China Builds 'Elevated Bus' That Drives Over Cars (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Remember that futuristic bus design from China a few months ago? China has actually built it and is testing it on the streets. The Transit Elevated Bus or TEB-1, as it's called, stands nearly 16 feet tall and straddles two lanes of traffic, allowing cars to pass under it. The hope is for TEB-1 to someday alleviate major traffic in China and other crowded countries. Washington Post reports: "The Transit Elevated Bus piloted in China's Hebei province rolls along a designated track, making it similar in some ways to a commuter train or tram -- the key difference, of course, being that it runs on top of the existing roadway without the need to construct a separate overpass. Images distributed by Chinese media show a spacious passenger compartment -- measuring 72 feet long by 26 feet wide -- capable of holding up to 300 riders. Surprisingly, there are not very many seats. That would probably have to change should an American model ever come to fruition." The concept of the elevated bus first arrived in 2010, where the company claimed it would "cost 10% of a subway system and use 30% less energy than current bus technologies."

Comments

How do you take a turn?

[Edis Krad]

I still can't wrap my head around the idea of turning when you're stuck under that beast. I imagine there would have to changes to traffic law to fix that. Let the behemoth pass over you first before you can take a left or right.

Re:How do you take a turn?

[Harlequin80]

Lol. If you ever go to China then you will understand that written road rules don't really seem to matter. There is a definite attitude of biggest gets right of way. If you get hit by this thing you are going to be the one in trouble.

Re:How do you take a turn?

[goombah99]

What if you have a dozen crates of chickens on top of your car?

Re:How do you take a turn?

[Harlequin80]

You don't see that inside the centre of major cities where these are likely to be used.

That said Beijing roads are really really weird. They have these massive roads right through the middle but no traffic. First time I went there my wife asked if we had missed the zombie apocalypse because the place felt empty. Their metro on the other hand was packed like no where else I have seen.

Re:How do you take a turn?

[Darinbob]

It's a lot like electric light rail. You don't turn when one is in the way.

Re:How do you take a turn?

[AmiMoJo]

They are building in the infrastructure to handle the traffic they expect in the future. Forward planning and all that. It's something that the west can't really do because the economic/commercial benefit of doing it today isn't great enough, but China thinks about the longer term.

Re:How do you take a turn?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Lol. If you ever go to China then you will understand that written road rules don't really seem to matter. There is a definite attitude of biggest gets right of way. If you get hit by this thing you are going to be the one in trouble.

This. A million times this. I've been to China. It's one scary place to be in an automobile. A few years ago I was in Shanghai and I took a taxi from my hotel to the airport. It was a fairly long drive, maybe 40 minutes, and a good chunk of it was on a 6 lane (each direction) highway. It was maybe around 10:30 AM and since the airport is, like in many major cities, actually fairly far away from the city center and kind of in the middle of nowhere, there weren't a lot of cars on the road at the time. My taxi driver was fine but the other drivers were most assuredly not. I saw people talking on mobile phones and some woman putting on makeup and many cars swerving back and forth between multiple lanes without a care in the world. My driver couldn't speak English and I can't speak Mandarin, but it was obvious that he wasn't happy with what he was seeing either. I've also spent time in Guangdong province in the south where my (at the time) girlfriend's brother-in-law drove us around. He was fine but traffic there is chaotic. You'll see intersections of multiple roads with no traffic signs or lights and it's every car for itself. There are videos on YouTube of really scary near misses in China where someone will avoid death at the hands of another driver by the slimmest of margins. I'm not so much worried about this bus crashing as I am wondering what will happen when some careless driver crashes into it when driving underneath it.

Re:How do you take a turn?

[drinkypoo]

It's something that the west can't really do because the economic/commercial benefit of doing it today isn't great enough, but China thinks about the longer term.

What? Surely you jest. China is operating like any corporation and focusing on the short term. They are polluting the fuck out of the planet which will have long-term consequences. They are building infrastructure whose future use depends on endless growth, which is unsustainable — hence why so much of it is lying unused. Ask Spain how that's worked out for them. None of this separates them from most other nations, but they are most certainly not planning for the future.

Re: How do you take a turn?

[gfxguy]

I've lived in NY, Nevada (and drove to CA a number of times), GA, FL, have driven across country a number of times, and generally put around 20k miles on my car every year.... trust me, people, drivers are terrible everywhere. They don't follow the rules/mores of the road, slower traffic doesn't keep right, everywhere you go there might be the occasional driver that lets someone signaling in without causing a problem, but you're just as likely (maybe more) to get a douchebag who closes up the gap; people don't signal, some people driving below the limit are in one of the left lanes, while copious numbers of speeders are in the right (probably because of the former), people wait until the last second to move over from the left to their very busy exit on the right, causing lane slowdowns every step of the way (and cumulatively that's what causes slow-and-go and stop-and-go traffic at a single exit on a six or seven lane highway). People purposely cause gridlock because they don't want to wait for the next cycle, they're not paying attention when the light turns green (causing any number of people to miss it in heavy traffic).

Some of these things are the results of others - people don't signal because, when they do, people close the gap. Then they get in the habit of just not signaling. If you think people should signal, you should always let them in when they do.... encourage good behaviors, don't punish them.

People go fast in the right lanes because others are going slow in the left lanes. People cut in lines because there are far too many people who don't pay attention and make the lines go slower (and leave large gaps in front of them, encouraging the bad behavior). The worse thing I see, by far, only because it's so obvious and so selfish are the people causing gridlock - but even then there are the cases where, if you don't, you might not ever be able to go (at least until the end of rush hour).

Let's face it - we've created our own bad traffic problems, and while law enforcement might help (I've never seen anyone get a ticket for causing gridlock or passing on the right, or going slow in the left lanes), people are generally anti-law enforcement because they might enforce other laws they don't want to get a ticket for (like speeding). And you will never get everyone on the same page about how to drive - and all it takes is one in 500 on a busy roadway (like city interstates during rush hour) to royally screw up traffic, causing people to have to go around and generally fubarring things. That's all it takes, but the actual number of douchebags is more like 1 in 10.

Re:How do you take a turn?

[painandgreed]

I took a taxi from my hotel to the airport. It was a fairly long drive, maybe 40 minutes, and a good chunk of it was on a 6 lane (each direction) highway. It was maybe around 10:30 AM and since the airport is, like in many major cities, actually fairly far away from the city center and kind of in the middle of nowhere, there weren't a lot of cars on the road at the time. My taxi driver was fine but the other drivers were most assuredly not. I saw people talking on mobile phones and some woman putting on makeup and many cars swerving back and forth between multiple lanes without a care in the world. My driver couldn't speak English and I can't speak Mandarin, but it was obvious that he wasn't happy with what he was seeing either.

Sounds exactly like my last trip to Dallas.

Re:Dupe from 6 years ago

[rxmd]

That was the design stage, now they've actually built it.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese Elevated Bus versus The Grave Digger, this weekend only at the fairgrounds and some damn arena somewhere. Monster Truck Madness! Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!!

Fit over a Semi? Or under an overpass?

[walterbyrd]

Can it make a 90 degree turn?

Re:Fit over a Semi? Or under an overpass?

[caseih]

No to the first question. Since it follows a set track, I imagine they lay track wherever it can go. To the third question, the answer is yes, if the track makes a right-hand turn. One of the videos showed that, though it's not clear to me the mechanism that makes the bus flexible like a tram, especially being so wide.

Re:Fit over a Semi? Or under an overpass?

[xession]

If you look at the image, you can see that each wheel set is on an overhead bearing and then then two wheel sets are joined together with another overhead bearing. This should make this pretty maneuverable. If it were on a flat pad, I'd fully expect it to be able to turn 360-degrees in place.

Re:Terminology

[aaarrrgggh]

At 2m clearance below, I guess they are trying to make sure it can get under existing bridges. Speeds up deployment time, but a pretty big compromise for now. Another 50cm would really make it less scary though...

I don't see how this saves money

[93 Escort Wagon]

You have the expense of laying track, plus the expense of producing a very small number of these extremely specialized vehicles. Why not lay track and run a mass-produced light rail train or streetcar on it instead?

Re:I don't see how this saves money

[speedplane]

You have the expense of laying track, plus the expense of producing a very small number of these extremely specialized vehicles.

There is a lot to criticize in this project, but the pace in which China can take crazy ideas, add manufacturing innovation, and put them into the real world is pretty spectacular.

Re:I don't see how this saves money

[93 Escort Wagon]

Because this is far more space efficient as it runs over existing infastructure rather than replacing or taking up even more space.

Your slashdot signature says it all here btw :).

Actually in this instance I had read this article and looked at the photo. I'm not convinced the support structure (x2) ends up being all that much narrower than a light rail train or streetcar.

This behemoth doesn't hover - the support structures still require tracks, which either means additional pavement gets laid or else existing pavement gets repurposed. This is the same as with a streetcar or light rail - they can share right of way with existing roads.

Re:I don't see how this saves money

[larryjoe]

There is a lot to criticize in this project, but the pace in which China can take crazy ideas, add manufacturing innovation, and put them into the real world is pretty spectacular.

It's definitely a crazy idea, but not necessarily more crazy than the hyperloop. China is to be applauded for trying a crazy new idea, which hopefully will allow them to observe and improve any significant deficiencies.

Re:I don't see how this saves money

[PPH]

one car stuck in the tracks, an accident or such and you're blocked

But most countries don't screw around with stalled cars and accidents like we do. They don't have half the police force standing around the site for half a day with their hands in their pockets. They get the people (or bodies) out, bring up a front loader or other large truck, push the disabled car into the ditch or up on a curb and get traffic moving again.

Re:Does it drive under bridges?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Once.

Re:Seems like

[speedplane]

Exactly the kind of government pork projects that we undertake in the USA. Except it would take 11 years and tens if billions of taxpayer dollars to get the pilot off the ground, which would fail miserably, then be abandoned.

China today is like the U.S. in the 40s to 70s. And I mean that in a good way.

Kapew

[fluffernutter]

What happened to all the Slashdotters that INSISTED that THIS COULD NOT BE DONE? Did their heads explode before they could comment?

Re:Kapew

[6Yankee]

They're right here INSISTING that well, okay okay, it got built, but IT'LL NEVER WORK! Because turns and trucks and bridges and all KINDS of DUH OBVIOUS real-world stuff (not that they've ever seen it, holed up their moms' basements) that those stupid "engineers" CLEARLY haven't thought about before pissing away MILLIONS on this thing!

In other words, a normal day on Slashdot. :)

Re:Kapew

[Imrik]

To be fair, they're used to dealing with American projects.

Re:Terminology

[Sique]

Why do you think a bus cannot run on rails?

In Europe, rail-bound busses are very common, they are actually called railbusses.

Re:Seems like

[someone1234]

At least, in China, they don't falsely accuse people with Communism :D

Have you been to China?

[Goonie]

Let's just say that slowing down traffic sufficiently to make this thing faster than cars is a solved problem in most Chinese cities.

It's also a solved problem in many American cities, but whatever. Enjoy your Freedom(TM).

Re:Seems like

[peragrin]

In china they falsely accuse people of capitalism. :D

If a businessman become es to rich and doesn't show proper party support he vanishes. In the last year 2 or 3 Chinese billionaires vanished without a trace and all their assets confidently going back to the government.

Re:First Post !

[Maritz]

I would think it would wreak disaster in the wrong hands

It sure would. That's what's unique to this vehicle. A train in the wrong hands, a cargo ship or oil tanker, an A380 airplane - you could never cause harm with these vehicles no matter what you did with them. But this little bus on rails - fucking lethal. They better keep a lid on this shit.

Re:Terminology

[Imrik]

Trains can hold many more people, electric buses don't spew diesel fumes, and, around here, the trains take up space that would have been roads otherwise.

Re:Terminology

[serviscope_minor]

Odd, around here the leftists prefer "train" despite it being less cost efficient and less flexible than buses.

Well around here (London) that's a non partisan view. There simply is not the road capacity to move everyone to everywhere they want to go. You can preach party politics all you like but they get ignored pretty fast when you're stuck on Tooting bloody high street at arf four in the bloody afternoon innit.

300 people?

[Event Horizon]

Only 300 people? Come now. I've spent a lot of time in China. They fit over 300 people on a normal bus with 1/4 the space of this thing.