Their only demo went back and forth for 200 meters, and nothing happened ever after. SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM, there is no way for the bus to turn except for tearing down infrastructure and using 10 lanes. The creators made a fund out of the project(promised 12% annualized return) that attracted a lot of small investors and scammed them out of their money.
Interesting to to compare the comments now versus then<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214675" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214675</a>
They actually built a prototype? Renders of that thing have been around for years. I'd wondered if the track system would be designed into one of China's new cities.
It would have been the largest mobile passenger vehicle since the German Imperial Gauge Railway.[1]<p>The CGI videos of it cornering show the sections bending, which only works in CGI.[2][3]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn</a><p>[2] <a href="https://youtu.be/vaUTIIggEis?t=131" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/vaUTIIggEis?t=131</a>
[3] <a href="https://youtu.be/vaUTIIggEis?t=138" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/vaUTIIggEis?t=138</a>
BTW this isn't the original headline (the error in the rewrite caused me to click on the title).<p>NYT would have written this in the indefinite present: "Chinese plan for “traffic-straddling bus” ends with 32 arrests." Except it didn't end, and the NYT headline says so.
Bicycle sharing companies are next I guess, give it a year or two.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g</a>
Intersections and cars under the bus wanting to turn left or right would be interesting. Dedicated turn lanes helps a little, but you would have to trail or lead the bus to see them coming soon enough.
From the photos it looks like this thing runs on tracks. OK, this concept was invented a century ago in cities like Chicago, it's called an Elevated Train.
why don't we have low altitude blimps? ones that pick up a car and drop it off between the car's destination and the next customer? or pull it by cable using a filtering bike of sorts?
still seems a decent idea to me. maybe something went wrong in the execution here, but it could be a solution for densely packed historical urban centers that do not wish to tear down too many buildings.