China Unveils 'Straddling Bus' Design To Beat Traffic Jams (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A Beijing company has unveiled spectacularly futuristic designs for a pollution-busting, elevated bus capable of gliding over the nightmarish mega-jams for which urban China has become notorious. The "straddling bus," which owes more to Blade Runner than China's car-clogged highways, is supported by two legs that run along rails laid along the roadside. Those legs allow the Transit Explore Bus, or TEB's giant frame to glide high above the gridlock at speeds of up to 60km per hour. Equally, vehicles that are less than two metres high will be able to drive freely underneath the bus, even when it is stationary. "The biggest advantage is that the bus will save lots of road space," Song Youzhou, the project's chief engineer, told Xinhua, China's official news agency. Song claimed his buses, capable of transporting up to 1,400 commuters, could be produced for 20% of the price of an underground train and rolled out far more quickly since the supporting infrastructure was relatively simple. One TEB could replace 40 conventional buses, he said.You can watch the concept video here. Interestingly a very similar -- if not the exact same -- concept has come out of China before. Not sure what kind of developments have been made in the six years since then.

Comments

Literally six years old, still not real/practical

[cam_macleod]

Old news. Just new hype.
http://www.chinahush.com/2010/...

Not a real thing, not practical in almost any area that needs high capacity transit, and just a distraction from real things we already know how to build but refuse to pay for.

Um, moving walls?

[holophrastic]

So, you're driving along, and all of a sudden, a wall appears around you, then vanishes, then appears again.

Hope you brought your sun glasses, and removed them, and put them on again, with your psychic powers.

Also hope you didn't plan on changing lanes, and weren't in the middle of doing so.

It's not the same as 40 busses. 40 busses come 40 times as often. Now you get to wait for the big-ass bus 40 times as long. Perfect.

How about just admitting that you can't fit more stuff into less space, and still have it usable. Archive-storage doesn't work for civilized humans -- intiguingly, it works far better for rural/country humans.

Re:Um, moving walls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anybody actual read TFA? The underside of the bus is lit to match the environment. The bus is as wide as the road, so you don't change lanes outside the bus. The height is sufficient for a semi-trailer, so your SUV is safe. And the interior looks quite spacious.

It's a tram/train not a bus

[HumanWiki]

It's stuck to and rides upon rails. It's not a bus, it's a train or tram.

Re:2 meters high.

[Errol backfiring]

Not even my bike fits under that bus. And although a Whike is quite high, it is road legal and conforms to the traffic sizes (which are based on a firetruck where I live). 2 meters is way too low to be able to pass regular traffic. The first van or truck would stop the bus dead in its tracks.