China's Solution to Mass Transit, Drive Over the Cars!

[G. David Felt]

G. David Felt
Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.CheersandGears.com

 

China's Solution to Mass Transit, Drive Over the Cars!

China has decided that due to the population they have and the mass transportation that a different way of thinking is needed. They came up with the idea that if the buses drove over the auto's they could use the same road for both personal and mass transit. These buses would hold 1000 people at a time. As such, they had this video and mock model of what it would look like posted here on the BBC web site:

BBC Video on proposed buses

This seem to go over well and as such, a large circle route was done with a fully functional 300 person capacity bus that has now gone into alpha testing, but by the looks of it could actually be in use now.

This alpha is officially called the TEB-1 "Transit Elevated Bus 1" and this TEB-1 stands 16 feet tall, glides over two lanes of traffic and the inside comparment is 72 feet by 26 feet, yet with few seats as most are expected to stand for their trip.

With China testing and playing out new ideas for mass transit, this does bring up the question:

Would the US consider building dedicated routes that have the tracks to supports these types of buses?

Would people accept making some roads passenger cars only roads to allow dedicated buses like this?

One thing is that this would force from Semi trucks to regular pickup trucks / SUV's anything over the normal passenger car height to stay to their own roads compared to using all roads.

SO what do you all think, could this be a solution to say the Washington DC circle or other high traffic flow routes that needs to move mass people from point A to B?

Or is this a China only Solution?

300 person Bus driving over auto's by Washington Post

 

[ccap41]

I think it would be great to have over here in the states but it seems like places that could utilize this best are kind of too built up to be able to build a second roadway for this. To put this in the DC area would require double roads in a lot of places, just like any other city.

I think it is a GREAT idea but I feel like the city has to grow around something like this rather than plop this onto a city.

[G. David Felt]

24 minutes ago, ccap41 said:

I think it would be great to have over here in the states but it seems like places that could utilize this best are kind of too built up to be able to build a second roadway for this. To put this in the DC area would require double roads in a lot of places, just like any other city.

I think it is a GREAT idea but I feel like the city has to grow around something like this rather than plop this onto a city.

I think it could be made to work, but they would have to bury all the over head power lines, network lines, etc. plus change how things were lit up at night. Just build the tracks into the curbs and you could have something like this. Might need to have it tall enough to allow Semi's and anything under 14 feet tall to go under it.

[G. David Felt]

If cities and states actually spent time focused on maximizing the space of the existing freeways, they would realize building up with mass transit over the top or the freeway system or going down the center would streamline so much in moving people around.