Can anyone provide some analysis / urban planning snobbishness? What are the disadvantages? Off hand it looks scary to drive under / around. Unlike a bus, one accident can cause the entire line to get backed up. You could say the same thing about subways, but subways can't get into car accidents in the first place.
Furthermore it can only run in places that have wide four lane roads (2 in each direction) to begin with. There's not that many appealing residential places next to loud, busy roads. Is it possible to build practical commuter routes serviced by this type of vehicle?
Of course I'm not a total cynic. If the problems could be hammered out then it will be quick like a subway (no traffic) but much less expensive. I'm curious to see how this experiment pans out.
Qinhuangdao isn't a very large city. About 1-2 million people probably in the urban area, so for China it's quite small. It is China's prime port for coal. It is pretty wealthy.
Northern Chinese cities are high-rise, especially in areas of change or economic development. A block consists several towers, often 20-40 stories high. Entrances are not road-side but elevated 3-5 levels up. The bottom 3-5 levels are used for shopping centers, gyms; leisure and retain. Paring in 1-3 levels of basement carpark. Complexes are build with 6-8 lane roads separating them into blocks or blocks of blocks. It is very grid like, and very high density.
IIRC, the proponent of this elevated bus is in the local Qinhuangdao government. That creates will where there's a way. Given city planning, they're build for something like this. I'd well expect alightment points to be elevated leading directly into the 2nd floor of the nearby complex.
The solution seems to be built for the environment it exists in, which is modern suburbs and development areas of Chinese cities that have developed very very quickly over the past decade. Everyone has a car. Traffic can be unbearable.
I doubt this will be adopted in Shanghai, Beijing, etc, as they developed while with wide roads, not with roads wide enough. This works in the younger developed places.
Some not small thing to add: Solar cells and batteries. A wide flat surface area, and the fact whenever I get on to a bus it is electric powered, creates this as a great proving platform for self-sustained mass-transit vehicles. This is double++ for urban transit in China.
When I visited Shanghai a couple of years ago, I was taught to never, ever look directly at a car as the driver would take that as a "you've seen me, I can go first"-signal. Instead i was supposed to only sneak peeks at the traffic, never let them know I saw them coming, which would make them stop. I was only there for about three weeks so i can't really testify for the long term effectiveness, but at least I'm still here to share that anecdata, so there's something at least. :-)
I ran into this situation with a driverless car at an intersection in Mountain View. It got me all confused. The car too .. it slowed because it was unsure I was getting into the crosswalk or not. Quite a corner case.
Similarly in Moscow I was told when changing the line I should never look that other cars show any indication that they would yield. I should just blink for some seconds and then go. Then I should trust that other drivers want to avoid collisions and yield.
It worked while I have been there for 9 months in 2009, but it never become emotionless instinct to drive like that.
It's common in (at least portions of) the US as well. I think this was just a case of it being somewhat ambiguous, since we are also talking about vision.
Interesting, I didn't have that experience in Shanghai at all. When did you go? I was there in 2005 and 2009.
When I visited Chongqing on the other hand...
I was there 2008, stayed on DongZhuAnBang Road. Somewhat near the Bund, if I remember correctly. I got the instruction from a Swedish expat who had lived there for three years or so.
(a) Cars do obey traffic lights, at least in Shanghai and Beijing. Perhaps you're talking about 10 years ago, or in tier 2/3/4 cities.
(d) People do pay attention when they cross the road. You have to, because cars can turn right at a red light and, even though they're meant to yield to pedestrians, they don't.
(c) Creating an additional lane is rare in big cities.
I'm not saying this idea is workable, but the points you make don't seem the most pressing.
> (a) Cars do obey traffic lights, at least in Shanghai and Beijing. Perhaps you're talking about 10 years ago, or in tier 2/3/4 cities
Most of the time? More so in Shanghai than Beijing, I still see cars doing very crazy things on a daily basis. I mean, what cop is going to dare and pull over a Black Audi?
> (d) People do pay attention when they cross the road. You have to, because cars can turn right at a red light and, even though they're meant to yield to pedestrians, they don't.
Most do, but after seeing a couple of cyclists hit and (probably) killed as they just blew through a red light, well, some obviously don't.
> (c) Creating an additional lane is rare in big cities.
Heck, 25% of the lanes in Beijing are being used for illegal parking, the scooters just spill out anywhere. Anyways, these buses I assume would only travel on very well regulated roads (if at all, this bus has been vapor for more than a few years now).
Some lights have cameras, not all, many drives know the ones that do and don't. Also, the black Audis don't care if they get caught on camera, they are basically immune to punishment. I see a few WTFs a day, still.
I wish abiut the seatbelts. Almost every single taxi I've been in for the last few years has them hidden under the back seat where they aren't usable. We have to take a zhuan Che just to get them for ourselves, and the the driver is never wearing. Any kind of enforcement in Beijing has a short attention span, they might do seatbelts once a year at a few locations, it isn't enough to form any kind of deterrent.
Beijing is a government city, so lots of national and provincial officials floating around, their car of choice seems to be a black Audi, but they seem to be branching out into BMWs, Mercedes, and even land rovers. You can tell who they are by how many traffic rules they ignore, but the police typically don't bother enforcing anything on anyone unless they are in special campaign mode.
Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou are better. Heck, even Kunming and hangzhou are better than Beijing, given there aren't so many officials in these cities.
Diplomat black plates are rare though, and they don't seem to drive aggressively, even if they have diplomatic immunity. Saw Hilary's SUV once around the American embassy, weird that they didn't bother blocking traffic or anything.
When I was in Beijing, every bus I travelled in (OK, that was 3 or 4 of them, so anecdotal evidence) had seatbelts installed in a position such that they where physically unusable.
I find it a rather funny thing, why do they do that? I mean, if they are required to install seatbelts and they actually buy and install them, doesn't it cost the same to place them, you know, in their proper place?
No one uses seatbelts, so no one cares, so they just bury them to make it easier to put on the seat cover that isn't really designed for seatbelts with only nominal holes for show.
You're refuting points that I didn't actually make!
On (a), I said cars obey traffic lights. I didn't say they don't do other crazy things.
On (d), I said people look when they're crossing the road. I wasn't talking about cyclists going through an intersection. That's not what 'crossing the road' means in every day speech.
On (c), I was talking about creating an additional lane. I wasn't talking about illegally blocking an existing lane.
I see cars routinely not obey traffic lights, which is one of hose crazy things. The only reason it has gone down at all is because of the cameras, but you'll still see it happen on a daily basis.
People don't look when they are crossing, they just go. I have to warn the driver to be careful at such intersection because there is always some old guy or gal crossing. The bikes are much more dangerous, as the cars are expected to, and can, just go around the pedestrians who don't give a f*ck about the light, but the bikes are always surprises.
Beijing used to have lots of bike lanes. Technically it still does, but it is all being used for parking. The four lane roads on either side of my apartment are effectively one lane roads since parking enforcement is non existent.
China is a corrupt country where officials will use/abuse their positionsagainst police who pick trouble with them. Black Audi is the stereotypical official car of choice.
I wonder how many people that are not in government specifically buy black Audis in that city to take advantage of this. It's actually possible (although unlikely) that much of the bad behavior is from pretenders.
I think Black Audi means nothing these days.
I would partially agree with your first sentience if it's 10 years ago and in small city. But today in big cities, definitely no.
(a) Cars do obey traffic lights most of the time, at least in Shenzhen as of November/December 2015, when I was living there.
And the GP's point (c) is spot on:
> c.) scooters are everywhere. and they ignore lights/lane
To elaborate - scooters and electric rickshaws basically ignore traffic laws altogether. Driving against traffic is basically their value proposition; that's what you use them for if you're brave enough to drive one / be driven in it. I've both been driven in one against traffic on the main road, and seen them passing us by, going in the wrong direction, when I was going to work by a cab.
Basically, traffic in (Shenzhen,) China looks scary and chaotic at first, but one can get used to it.
> (d) People do pay attention when they cross the road. You have to, because cars can turn right at a red light and, even though they're meant to yield to pedestrians, they don't.
How much space does it actually save? The two sides probably add up to as much volume as a conventional tram line. If you made an ordinary double-deck tram the same length the capacity for the same "footprint" would be not a whole lot less, and it would probably be more stable - therefore able to go faster.
How much space do the stations take up? Those elevated platforms have got to be more expensive than a tram stop, and they won't be accessible without space-consuming ramps and/or expensive lifts that require maintenance. Speaking of which, how do passengers safely move from station to "bus" at that height? At a minimum you're talking about deploying ramps or similar, which will make the stops take longer. And what about away from stops? In my part of western Europe all new public transport is legally required to have disabled-accessible evacuation facilities through the whole length of its route - if this thing got into a crash, how do even able-bodied passengers get out?
How's it getting its power? I don't see any overhead wires but I do see some kind of tracks under the wheels, so we're probably talking about live electricity in the roadway. That's dangerous, and prone to getting shorted out by road debris or the like.
The thing can only run above ordinary cars - a lorry in either lane blocks it - so I'm not sure it will actually be able to travel that much faster than a conventional tram. If you're willing to restrict the road to standard-height cars, a monorail suspended over the roadway would offer better stability (so higher speed) and safer power supply (though it still has the evacuation issues).
>A monorail suspended over the roadway would offer better stability
Building elevated rail infrastructure is very expensive though. The material required to build infrastructure supporting a "tall bus" is substantially less. Furthermore, the bus doesn't contribute to visual pollution quite as much.
It might be slower than a train, but it's certainly faster than a normal bus. There are a few places I think this idea would be extremely helpful in Chicago. Our road system is a very regular grid, with major streets every 8 blocks, and semi-major streets every 4, both of which are signaled. Bus stops are usually at these intersections. These intersections are also the places where people are most likely to want to turn.
If you banned left turns outside of signaled intersections on these bus routes, and the bus stopped on the near side of every intersection, you wouldn't run the risk of the bus overtaking cars and hitting them. Instead, the bus would get a signal to move first, and cars could proceed afterwards.
Some of the slowest buses in Chicago are on routes that aren't served by trains. Trains only go to and from the central business district, and so you need to either take a bus or drive to go anywhere else. The immense volume of car traffic also slows down the buses, some of which are barely faster than walking speed. I used to live 4 miles from my job, but taking a bus would have taken over an hour. That is the time with a single transfer, 10 minute headways, and a bus stop in front of my apartment and a bus stop in front of my office.
I didn't see numbers, but the two sides looks like they'd only be about as wide as a car lane, so not as wide as a tram lane, and the vehicule is possibly higher capacity than a tram...
The biggest thing I see with this is you're now blocking both left and right turns while the vehicle is moving.
If you look at something like the 511 Spadina Streetcar in Toronto which runs on a right of way (ROW). You're in one of three states: the alternate direction of traffic is allowed to move, traffic going straight is allowed to move (including the streetcar), or cars are taking left turns.
Other LRTs and Streetcars either run on a ROW or they are on their own road without other modes of transit. Similar to portions of the Nice trams, and dozens of others.
LRTs and streetcars are generally running in the middle of the lane meaning that will only block left turns. But if you have a tram (they call it a bus, but that's stupid) that's required to be on the outside of traffic it would have to stop or slow down whenever a car is turning right. And when cars are taking a right turn, if there's not space on the road due to a back up, that tram will now be forced to stop since the car will be on top of the tracks.
Given the cost of building the infrastructure vs the time saved. I don't see how you're coming out any better than an LRT or BRT.
This is if it's in local traffic. I think a lot of these issues could be avoided on highways if you're able to fiddle with the design of off-ramps. Of course, that highway would need to be two lanes in each direction.
Disadvantages: what do you do with traffic signaling? You would either have to move traffic signals up and sideways five meters or so or make this bus a few meters higher, so that you can keep existing infrastructure.
Also: this thing being wider gives it about three times the floor area relative to a train, so it would require about thrice the number of doors to get passengers in and out efficiently. How do you do that while keeping it structurally safe? I guess the answer is that that spacious room inside would see a few walls added.
> Also: this thing being wider gives it about three times the floor area relative to a train, so it would require about thrice the number of doors to get passengers in and out efficiently. How do you do that while keeping it structurally safe? I guess the answer is that that spacious room inside would see a few walls added.
That thing has already twice more doors than a train since the doors of both sides can be used, so it partially solves that problem already.
The other issue is the type of door they're proposing. The video showed a large elevator being raised and lowered from an elevated platform. That seems unnecessarily slow and complicated, but there's no easy way to get passengers out of an elevated bus above traffic
> Also: this thing being wider gives it about three times the floor area relative to a train, so it would require about thrice the number of doors to get passengers in and out efficiently.
Not exactly. Longer stopping times are enough to get people off and on.
> How do you do that while keeping it structurally safe?
There are no possible structural issues. In fact, building this sort of bus is more trivial than a regular bus, as size and weight constraints aren't nearly as important as regular buses.
"Longer stopping times are enough to get people off and on"
They also may be enough to annoy people so much that they will avoid this like the plague. Extreme example: if this loads and unloads like an airplane and makes a stop every few miles. Yes, maybe only 5% of passengers would get out and in at every stop, but that still would be a one minute stop every two minutes or so.
And if there are no structural issues, why do trains have so few doors nowadays? I would think stops could be a lot shorter at peak hours of trains had more doors.
> Extreme example: if this loads and unloads like an airplane and makes a stop every few miles. Yes, maybe only 5% of passengers would get out and in at every stop, but that still would be a one minute stop every two minutes or so.
That's a good point. I'm sure the bus operators programmed the bus' route to make it at least as good as regular trains with regards to the basic performance metrics such as average operational speed.
> And if there are no structural issues, why do trains have so few doors nowadays?
In short, design options. If a railway operator felt a demand for passenger wagons with more doors and a reduced number of seats, it would be trivial to design one. There are downsides to this (less seats, more moving parts, more maintenance, potentially heavier wagon, harder ticket control, etc...) but nothing stops anyone from doing a passenger car with doors everywhere.
The picture you link to is probably exactly what the original author had in mind. It has mostly wooden bodywork and a metal subframe which in the event of a collision is given to riding up onto the carriage in front and killing everybody. They were literal death traps.
In practice there were half a dozen non-structural reasons to move to less doors including automatic doors being much safer, disabled accessibility and simply that those trains were cold.
> You could say the same thing about subways, but subways can't get into car accidents in the first place.
Trams can. But it still happens only rarely (at least in my home town. You can still fall back to normal buses in that case as a replacement until the crash is sorted and cleaned up.
Okay, story time. So a friend of mine is a tram driver. He fondly recalls the time when some idiot had parked across the tram line to go inside a store. Much use of the horn got said idiot out, but he didn't see the problem; "Why don't you just drive around me?" he shouted. My friend shouted back "Why don't you come up here and try that?" The idiot actually came up, sat down in the tram driver's seat, and then promptly deflated as he realised there is no steering wheel, a tram runs on tracks. He got up, with a very long face, and left to move his car to the tune of laughter from passengers and bystanders.
As a data point, my local (German) tram operator reports an accident rate of once per 30,000-70,000 vehicle-kilometers, depending on the line. The highest accident rates occur, of course, on lines passing through high-density areas with small roads.
Looks like an accident waiting to happen: someone tries to go under it and forgets that they have a bike on the roof or that their car is too high; the bus tries to drive over a car just as it makes a turn; the list goes on.
> There's not that many appealing residential places next to loud, busy roads.
Yes, yes there are. There are countless elevated highways through the middle Shanghai, I believe the highest is an intersection where the roads stacks five levels high - in the middle of the city.
Another question I have is whether this can accommodate all types of vehicles underneath it... from the image it seems like only compact cars would fit - so this excludes SUVs or larger trucks.
I disagree: Delivery trucks, city busses, school busses, tour busses, construction vehicle. All of those exist outside of the US/Canada and would likely not fit underneath the TEB.
What will happen when a car or trunk with a height higher than accepted is on the road ? On a tunnel it is easier to guard against it because there is only 2 entrances and it happens a lot, but on a road with multiple cross road it will block cars and the tram. All this show is poor planning, the solution is to use a car line for a tram line or to plane a tram line in advance. But it is still a nice hack, and it will be interesting to test how drivers will behave with it.
Given the speed it goes at, 40mph max it says in the article, I guess most of the time cars would be zooming underneath it. In which case, the scenario will be that the bus-thing will block larger trucks from going past it as they cannot go under or around. Then those trucks will block cars, and the whole 2-lane traffic will slow to a crawl behind this monstrosity.
It seems unlikely that they would operate it on roads with significant truck traffic. I guess it might be hard to avoid roads that are used by delivery trucks, but they would be less likely to follow it for long distances (and in cities those roads would anyway tend to have speed limits closer to 40 mph).
Ah that's true, thinking were I live in Europe there are a few 2 lane main roads through the city, in fact I live on one, with that kind of limit or even less. No way you'd get up to 40mph there. This looks great and reminds me of something from Thunderbirds, but a normal bus seems much more practical!
for public traffic this is a death trap waiting to spring, but I can see it working to have a tram line dubbing as parking area. but they'd need to have three lanes under to get decent space efficiency out of it
I have to imagine the lanes this will use are divided from the rest, and the entrance to those lanes has a "maximum height" barrier like you see at drive-throughs.
"…If your starting point for urban design is that single-occupant cars, despite their extreme inefficiency in using scarce urban space, should be allowed to go anywhere at all, and that the surface plane should be designed solely for their convenience to the exclusion of all other citizens and needs, then this technology makes sense.
Remember, the primary cost of transit infrastructure is the cost of keeping transit out of the way of motorists, on the assumption that motorists have the prior claim to absolutely every bit of public space in our cities."
One of my buddies here in China (who's been here for ever) told me that the China always say that we in the West talk too much. That we talk talk talk and never actually get anything done. In China people just do thing - often stupid things, but it's often the quickest way to learn how to do it right.
> One of my buddies here in China (who's been here for ever) told me that the China always say that we in the West talk too much.
The main reason why "the West" talk too much is because they talk about safety concerns, and actually tackle potential problems.
China doesn't, and when the proverbial shit hits the fan they simply try to cover up the result of their incompetence, too often even at the expense of human lives.
Another reason why "the West" talk too much is because in "the West" projects need to have a sound business model, as there isn't a dictatorship that is able to throw piles of cash at problems just to save face and resorts to industrial levels of censorship to stop these problems from being discussed.
It's easy to have successes if you use force to silence anyone who dares point out any failure.
You're right, but you're also thinking way too big-picture were saving face and corruption play a daily role. You're missing the crazy chaos that happens on a daily basis on a small scale - which is both positive and negative. This same friend for instance decided to open up a restaurant. It's on rooftop area with a few other bars.
It's zoned as residential property but that's not stopping anyone. In general, as long as you're not bothering anything no one cares about any regulations (again, on the small scale. If you you're big and have money and people want to fuck you over then there is no escaping it. On paper this is a socialist system and they have the laundry list of regulation to back it up).
He doesn't get permits to build walls, to put in a bar, to tear out half the place and put in something completely new. There is no health inspection, liquor license or firesafety inspection. It's basically, go rent a property, hire a bunch of people to do the manual labor, remodel and you're cookin'!
In a way the little guy has a leg up on all the commercial chains that do have to follow the rules
And everything in China kinda works like that. No months of planning, chasing investors, getting permits, getting licenses pussy-footing around and figuring out your supply chain. They just go and do it. It's the bootstrapper's dream.
Along the way some walls collapse and some people get food poisoning, but this place is changing at a astronomical rate. You can't contain it
While the attempt of cover-up was ridiculous, the event as a whole doesn't seem worse than Spain's derailment that happened two years later, in which many more were killed, and for which all blame was laid on the driver.
Yep. Or the Valencia metro accident, where there is some quite convincing evidence that the authorities hid evidence and instructed employees to give a convenient version in their declarations.
Unless by "dwarf" you mean "less than 10% more" and by "myriad" you mean "exactly one", I invite you to join those of us who live in the real world. You don't have to like Amtrak, but there's plenty of nonsense on the Internet without you adding to it.
> the event as a whole doesn't seem worse than Spain's derailment that happened two years later
Spanish authorities didn't tried to censor the accident, nor did they tried to bury the wreckage with corpses and human remains still mangled within the wagons.
I'm not interested in playing the part of a Yorkshireman, and I'm certainly not about to defend the CPC. I wouldn't trade my citizenship of a Western country for any other.
All I'm saying is that your example doesn't make your case that Western governments are that much better at tackling these kinds of potential problems, or that they don't try to cover them up, often in ways that prevent the problem from being fixed.
If you want to argue that they have a train collision a month that we just don't know about, while I vehemently condemn censorship for itself, I can't accept lack of proof as proof that it happened!
Well also checks and balances is a core concept of American government. It's designed to prevent an overly strong central government albeit at the expense of getting things done.
They've been talking about this since...2010. I'm nit sure even the Chinese are crazy enough to try this, and it doesn't really solve a problem Beijing has.
That really hasn't worked well for the Chinese in the past. The Great Sparrow Campaign and the Great Leap Forward immediately springs to mind.
Tens of millions of dead in each one.
Does your buddy not know anything about recent Chinese history? I guess I got taught it randomly in school (UK, happened to be on the History GCSE), so perhaps it's forgivable.
The main challenge of this sort of project is to come up with a concept that's outside the proverbial box, and then sell the concept to public officials high enough in the regime's hierarchy to get them on board and have them sponsor the project to make it happen in the political level.
For such a bus to be able to circulate, traffic codes need to be adjusted, signaling must be tweaked, public roads need to meet stricter requirements, and the public needs to be educated. These are all political challenges.
countries with more educated and respectful drivers still have regular crashes where regular trams intersect with roads, even when there are traffic lights regulating the access.
This is cool - looking at the design, I was thinking they should put solar panels on the top and then it could also provide a free source of charging for people to charge their phones. But then, I had a darker thought and those chargers could be USB allowing china to hack into everyone's phones... I love the future.
If you are worried about intimate contact with public charging stations giving your phone the cooties, just use a condom (as [0]). Or cut the data lines in a charging cable. That'd be white and green in a standard usb cable afaik.
So looks like it has tyres as well as tracks to guide it along a path it cannot deviate from --which makes sense as it needs to have as predictable a route as a rail car.
Is this solution cheaper than elevated monorails? The clearance for traffic definitely is something which has the potential to cause problems of either high clearance vehicles misjudging or the bus misjudging as vehicles exchange position in traffic --you know there will be people pushing the clearance, so they should think about failsafes.
> you know there will be people pushing the clearance, so they should think about failsafes.
I'd imaging you'd just put up height restriction bars on all the roads entering the path.
Add in a sensor that checks the height of other transport around in case a car somehow got higher after passing a safety bar. ....
You'd reduce accidents to normal levels.
The Chinese would have thought of this on day one....
[edit]
"To prevent traffic accidents, Mr. Song said guardrails would be constructed between the bus tracks and the car lanes that pass through the elevated bus. The rails would be able to absorb at least 70 percent of a collision’s impact to reduce damage to the bus and other vehicles. Lanes for the elevated bus would be limited to passenger vehicles no higher than 7.2 feet, and the buses are designed to meet zoning and bridge height regulations in each city."
I hope so, but sometimes we're optimistic about the behavior of others. Restricting the height of vehicles able to enter a multilane multi purpose roadway is going to be tough. People will sabotage those just so they can use the same roadway to make deliveries, make a living, etc. But, who knows, maybe you're right and they have devised such a solution.
Another issue is people trying to turn away from the lanes of the elevated bus as the bus approaches --thinking they can beat it, unless getting in and out of those lanes is restricted to a few well managed merge and exit areas.
>Is this solution cheaper than elevated monorails?
I'm guessing the advantage is that they only need the supports built for the length of the car, with other tracked vehicles it has to be built for the length of the route.
Yeah, but that means you're carrying those (presumed heavy, because structural, particularly if they have to be able to survive a car hitting them without compromising their integrity) supports around for however many miles it travels every day.
I would expect that the upfront infrastructure cost for a monorail is much higher. However, the monorail trains themselves should be cheaper. So if you know it will be a busy line the monorail should be more efficient. If it only goes infrequently this thing wins. I guess in that regard this really is really between a bus and a train.
In London, the buses are a real pain because they are slow (both in terms of how fast they can go and because they stop every couple of hundred of meters or so) and you often cant get around them due to narrow streets/constant traffic coming the other way. "Sorry, I got stuck behind a bus" is a common (and legit!) excuse for arriving somewhere late. And in UK and London, we have a LOT of buses which does not seem to be the case in most US cities I have visited where Buses are probably less than 10% of traffic compared to more like 50% (or even approaching 75-90% in some central areas) in central London (anecdotal figures)
The fact that tall vehicles cant go under these is a limitation sure, but right now (in London at least) its very hard for ANYTHING to get past a bus (even cyclists or motorcyclists sometimes) so allowing cars to get past if not lorries is a massive step forward.
When can we get these in London?!
Only drawback I can see is people driving into the back of the thing. I imagine they will be riddled with sensors and big flashing lights if something too tall is approaching from behind (and I would assume that forward looking sensors will stop it just driving into stuff on its own).
This seems like only usable at straight roads, where only regular passenger cars are allowed. Allow a van there or a truck and you are up for accident. Also, I would assume that some driver being all of sudden surrounded by this machine can steer right or left out of surprise.
Hopefully they have this planned. Or maybe this is just a way to suck money from city budget to private pockets or even marketing stunt, that would make more sense.
It's a cool idea, but I think it's very unrealistic to label this vehicle as a bus. It is more along the lines of a streetcar, especially since it will only be traveling along fixed paths and isn't able to turn down a side street to detour or make an ad hoc route change.
Imagine a slightly longer, single-lane-width version of this running along the middle lanes of Oak and Fell in SF, one every few minutes, almost never late because traffic is irrelevant.
This coming at you from behind is not all that different to a motorbike, is it? You'd have a special traffic light phase at each end to allow it to loop around safely. This has to be much cheaper than digging tunnels anywhere where earthquakes are a concern.
Psychologically, a motorbike feels less like an alien battleship hovering over your head => I do not rule out human reaction to this overtaking them will be quite different.
"Mr. Song said the buses were fully capable of turning corners, though the cars underneath must wait until the buses have passed before turning themselves"
This might seem like a cool idea at first. But, why they did not built an elevated metro/sub-way line.
I don't think this kind of vehicle is energy efficient. The aerodynamics of the vehicle doesn't seem to be very good. That amount of energy can carry more people and be energy efficient(compared to this) for a regular metro/sub-way or trams.
The use case for this is the same as light rail, shorter distances with more frequent stops. Basically this is to commuter rail as commuter rail is to high speed rail.
> Yes, but one that doesn't have the costs of being elevated or the downside of being blocked by traffic.
This is a false assumption. The elevated bus does block traffic when crossing intersections, which it does somewhat slowly due to restrictions on the turning radius, and it does block traffic from switching lanes.
This doesn't mean the concept is silly. The main feature is that this concept doesn't require a dedicated tram path, nor does it appear to require extensive road work (i.e., installing a rail track).
> but can also go faster than traffic on the same road.
That's only true in traffic jams. Due to operational restrictions on how mass transit vehicles can safely operate (limits on acceleration and breaking, limits on centripetal acceleration on curves, distance between stops, average dwell times, etc..) bus/tram operating speeds are only a fraction of their peak running speed, which is somewhere between 25% and 60%.
I did. If it has to stop at intersections, how is it not subject to being blocked by traffic? If it is rolling along the same road, what stops cars from moving in front of it? As far as I can tell, this system has no advantages over a tram/streetcar.
How does this thing avoid traffic without dedicated lanes? It needs to touch the ground somewhere, and the article talks about installing guardrails and other measures to keep traffic from interfering with its movement.
A tram can be blocked by traffic, not just lights but cars backed up at those lights. If there is a traffic jam then the tram has to sit behind cars, this things can just cruise over the top.
How does it cruise over the top when all available ground space is covered in cars? The only way it can do that is to give it dedicated ground space, at which point what is the advantage over dedicated tram/streetcar lanes?
It's very rarely the case that "all" available ground space is covered in cars; most roads have a bit of extra width, even if not enough for an additional car + separation with the next lane over.
Gutters, shoulders, bike lanes, etc. Sidewalks are also often wider than they need to be - there's usually a dead two feet or so on the sidewalks of major roads where signs or parking meters are planted.
That extra space has a purpose and will still be needed with this thing installed. Gutters are not just there for drainage; they also serve as a space buffer between sidewalks and the road in places that don't have swales for separation. Shoulders are there for parking and getting broken-down vehicles out of travel lanes. Bike lanes are for, well, bikes. You lose those functions if you want to install this and not replace the thing you removed.
As for the ground area it needs, it appears that the rails are roughly the width of a suburban sidewalk[1]. Add guard rails to keep people and vehicles from interfering with it and you have close to half a travel lane on each side consumed by this. What then is the advantage to this versus taking a travel-lane's width for a tram or installing an elevated people mover?
Brilliant idea.
I had thought of building elevated train/road track sections, in a factory then, installing them above existing roads or railways, slotted together delivered by airships.
This must be much cheaper though, I don't agree will cause accidents, drivers are amazingly adept at driving close together and missing each-other and other obstacles.
Will be no more difficult to avoid, than obstacles found driving in Paris or Rome today.
Wouldn't it be better if the bus' wheels latched on to the actual sides of the road, like say fences/concrete walls on each side of the road?
Seems to me like it would make it less scary for cars to drive under, as they would just have to worry about not hitting the sides of the road like they normally do.
I can't believe they actually built this. Am I completely crazy or is it much easier to juse use a rail system? They've already been forced to build rails into the road so it's not a bus per say. it's a rail-based vehicle that allows cars to pass through it.
This doesn't need a dedicated space like a railway, and won't be delayed by traffic like a tramway. Of course those would be easier, but what's the problem with innovating?
> This doesn't need a dedicated space like a railway, and won't be delayed by traffic like a tramway
Those are fundamentally incompatible. Either it does have dedicated space (which the article certainly indicates it does, both elevated platforms and travel paths) or it will be delayed by traffic. You can't have both.
Well this does :D It goes over traffic, and as mentioned elsewhere, the height of vehicles is limited on these parts of the road, so it won't get stuck behind a tall lorry.
I'm turning right, oh wait the bus / train thing is coming up behind me. Roads were meant for one class of vehicle on them at a time. This thing will cause so many accidents the plan will fail. Regular buses can do the job just fine.
Countdown till the first car collides with one of those posts, or tries to cut it off and is slammed sideways. This just seems like such a bad idea in general I can't believe they actually built it.
Yes, an obvious and valid flaw, I don't know why you are being down voted. A car with a roof-rack word would prevent the bus passing, assuming the driver sees it. Not to mention cyclists.
And easily fixed. Put multiple warning signs, then hang some chains set at this height limit on roads leading in as a warning (nice loud crash but limited damage), followed by a nice solid bar blocking the section of the road this operates.
I predict a dramatic increase in car accidents because of the effect this will have on drivers' peripheral vision. Based on the various articles I've read it seems nobody has considered this at all, which is amazing in itself.
> Based on the various articles I've read it seems nobody has considered this at all
Whenever I have a thought like this, I think of IT-related articles in mainstream press and how much information they omit in there. It's city/traffic planning. Someone definitely thought about issues like this. We're just not going to read about it in press, just like nobody will get minutes of the planning meetings of the latest Windows release.
Wouldn't it be like driving through a tunnel? Granted it would be a bit weird that it moves (you can overtake it and vice-versa) but given it short length, you can easily focus on the road and compensate.
I think they might add a vanity panel so you can't see the tyres and trusses making hitting the thing less tangling and perhaps even add flashing warnings if you are veering too close to the thing. Given the width and height of the TEB it looks rather stable.
You have to keep in mind that the majority of drivers use a sort of mental auto-pilot, which is why most car accidents happen in the first place.
Only someone who is aware of the dangers introduced by how their peripheral vision will be affected is going to have the foresight to "focus on the road". Other people are going to slam into the person in front of them. That's my prediction anyway, I might be wrong but let's wait and see.
I read through most comments here, and nobody seems to say this so I do. This article is BS, Silicon Valley might not be the cutting edge in mobile, but neither is China. You can't just write a generic article because of few small advances.
Furthermore it can only run in places that have wide four lane roads (2 in each direction) to begin with. There's not that many appealing residential places next to loud, busy roads. Is it possible to build practical commuter routes serviced by this type of vehicle?
Of course I'm not a total cynic. If the problems could be hammered out then it will be quick like a subway (no traffic) but much less expensive. I'm curious to see how this experiment pans out.