Mr. Giggles
Member
Thats a shame, I thought it was a neat idea.
oh well
oh well
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
China's futuristic 'straddling bus' now sits abandoned, gathering dust
- Thread starter Blablurn
- Start date
- Status
Not surprised at all. Even disregarding the fraud aspect of the company behind it. If it were done by a reputable company with good amount of investment it wouldn't have worked as a proper public transport system in competition against other transport technologies available. This includes other public transport systems that need specialized infrastructure to function like trams.
The thing is, every transport system has its own niche where it's best suited for. For example commuter rail systems can haul people quite fast over distances within larger metropolitan areas. However as speeds go up, the station frequency goes down. You'll get roughly to the area where you need to go, but there is an increased travel to and from the system.
Buses are very flexible, as they can go almost anywhere and usually have lots of stops in between. But they have the disadvantage of slow speed over longer distances in urban settings. Bus systems can be built for long distance travel with greater speeds, but then again in those cases they sacrifice some of the flexibility and proximity to the start and end points of the travel.
This system was baffling to me as it didn't encompass either speed nor flexibility. Although supposedly able to haul a fairly optimistic amount of passengers (which would suggest a trunk line of sorts) it'd still be limited to use roads with traffic. Sure it could go over the cars, but roads have a nasty habit of having intersections, junctions and other elements that would really hinder the speeds the bus could travel in over long distances. On the other hand it's bound to its own infrastructure, the reach of which would be hindered by the sheer size of the bus itself - it couldn't just go everywhere a normal bus or a tram could.
And this was its major problem from the get go. There really isn't a niche for this bus to exist in for it to be the most suitable form of transport in, it tries be a one size fits all solution but by doing that it's a rather poor compromise.
The thing is, every transport system has its own niche where it's best suited for. For example commuter rail systems can haul people quite fast over distances within larger metropolitan areas. However as speeds go up, the station frequency goes down. You'll get roughly to the area where you need to go, but there is an increased travel to and from the system.
Buses are very flexible, as they can go almost anywhere and usually have lots of stops in between. But they have the disadvantage of slow speed over longer distances in urban settings. Bus systems can be built for long distance travel with greater speeds, but then again in those cases they sacrifice some of the flexibility and proximity to the start and end points of the travel.
This system was baffling to me as it didn't encompass either speed nor flexibility. Although supposedly able to haul a fairly optimistic amount of passengers (which would suggest a trunk line of sorts) it'd still be limited to use roads with traffic. Sure it could go over the cars, but roads have a nasty habit of having intersections, junctions and other elements that would really hinder the speeds the bus could travel in over long distances. On the other hand it's bound to its own infrastructure, the reach of which would be hindered by the sheer size of the bus itself - it couldn't just go everywhere a normal bus or a tram could.
And this was its major problem from the get go. There really isn't a niche for this bus to exist in for it to be the most suitable form of transport in, it tries be a one size fits all solution but by doing that it's a rather poor compromise.
ClosingADoor
Member
Just built a monorail above the road and you have the same effect. The idea to have this thing run over the ground made no sense, considering intersections in the road.
show me your skeleton
Member
or a tram.
If it could somehow be designed to work without needing tracks, being able to drive just like a bus then it might have a small niche. You would still need to essentially design a town or City around them in order to ensure all the roads are the right width but given that China regularly throws up brand new ghost cities it is actually feasible for them to build roads in such a manner. In a preplanned City then it could function as a space saving, and possibly cheaper, alternative to a tram or monorail system.
newtypepilot
Member
It was a flawed concept in the first place. It is unsafe to drive underneath it due to the low height clearance as well as the reduced visibility for drivers. Even if the idea is viable, construction and operational cost will be not economical compared to BRT or even LRT.
What are you talking about? Elon Musk and SpaceX came up with hyperloop for other startups to get it going.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop
He didn't buy anything and hyperloop isn't like that Chinese toaster.
It could be a cheaper alternative for monorail as almost everything is. There is a reason monorail is not prevalent at all in the world of transport, it's usually just an expensive novelty item. Trams and other rail transport have a lower operating cost (per passenger/km) than a normal bus, so in situations where the expected ridership of the transit system is high rail alternatives justify the initial investements over time.
It could be possible to build a city around this system though, I agree it could be done. But I wouldn't see it as a space saving solution as the bus itself requires a lot of space not to mention the turn radius of the thing in the intersections, not to mention how the intersections could be designed. There should always be two lanes going forward, and two turning lanes each way or something to that degree (picture wanting to drive straight, but there's a bus over you turning left).
Instead of focusing solely on space saving we should focus on space allocation and its effects. Public transit in itself exists to reduce traffic and keep it at manageable levels. The more people take the tram, the less cars there are on the street. That is why many dense urban areas have built extensive public transport networks of metro, rail, light rail and bus services even though they have a lot less space to work with. Although they take space away from cars, they free much more.
Also, when we're looking at these urban areas with working public transit systems we see that they usually don't resort to just one. It's usually an interconnected and multimodal network, where it's easy to switch between the modes. Because there is not an ideal form of public transport that's suited for every sitaution, you always have to consider speed over long distances and flexibility.
Honestly, there's no conclusive reason provided in the article on this. All there's present is this:
Which are all legitimate potential concerns but there's no information provided about problems arising during actual trials, testing or operation (because there were not any realistic tests conducted in the first place). Seems more like it was abandoned because it was easier to raise the money and ditch the idea with little consequences than it was to implement it.
YourMaster
Member
This is how people got scammed. Elon Musk did not come up with the hyperloop, he just renamed it. The concept of a 'vacuum train' has been around for over a century and so far he has not come with any fundamental change to the concept that would allow it to actually work in the real word.
I agree Musk isn't the one being scammed here, he is the scammer. Evident that all the tests are designed to have no usable outcomes. Building a mile of train tracks for a maglev like system isn't helping at all, because the concerns are with building miles and miles of super expensive vacuum tubing, allowing passengers to board and don't kill everybody when there's a puncture somewhere.
In other words, all tests are of stuff we already know how to do, and he is not addressing anything that today seems to be impossible to do technologically or economically.
So far this 'Chinese toaster' has come much, much closer to becoming reality than the hyperloop, with no indications that this will ever change.
LiveFromKyoto
Member
Sometimes you just want to have all your styrofoam with you, just in case.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Like half of them. They are crap and lies.
If your goal is to make traffic worse, sure.
So was height the only issue?
But then if you make it higher you cannot go under bridges, tunnels etc.
I love this.
Maybe one day people will realize transportation is about moving people and not cars. Here's a big surprise: one bus can carry a lot more people for the space it takes up than the same for cars.
PdotMichael
Banned
Well, China is already the largest market for e-cars in the world. Combine it with not silly American style city planning and high investments in public transportation systems.
China is doing a good job in that regard.
Stuff like the straddling bus only happens becuase there is the desire for alternative transportation systems.
China is doing a good job in that regard.
Stuff like the straddling bus only happens becuase there is the desire for alternative transportation systems.
CrunchyFrog
Member
I've wondered, are overstacked vehicles like this just a one time extreme measure or is this like a legitimate delivery strategy due to limited overhead? I wanna give these people the benefit of the doubt, but the amount of time you lose precisely stacking, balancing, and securing all that cargo on top of the physical difficulty of transportation and increased likelihood of accidents and lost product makes this seem ludicrous. And yet I keep seeing pictures of these kinds of people who've spent likely inordinate amounts of time making it happen. I know this is a weird thing to stick on but eh. I just wanna know why
There is a desire for alternative systems, because many times the solutions that do exist and work are not seen as such. Ezrarh mentioned a pretty valid and simple alternative, just give up one vehicle lane and turn it into a bus lane. It'd decrease the capacity of the street to carry cars, sure, but it would also increase the capacity to carry people.
The fallacy many people perceive is that the traffic is constant. They see adding buses or other public transit systems to the street as adding more vehicles to the streets among the cars already there. What they don't see is that viable alternatives for driving makes some people to switch their transportation habits and ditch the car in many cases.
I've only ever been in a handful of countries that know what the lines on the street are supposed to be there for.
hydragonwarrior
Member
It's crazy how it wasn't so long ago because I remember the GAF thread lol: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1223472&highlight=straddling
that thing either goes back and forth on a single road, or it would need special traffic-free areas where it can turn, probably most easily done with a platform. The biggest problem with it is that it can only operate on specific roads, but I still think it's not a terrible idea imo. Make it higher and put it on rails on the side of the road instead of having it drive on the street and it seems feasible to me
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked