.
From the sketches it appears the buses use a rail on one side to help guide them, this is probably the biggest failure point. All it will take is someone crashing into the rail to cause a delay for the bus until it can be repaired. Seems like they would be better off just building an elevated road for buses only. My first though was that the buses would just use rails like a train that were set to be flush with the road so cars could easily change lanes. Only problem there would be debris de-railing them. The best solution would be to let everyone telecommute and invest in laying fiber for greater bandwidth. ;)
Do they have trucks in that area? Wouldn't that pose a minor issue?
No smoking sigs indoors.
This looks cool, but I have to wonder how practical it is. First, you'd have to design all your roads and bridges to accommodate it, but second, you'd have issues with things like turning traffic (don't forget to look for a giant bus over your head or coming from behind before you make that turn!) and possibly even pedestrians, although I'm sure they'll have a clever solution like not putting it right next to the sidewalk.
Just thinking of how things are on my bike sometimes, though, the turning traffic was the first thing that came to my mind.
R.Mo
The best solution would be to let everyone telecommute and invest in laying fiber for greater bandwidth.
That would be a wonderful solution if nobody MADE any thing.
you know those nasty, dirty people who produce everything you own.
I have not been able to find a way to run my cabinet shop from my desk. I'll be damned if I don't have to keep traveling to the shop to cut things and assemble things and those darned customers think that we should deliver and install too.
please crawl back under your bridge now.
-- Sig under construction...
If 90% of the office workers could telecommute and you removed them from the roads, wouldn't that alleviate much of the congestion in the first place? Assuming a mixed load of white and blue collar commuters, of course?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
You've got the same problem with streetcars and trolleys. Never seems to slow them down much.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Chinese driving is not compatible with this idea. Chinese cities have some terrifying traffic behavior. Not that I think such a system would even be safe in the nicest town.
sure, a country should make things and the people who do can commute to work. But that's still would leave a huge chunk of the population who could work from anywhere. we're wasting time and fuel being on the roads, only 5% of days at most would I physically need to be present at work or at client.
The advantages of el trains and monorail systems is that they don't compete with street traffic. The advantage of buses is that they can pass each other -- one stalled car doesn't take the whole line down as currently happens with light rail. Elevated bus lanes seems to me the best of both worlds.
Regarding earthquakes, elevated roadways are a mature technology. Nothing is 100% safe -- if you're looking for absolute safety we'd never build anything -- but built to today's standards, elevated roadways shouldn't be any less safe than any of the other tall structures hanging over you -- overpasses, skyscrapers, bridges, etc.
Parenthetically, light rail on the street is the worst of both worlds. The disadvantages of light rail (the system moves as a whole or not at all) with the disadvantages of buses (the system competes with street traffic). When I was living in San Jose, cars being t-boned by light rail in low speed collisions was so common that people started scrawling under the ubiquitous "Taking 217 cars off the road" the addition "One car at a time".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That is a problem with the driver attitude. Replace him with an automatic system (it is driving a guided vehicle in a dark tunnel, what benefit is a human anyway?).
I was with you until you said "no-contact". Now I don't believe your wife has ever been to China.
It's not using the guard rail. They're on tracks. It's basically light rail that uses existing roadways instead of requiring a widening of the roadway. They use signal lights inside to indicate turns and radar to sense when you're too close to the supports and make an announcement to the driver. At turns, the signal lights would stop all the cars and only the train would go, just as with any other light rail system. Debris that might derail this train would derail any other light rail train as well. It's much cheaper than building a subway and they're going to commence building 186 km of track by years end.
I can't see how this is a good idea or safe. But it sure is awesome.
It's a good idea because it has huge capacity, causes minimal extra congestion, and the infrastructure is no more expensive than a tram system.
As for safety, it doesn't seem substantially less safe than a double decker bus, and certainly safer than several dozen cars.
Not at all. Many jobs will still be location-specific, and many will still drive - but it could be far less than now.
There is not only many jobs that actually don't need physical presence at all, such as most forms of banking transactions and many services.
We also gave the opportunity to serve more people with the same car at the same time for many common tasks, especially shopping. Let us think of a food store. Food can be delivered once or twice a day from the warehouse, to the whole street and surrounding streets, instead of everyone getting into a car and fetching their own. This not avoids a real lot of smaller cars in traffic between the shop and homes by simply having a larger one there (of which far less is space that is being used rather than empty), but also may avoid many cars that first travel to an additional point of sales, sometimes maybe not even fully loaded in order to restock things that ran out. And there can be a further reduction of surprises in logistics not only by having a larger volume of sales, but by delivering only once a day, and the next day at the earliest - a thing possible even with perishables that require refrigeration/cooling these days, as well-insulated containers with dry ice or frozen water or outdoor fridges can keep things frozen/cold enough until people are home.
And this became only feasible because only the internet makes it somewhat adequate to shop online. It gives a well-verifiable, fast, and safe way to buy or sell things right down to payment, with many perks for either buyer and seller.
I wouldn't call it a bus if it ride on Rails, it more of elevated Train.
Good grief, grow a pair. Terrorists can blow up things, big deal. That doesn't make building new things a bad idea.
I'm betting it costs a lot less to lay rails than to actually build an el and all of that infrastructure.
I definitely agree with you on that. However, the real benefit to cost probably isn't the infrastructure savings, but the right-of-way benefits. One of the biggest costs of building light rail or monorail or whatever is getting a place to put it. With this "bus" the city already has the right-of-way and is doubling up on its use.
Americans are good drivers compared with a lot of the world. Not the best certainly (Germans are indeed far better), but good. Much more of the world is like Italy than Germany, or at least the bits I've seen or heard of. I've personally observed a fair chunk of Europe and the Middle East; and while northern Europeans are generally as good or better drivers than Americans, most of southern Europe is kind a scary. The Middle East is freaking frightening, and I say that as someone who did most of his driving there in an armored vehicle. Asia in general doesn't look any better in the footage I've seen, though there are definite exceptions (Japan comes to mind immediately). From first hand accounts of friends, Africa is one giant game of bumper cars in most countries.
If you listed every country on Earth in order of driving safety, I'd be willing to bet the US would be in the top 15 or 20 percent. And yes, that does scare the Hell out of me now that I think of it.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Maye you got modded down because of your selective quoting. The parent to your post was talking about streetcars and trolleys, not the DC Metro system, which is trains on dedicated tracks.
And also maybe because you used your tangential complaint to segue into your personal desire to use a car, based on fallacies in your post, which no one really gives a flying fuck about.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
NOTHING, I own that I have bought in the last twenty years is/was/has been made wholly or mostly in the USA, with the exception of service, food and desktop support almost everybody in the USA could telecommute at least several times a week.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
You both seem to be taking this to extremes. There's no good reason to have people come in every single day when they're working on a project. But that doesn't mean that it's sane to have no personal contact either.
I know I get very little done being in the office all of the time, and generally if I work from home for a few days I usually get a hell of a lot done. That doesn't mean I think it'd help anyone for me to just work at home all the time, as I can't see how staying out of the loop would help anyone.
We need employers to be more flexible (which actually probably requires insurance reform, funnily enough.) If someone doesn't need to be on-site all of the time, let them work from home, but not to the detriment of team working. Yes, this will cut down on congestion, and oil dependence, and our balance of payments. We should do it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I guess it's cheaper if the buses carry their own platform instead of building platforms for hundreds of miles.
The main question is how you're supposed to see road signs and traffic lights when under there. As long as you know where your exit is, you can always wait until the thing is gone.