The Bus That Rides Above Traffic 371
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.
That is bloody clever. (Score:4, Funny)
Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the rail. (Score:2, Insightful)
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. T
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Yeah I'm not sure how this will interact with the way the Chinese drive. My wife has been there for business before, and she says that while Chinese people are generally better drivers than people here in the states, they have to be because the streets are like a giant game of no-contact bumper cars. People basically just do whatever the hell they want.
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I was with you until you said "no-contact". Now I don't believe your wife has ever been to China.
Re:Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the ra (Score:5, Informative)
Therefore they're not better drivers. And I think the statistics do indicate that drivers in China are worse than those in the US.
As for anecdotal evidence:
1) A friend of mine has a chinese wife. When he was visiting her relatives in China, he had the opportunity to get into the driver's seat and started adjusting the rearview mirror. His wife's relatives at the back asked what he was doing, and it seems they were unclear on the concept of the rear view mirror, and they used it more as a vanity mirror
2) Another friend of mine visited China and his taxi driver drove the wrong way around the roundabout just because it was a shorter distance.
3) When my brother went to China, his van driver drove on the wrong side of the road for a significant period till oncoming traffic almost hit them - then the van driver swerved to the correct side. What bothered my brother a lot was that the driver actually looked scared by the incident.
4) I personally know people who have gone to china and not come back alive because of traffic accidents.
In contrast I do not hear of such problems from friends or relatives going to USA, UK or Australia. I have had friends who had problems with "black ice" in the UK, fortunately nonfatal, but that's a different thing.
Re:Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the ra (Score:4, Interesting)
Horse. Shit.
And I have proof.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QESfEd180rQ [youtube.com]
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Horse. Shit.
And I have proof. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QESfEd180rQ [youtube.com]
I hate to say it, but I definitely woulda considered hitting the idiots standing in the middle of the road at roughly 2 minutes and at roughly 2m12s.
Re:Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the ra (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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?
They've already moved to India, but there's still congestion. Next step, this train thing?
Re:Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the ra (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Some of us like the social interaction - thankyouverymuch.
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That's what the pub is for... thankyouvery....BUGGER OFF!
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One way to improve things would be to have staggered shifts. Having everyone arrive at the same time along with everyone leaving at the same time creates traffic jams.
Now in a place that makes things that gets difficult, but not impossible. You just need a reasonable amount of shift overlap with different departments starting/ending their shift at different times than other departments.
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If anything, the places I've worked building things are a lot better at that than the office jobs I've had. My first blue-collar job would let people work basically any hours they liked. One guy would come in at 2am, then leave at 10am. Another guy would get in at 4pm and stay until midnight. Some people would work night shift (and be a pain in the ass when we went out on the weekends.)
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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 surrou
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3D Printing, my friend. Go to IKEA's Web site, download the plans to your 3D printer, and print.
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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.
Re:Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the ra (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Seems like any accident could leave debris in the tracks. I can't imagine that would end well. It would also be very easy to sabotage.
Re:Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the ra (Score:4, Insightful)
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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?).
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I'll stick with the flexibility of my bicycle, thank you. At least I can ride around accidents, construction, and gridlick - can't do that with 6 foot wide 3000 pound cars.
Oh and by the way my bicycle uses no gas at all.
Re:Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the ra (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Seems like any accident could leave debris in the tracks. I can't imagine that would end well. It would also be very easy to sabotage.
Light rail systems have been around in various forms for over a century now. I'm sure they're aware of the potential issues of them. I'm curious what would happen if a vehicle under the bus were to veer into the the side. How strong is the support structure, and could it withstand multiple vehicle impacts if there were to be a serious accident under it. I could see the thing freaking out some drivers.
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It also seems like having a giant structure zoom across/around your car could be rather distracting. Not to the level that every time it occurs there will be a pile up, but I'd wager that there will be a significant increase in accidents with that cause. And given your example of accident debris getting on the tracks, you have a bad little cycle.
Overall, while it might be only a fraction of the cost of a subway system, I don't think this idea will stand the test of time nearly as well.
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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. ;)
Building elevated roads seems like it would cost many many times what building elevated buses and street-level rails would cost. That said, I'm all in favor of telecommuting as much as possible.
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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.
That's called a tramline/tramway, and the vehicles trams. (In the US I think they call them streetcars.) I assume they keep the gap for the wheel flange clean, but I don't know how.
However, if cars can drive over the rails you aren't going to avoid severe congestion -- someone will always be stopped in the tram's path.
For 0.01% of the cost I suggest the Chinese paint one lane of the road red and mark it "Buses Only".
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mmm at least in the UK trams don't tend to share the road with cars. Sure they cross roads and sometimes run along them for short sections but for the most part they run along dedicated routes.
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The ones in the UK made of reclaimed railway line have much less street-running than normal, but most others (worldwide) are on-road most of the time. Of course, when there's space the trams have their own bit of land not shared with cars -- often in the median.
(If you're not running at street level for most of the time it's more light rail than tram, IMO.)
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Not sure that's correct.
Nottingham tram is dedicated only at the ends / outskirts - all the central part is on road and shared with cars.
Sheffield I don't know as well, but it definitely has some long stretches along shared roads.
Manchester I believe runs on roads in the centre (but has converted old rail lines - on the outskirts).
Edinburgh has definitely dug up a road, but whether it will ever get trams running on it is anyones guess.
What other major ones are there ?
Re:Looks nifty assuming no one crashes into the ra (Score:2, Insightful)
Trucks? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do they have trucks in that area? Wouldn't that pose a minor issue?
Truck "Repellent" System (Score:5, Interesting)
Do they have trucks in that area? Wouldn't that pose a minor issue?
I don't speak Chinese but from watching the video it appears that there is a warning signal when a truck is detected as approaching from behind or in front of the bus. In addition to this there are black and yellow poles that apparently act as truck detractors like the upside down U-shaped hoops in lawn croquet. The bus would fit over these perfectly but a truck in this same section of traffic would hit one of these before endangering the bus. It appears that this would designate which lanes are okay for trucks (however they then also pose a bit of a traffic obstacle where they come down in between lanes).
My bigger concern is turning and how the sections bend and twist between themselves (as seen at around 5:30 in the video). Is this on a rail or not? Because I could see that being potentially problematic and accident prone if drivers fail to yield to you. I'm interested that they're already planning on deploying this as I think there are things to iron out yet.
On a rail and not (Score:2)
"Is this on a rail or not?"
Yes. At least, from what I understand through the translated text, the bus could run both on a rail (for maximum energy efficiency) and also like a bus, using video tracking technology to follow white lines on the pavement. Although, I think I'd prefer a human driver instead.
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...using video tracking technology to follow white lines on the pavement.
So this wouldn't work in the U.S. where some drunk teenager bent on revenge over an imagined slight is bound to reroute the white line to their former-BFF's house.
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Or where the government is too cheap to paint white lines more frequently than once a century.
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"Is this on a rail or not?"
Yes. At least, from what I understand through the translated text, the bus could run both on a rail (for maximum energy efficiency) and also like a bus, using video tracking technology to follow white lines on the pavement. Although, I think I'd prefer a human driver instead.
Actually, according to the video in TFA, there is a human driver.
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There is at least one municipality in the US that bought busses nearly 2x the length of regular ones, with an accordion section in the middle, and ran them on regular roads. There must be some similar engineering feat at play here. Not speaking Mandarin or Cantonese, I'll have to take it on faith that they've addressed the
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There is a translation in the source article (it took me a while to find it). Damn blogs that masquerade the actual content.
Here is the translation:
Translation:
What you can see from the video is traffic jams, what you can hear is noise, and there is also invisible air pollution. At present, there are mainly 4 types of public transits in China: subway, light-rail train, BRT, and normal bus. They have advantages and disadvantages, for example, subway costs a lot and takes long time to build; BRT takes up road
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My bigger concern is turning and how the sections bend and twist between themselves (as seen at around 5:30 in the video). Is this on a rail or not?
Articulated tram [wikipedia.org]. Similar technology also works for buses [wikipedia.org], subway trains [wikipedia.org] and normal trains [flickr.com] (some of those are internal pictures).
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I can read Chinese...well I mean I am a Chinese that RTA and let me do the translation for you.
Their answer is to have traffic light system that will allow the bus to turn in the intersection while stopping traffic that will be going straight through.
Also as you can see in the simulation, there are 4 lanes (In fact a lot of major local roads in Beijing are 4 lanes per direction, so does the beltway).
I wonder if you want to change lane from the inner two to the outer two...you gotta make the decision fast be
Congestion? (Score:5, Interesting)
Couldn't you get trapped under a bus when there's congestion and end up missing your destination?
Re:Congestion? (Score:5, Funny)
Gives a whole new meaning to the term "throwing them under the bus"
Re:Congestion? (Score:4, Funny)
Damn you!
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I was very impressed by the video, but I also worry about how to change the lange when under the "bus."
In the video they say it is much faster to build such a highway than building subway. And the bus is driven by both solar energy and electricity.
What I find also cool, if not better, is the suspended railway [wikipedia.org] in the German town Wuppertal. It seems to me it as all of the advantages, minus maybe time and money, and avoids the trap problem.
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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.
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Like the idea (Score:2)
Very cool, and while the video seems to touch on it and explain the system (don't understand Chinese), I'm still worried about the whole cars passing underneath it and tall trucks getting told to move to the side. The buses would need to be super communicative to avoid any kind of collisions.
Also not sure how much infrastructure would need to be modified to accommodate the buses, apparently they need two lanes and quite a bit of clearance that might currently be blocked by power lines and the like. I'd lov
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I dont like the idea at all. When one gets derailed what in gods name is going to take it away for repairs? All it takes is one idiot with a kayak or something mounted to the roof of his vehicle to cause a traffic jam. And what about exits and side streets? Couldn't they just build a separate rail system next to the road or are they too cramped for space? And what happens to traffic when one of these is knocked off the rail? I would love to see what they would have that could haul that thing away from traff
Oh My Goodness! (Score:2)
I just saw the concept, and I must say. "DO NOT WANT!"
Looks cool, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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you'd have issues with things like turning traffic
From what I can see in the video (it's in Chinese but just judging from the graphics...) they seem to have thought of that. These mega-busses would be in the left-most lanes, and if they need to turn at an intersection, the lights at that intersection go red in all directions. The mega-bus then has the right of way to make a wide turn, cutting across many lanes safely because everyone is stopped.
I don't know if this is a good solution, mind you. First, the mega-bus has to be able to communicate-with/cont
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These mega-busses would be in the left-most lanes, and if they need to turn at an intersection, the lights at that intersection go red in all directions. The mega-bus then has the right of way to make a wide turn, cutting across many lanes safely because everyone is stopped.
That's pretty much how trams work in every city I've seen -- where the tram needs to move across a junction and can't keep to the standard lane of traffic other traffic is stopped. (With the tram waiting, if necessary). The same system controls the points (switches).
(Also, the last two large cities I visited, both in Europe, were laying new tramlines.)
Re:Looks cool, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the use of the word 'bus' is problematic here.
I think of it more as a substitute for light rail.
I don't see it being too useful for new developments, but I could definitely see it being useful in areas where you can't just add another lane for busses or put light rail on its own. A lot of our cities are built up.
So the alternative is either bore underground with an expensive subway, go overhead with an expensive skytrain (like vancouver), or do something like this. I'm idealizing a bit here just from the video. But if the only infrastructure needed in the guide rail... it could definitely be cheaper.
Safety wise... no doubt there are issues. I'm especially worried about drivers thinking they are going to miss their turn while being stuck under the bus. They might end up doing some stupid things. I really dont see trucks swerving out of the way like in the video. They would probably either be content to stay behind the bus or go the next lane gradullay.
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It may be useful for congested central areas with no trucks, or at least 3 lanes where small trucks will only stay in the right lane. It looks more like a tram and not a bus. But is it really "better" than a tram?
What about:
- cars slowing down, and congesting traffic behind them, in order to get out of under the bus to change lanes, park, turn, etc.? This could easily cause more congestion than a bus
- cars accelerating to pass the bus and do the above would also be dangerous
- cars getting stuck (because of
Re:Looks cool, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I RTFA and the video.
It's sounds easier to upgrade then building subway.
In the video, the presenter said either rail on the level could be embedded (like light rail) to save energy, or have the bus run on wheel and follow solid white line painted on the road.
Energy are solved when the bus travels under the charge poles attached to light poles, as well as charging the super-capacitor at each station (BTW they are running super-capacitor bus in the Expo, Shanghai).
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It is much easier to imagine this product when you realize that China is still building its infrastructure and can do dang near anything it wants at this stage because the institutional inertia isn't present like it is in the rest of the developed world.
Plausible? (Score:2)
Ok, I've got a couple problems with this... First, if that bus wants to turn left/right, then I'd feel bad for anyone who's underneath that bus at the time. (Or likewise, if it's going straight, and you want to turn left/right while underneath.) Second, people drive like idiots. I can't imagine how much damage a car accident with this thing would do. Third, maintaining the tracks that these things run on has got to be expensive and/or difficult. I can imagine the amount of loose change, or little kid shoes
Switching lanes (Score:2)
Seems like a good idea until you start imagining rush hour traffic.
You're the driver of this "bus" and someone is stopped in between lanes as he's trying to merge/switch. But there is a long line of traffic and a bunch of people are switching. Now the "bus" is stopped waiting for the cars to clear the track. And the cars underneath it are unable to switch as well. Imagine a stalled vehicle or accident and now all cars underneath are now, stuck.
If everything works flawlessly, great, but it seems it would
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Which is why I only see this as practical for long straight runs, where it would move with traffic lights just like a car, and would not have to turn. Otherwise there's going to be serious confusion down below. And considering that "confused" was the kindest thing I can say about Chinese street traffic (at least per videos I've seen)...
A very expensive system it seems. (Score:2)
China 2010 = America, c. 1955 (Score:2, Interesting)
10% of subway costs (Score:2)
Well, I for one like the the Beijing Subway. Line 10 goes between my house and my workplace, it is two yuan (US$0.30) to go anywhere on the extensive network, trains are clean and frequent and best of all: when you change lanes, you don't have to worry about it being on top of you with its support struts engulfing you from all sides like some monster, ready to shear you in half if you, um, well, behave like a Chinese driver.
By definition a subway is under ground where you can just ignore it when you are no
Chinese driving (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems unique but limited (Score:2)
The design obviously requires at least 3 lane roads - two lanes for cars and small trucks where the bus goes, and one lane for taller vehicles. So many large cities are also old cities, with many narrow streets; certainly digging subway tunnels and establishing infrastructure is expensive, but employing this solution basically requires a pre-planned city with huge thoroughfares. The larger the street infrastructure, though, the less need you have for a bus that allows traffic to go underneath it.
All this
Charging? (Score:2)
Hard to say. Some of the renderings of the buses seem to show some sort of 'arms' sticking up out of the top of the buses, similar to some electric train designs I've seen which use such arms to get power from overhead wires/bars, so it might be powered that way. Alternatively, it looks like the 'buses' ride on some sort of rails, so they could possibly electrify the rails the way some electric passenger train systems are designed.
Crash. And Burn. (Score:2)
oh yes, diesel tanker changes lanes under bus... (Score:2)
and hilarity ensues.
more like a trolly on stilts (Score:2)
Since it rides on tracks in the street it's more like a trolly car (or LRV) on stilts than a bus. And because of the tracks drivers in cars on the street will know how to get of it's way, since the 'bus' has to follow the tracks.
The best of both worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
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I know, this is Slashdot, but I think that you need to read the article. Don't worry, it is only one paragraph, a few pictures, and a short embedded video which you can probably skip. They are not talking about elevated bus lanes, which would be a good idea---dedicated bus lanes in Seattle and LA seem to work pretty well in those cities, and taking it one step further sounds good to me. Instead, they are talking about building buses that are two lan
Wierd, yes. Possible, maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a fascinating idea. Some postings claim that construction will start this year, but it seems unlikely. They'd have to build a prototype and a test track first, and if they had that, there would be pictures.
The thing runs on road wheels, not tracks. Steering is at least semi-automated, to keep it properly positioned. It's electrically powered, with recharging as it passes through stations. The electrical contact mechanism for recharging, as drawn, is wildly optimistic about the difficulties of making contact with a moving vehicle. The illustrations show solar cells atop buses and stations, but no way can those yield enough power for this thing.
They're vague about how the articulated bus corners. The trick with articulated buses is avoiding crush points. Real articulated buses have turntables and bellows at the joints, and they narrow at the join region. That's going to be tough with a vehicle this wide. Also, it's not at all clear how transitions to hills are handled. Does it articulate in pitch, too? All that can be made to work; San Francisco, of all places, has large articulated buses. The joints were troublesome at first, but the second generation of joints seems to work adequately.
Also, on sharp turns, there had better not be cars underneath.
The emergency evacuation slide system is a bit much, as is the roof entry stair system.
small footprint elevated train (Score:2)
I can't see how this solution could possibly work as well as a small footprint elevated train similar to Bangkok's Skytrain. For this you need a 3m median for support pillars, and a slightly wider (4m?) median to support stations. Entrances and exits are stairways to the sidewalks.
Skytrain type solutions have zero probability of having to stop for gridlocked cross traffic.
I've not researched it, but I'm guessing that the only advantages of the megabus are lower upfront capital outlays (not TCO), and that
For more comedy and comments (Score:2)
http://jalopnik.com/5602570/chinese-to-revolutionize-cities-with-traffic+straddling-bus [jalopnik.com]
Actual source + Translation (Score:2)
This is the original article: http://www.chinahush.com/2010/07/31/straddling-bus-a-cheaper-greener-and-faster-alternative-to-commute/ [chinahush.com]
Unlike the one posted on the story, that adds nothing (except for stealing ads money from the actual source).
It also includes a translation of the video.
Good idea and safe (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
hyper-buses. (Score:3)
Some translation points... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think I *might* have an explanation for one of the points - I'm not sure if this is why you put (???) at the end of this point, but let's look at it:
"each vehicle reduces use of gasoline 864 tons and green house gas 2640 tons"
How can the amount of "green house gas" reduced be that much *greater* than the amount of gasoline reduction? I think it's because CO2 combines 1 Carbon from the fuel with 2 Oxygen from the atmosphere, (also, hydrogen in the fuel gets combined with oxygen to form water vapor, I think
Re:Shades of Oakland (Score:5, Funny)
So you are worried about a bus collapse?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
All it takes is one fucktard in a dump truck straddling the line a bit too close, and the entire bus collapses. Cute.
Of course, this is China. They'll shoot the fucktard, repair the bus, and the next day none of the state-run newspapers will dare carry the story because it embarasses The Party.
Yet another of those "well it seems like a good idea until we really think about it" concepts, kind of like the Segway (only useful/practical in some really, really niche markets) and moving walkways (useful in airpor
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It also requires special infrastructure to be built, it CANT drive off the tracks it's already on.
Build an elevated platform, slap a train up there. CALL IT DONE.
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I guess it's cheaper if the buses carry their own platform instead of building platforms for hundreds of miles.
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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.
Re:Shades of Oakland (Score:4, Informative)
it was attempted [pittsburghlive.com] in the 60's. Pittsburgh does now have separate busways, but not elevated.
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Re:Shades of Oakland (Score:5, Funny)
I was wondering why all the people getting onto the bus were caucasian, myself.
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That was an awesome parody.
"Dan's a good man, and he's never eaten a whole person in his entire life. "
the 70's. it was truly a different time.
Re:Since when... (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean like ... china, paper, woodblock printing, gunpowder, compass, the fork, fireworks, go, maglev wind power generators, negative numbers, menus, tea, toilet paper or the toothbrush?
I mean, granted, not all of these are new things - in fact most of them are all fairly old (the maglev being the exception), but I really doubt any of us would want to go without them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most of that stuff was invented independently in Europe, so even if China never existed, we'd still have those items.
Plus you gave credit for some things that were actually invented by the Arabs or the Romans/Greeks. Like the compass.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What whitewashed history book did you read? Even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass [wikipedia.org] says that the compass was invented in China.
Re:Since when... (Score:5, Funny)
Give me 5 minutes and that will say it was invented by me
Re:Since when... (Score:5, Funny)
And to think I'm talking to the inventor of the compass right here on /.!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1. Foundations under the roads would have to be completely redone to support the extra weight, trains have large supports under the rails to support the weight of the trains, so its not just a simple cut holes put in rails, and drive.
Looks like the rails steer it and regular tires support the weight.
I imagine old fashioned cable cars (frisco?) work the same way, in that the cable provides the "pull" but the cable cars do not by any means hang from the cable. (an Aerial Tramway is a totally different concept and does in fact hang from the cable)
The vehicles have a small surface area that contacts the ground
I would not worry so much about tire friction as about wind surface area. Coasties are supposed to know all about hurricanes, but even Chicago "the windy city" can't use these. The center of gr
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Guaranteed easy kill for any wannabe terrorists who drive a loaded truck or car bomb underneath this bus. Stupid idea.
I don't think you realize how easy it is to kill lots of people with a car bomb already. This thing won't improve the kill ratio by even 2:1 and may even lower it because the bus would likely contain the explosion somewhat.