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The Future of Public Transportation or Not

How to save energy through both societal and individual actions.

The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby vox_mundi » Wed 03 Aug 2016, 12:42:04

China's Elevated Bus: Futuristic 'Straddling Bus' Hits the Road

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Video - It may look like something from the future, but China's long-awaited "straddling bus" ran its inaugural test in Hebei province this week.

The bus would span two traffic lanes and carry up to 1,400 passengers. Up to four TEBs can be linked together. It would travel up to 40 miles an hour above street level on a special track, allowing regular cars under 7 feet high to freely pass underneath. (As an extra touch, its underbelly even simulates the sky.)

More importantly, it would run on electricity and take the place of 40 buses, which could cut annual fuel consumption by 800 tons and carbon emissions by almost 2,500 tons, according to an interview with the chief engineer, Song Youzhou, conducted by China’s official news agency, Xinhua. And it would be less expensive than a subway system as it doesn’t involve digging up the ground.

"The TEB has the same functions as the subway, while its cost of construction is less than one fifth of the subway," another engineer Bai Zhiming told news outlet CCTV.

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Vaguely similar to the disaster film parody; The Big Bus (1976)

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The ultimate disaster film parody. A nuclear powered bus is going Non-stop from New York to Denver and is plagued by disasters due to the machinations of a mysterious group allied with the Oil lobby.

Busdriver man! The Simpsons - "The future mode of transportation for this western world."
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Re: The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 03 Aug 2016, 17:22:19

Really, really stupid.
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Re: The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby Subjectivist » Wed 03 Aug 2016, 20:25:42

pstarr wrote:
Newfie wrote:Really, really stupid.

Why is that, Newfie? Seems to solve an essential issue of road shar>ing with both buses and trollies vs cars.


It's not a bus, it runs on tracks. A really trolley would make a heck of a lot more sense.
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Re: The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 03 Aug 2016, 20:51:55

It's not a bus, it's a silly ass train.

Think of the infrastructure to carry it.
How does it go through intersections?
What about over passes and exit ramps?
It's electrified somehow, how does the electricity get to it?
How do you transmit it down the guideway?
Where, even in China, do you get 1,400 people who want to go from
A to B at one time?
At 40 MPH!
Think of the terminal you need to se folks on and off.
And the feeder network.
And the yard to house these monstrosities.

The only way you make something like this work, even remotely, is for it to be a short distance shuttle, sort of like an airport people mover. It just goes back and forth obpverover the same short route. But the route demands needs to justify the capacity. There may be some crazy situation where you have a huge bedroom community here and a few miles away a huge industrial complex.

So let's suppose you build it and it's working to capacity, a huge success. The. It breaks for a few days? Do you have spare sets? You need a switching network, with guideway or a huge parking lot, to move the things in and out.

Next thing you guys will be talking about solar covered highways and supersonic bullet tubes.

More philosophically, to what end? So that we can shove more and more folks around making useless gadgets we don't need? Really?
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Re: The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby ennui2 » Wed 03 Aug 2016, 21:36:44

Newfie wrote:More philosophically, to what end? So that we can shove more and more folks around making useless gadgets we don't need? Really?


Wow. Now you're sounding the way PStarr normally does and PStarr is sounding positively BAU-friendly. Is it April Fool's day?
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Re: The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 03 Aug 2016, 21:43:15

ennui2 wrote:
Newfie wrote:More philosophically, to what end? So that we can shove more and more folks around making useless gadgets we don't need? Really?


Wow. Now you're sounding the way PStarr normally does and PStarr is sounding positively BAU-friendly. Is it April Fool's day?


No, I'm sounding like me. Ive been fairly consistent on this point.

My current working assumption, because I can find no better, is that humanity evolved to create entropy, to get at otherwise difficult stores of energy and reduce them, burn them. When those stores are gone Nature will be done with us as well. Our only hope is to evolve a higher plane of understanding and take control of our future as a small but interesting part of a much larger ecosystem. Chances are slim to none.

If something is not working toward that end it is working to our ultimate end.

Sleep tight on that thought.
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Re: The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby litesong » Wed 02 Nov 2016, 00:39:35

vox_mundi wrote:The bus would span two traffic lanes and carry up to 1,400 passengers. Up to four TEBs can be linked together. It would travel up to 40 miles an hour above street level on a special track, allowing regular cars under 7 feet high to freely pass underneath.....cut annual fuel consumption by 800 tons and carbon emissions by almost 2,500 tons, according to an interview with the chief engineer, Song Youzhou, conducted by China’s official news agency, Xinhua. And it would be less expensive than a subway system as it doesn’t involve digging up the ground.


I love it. Stuck behind buses isn't my idea of pleasant travel. You say its electric. That's great. I don't have to suck diesel fumes. Able to pass buses by going through buses. What a wonderful way to travel...in a car AND in the bus. Two sets of vehicles can use the same volume with out hitting each other. What a miracle of motion!! Two levels of travel without building a sub-way or mono-rail. Another miracle of motion!! Did I say I love it? Yes, I did say I love it.
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Re: The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby Zarquon » Mon 07 Nov 2016, 15:57:12

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Re: The Future of Public Transportation or Not

Unread postby vox_mundi » Tue 04 Jul 2017, 14:23:54

Newfie wrote:Really, really stupid.

Gold Star for Newfie ...

China’s Vision for a Straddling Bus Dissolves in Scandal and Arrests

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HONG KONG — Maybe a giant tram rolling over pesky cars clogging the streets wasn’t the answer to China’s traffic congestion woes. A Chinese inventor’s plan to develop such a vehicle, called a “traffic-straddling bus,” has been effectively killed after 32 people from an investment company that backed the project were arrested.

Critics raised many questions, including the expense of installing tracks and stations, whether tall trucks would get stuck underneath and about the risk to smaller vehicles and pedestrians..

“Cars under the belly of the big vehicle would have no way to change direction, and even changing lanes would be dangerous,” The Beijing News said last year.

In subsequent months, the Chinese news media and investors raised pointed questions about the company behind the project, Huaying Kailai. The company promoted the “reliability” of investing in public-private partnerships like the bus initiative and promised annual returns of up to 12 percent.

A New York Times reporter who visited Huaying Kailai’s office in September saw walls lined with photographs of the owner, Bai Zhiming, with celebrities, entrepreneurs and local officials. A half-dozen investors stopped by over an hour. Some left with gifts and grocery bags full of cash.

Zhang Wei, the director of development and planning for TEB Tech, the Huaying Kailai subsidiary that developed the bus, told the reporter:
“We are just a private tech company. We are not a briefcase company for illegal fund-raising” ... “Everything we do is approved by related departments in the government, and if we are an illegal company with financial issues, why are the local governments still interested in us?”

In the fall, as public scrutiny increased, the test track and the huge, 72-foot-long, 16-foot-high prototype fell into disuse. In June, workers began dismantling the 330-yard track, a sign the local government would not allow the project to continue.

Mr. Bai was among the 32 Huaying Kailai staff members arrested last week on suspicion of illegal fund-raising, the Beijing police announced on Sunday. Company officials could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
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Chinese news outlets were harshly critical, saying the exercise was little more than a fraud from the start.

“The truth is the bus was a fake science investment scam, with no scientific innovation,” a Beijing News op-ed said on Monday. “The test was nothing more than a trick to attract investors.”


Move along! Nothing to see here folks.
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