Journal Entry
Cool Chinese Bus
Wow, China’s really thinking outside the box here with a tall rail straddling bus type thing that will let cars go by underneath it.
It’s really an interesting hack, though I wonder how well trucks and tall vehicles will work to avoid it (update, if you look at the video at Engadget, you’ll spot the neat, lo-tech hack that heavily discourages trucks from using the train/bus lanes!).
Still, it allows the city to add track to this weird looking public transportation vehicle at a much cheaper level that other rail-based metro projects (10% of the cost), and to existing road structure.
Filed under the topic Uncategorized on August 3rd 2010 at 10:50 am. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.
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Tobias is a Caribbean-born SF/F novelist who lives in Ohio.
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1. Irene Delse on Aug 3rd, 2010 at 10:53 am
Awesome, but can we still call it a bus? If it’s on rails, does’nt it becomes a tramway?
2. Tobias Buckell on Aug 3rd, 2010 at 10:55 am
I was using the phrasing that was being repeated by others, so I’m not sure what they call it…
3. Jeff Hotchkiss on Aug 3rd, 2010 at 10:56 am
The lanes those buses use would have to be passenger vehicles only, and trucks would get their own lane. The buses themselves would have to be equipped with some sort of death ray to blast trucks out of the bus lanes should any truckers find themselves where they shouldn’t be.
4. Tobias Buckell on Aug 3rd, 2010 at 10:58 am
Jeff, if you read the Engadget post and watch the video, you’ll see the very elegant hack and lo-tech hack that discourages trucks from being a problem…
5. Steve Buchheit on Aug 3rd, 2010 at 10:59 am
It’s like an elevated train, but without the elevated tracks.
6. Wyman Cooke on Aug 10th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
There’s a better, safer, way of doing this. It’s called monorail.