weekend silliness: bridge buses / a little giveaway
7 Aug
I saw this on Engadget: (Chinese comprehension recommended but not required for those who like to decipher graphics)
Apparently China is about to build huge buses that basically swoop over passenger cars, carrying riders on a raised level. The video of a short presentation given by one of the, I assume, design team claims that the vehicle can track white lines on the road and thus does not need rails. Supposedly each vehicle can also carry up to 1200 people, if I’m understanding him correctly. That sounds a bit high, and makes me wonder how the cost scheme is going to work if they don’t run at full capacity most of the time. Not to mention how in the world sidewalks would accommodate that number of people waiting for one. Sounds like it would take a good 15 minutes just to load one.
But if they can get the kinks and the accident prevent worked out (driving in China isn’t exactly orderly, and I assume they’d need to implement a truck lane), it’s a clever plan to take advantage of existing infrastructure to reduce pollution. I doubt it’d really reduce the amount of passenger car traffic though.
Unfortunately I won’t be able to see any on my trip since I won’t be in Beijing, but even if I was, they are hoping to have the tech side of things wrapped by late August and begin construction by the end of the year, so I’m too early for once. Cross my fingers that there’ll be something on it at the Expo though.
What would you call this sort of vehicle? In fact, if you have a clever name for this thing, drop a note by the end of the month and the cleverest name gets this little volume (catalog to this exhibition). (I’m sure it already has a name, but I bet it’s not clever.)
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