Chinese Bus Drives Over Cars

Now if they just put some electromagnets underneath, they could pick up a few cars, and carry them along too (for a fee).

It's all fun and games - until anyone turns.

Told them it would not work - because the vids showed the whole thing (including hard bits) bending like an accordion to go around 90° corners -

If your car breaks down I guess you're screwed....there's no way to pull off the road....what a frightening thought...

Uhhh....Homer S says they don't have break-downs in China. It is against party policy.

DOH!!!

That's where #1 comes in...

How do you figure that?

An interesting concept. It has been around in one form or another for a while, so it is nice to see it is actually being field tested.

Obviously you don't just add these to standard road routes without taking proper care with control of turning traffic, but it isn't as crazy as it looks.

Says the bloke from down under there somewhere. If they install this in New Zealand, will the cars be over the bus?

No, the same way - bus over cars, but the bus will be upside down.

I spent a week in Montreal with a PhD Chinaman and a PhD Englishman, both acoustics engineers.

We took turns driving each day.

The Chinese engineer scared the bejesus out of me. No concept of traffic lanes, turn lanes, signaling or defensive driving. His concept was "First to see a hole, first to fill it and other drivers be damned.

I'll want and see on this one.

So with that experience, when you read the thread title

Chinese Bus Drives Over Cars

you probably thought this discussion was about something different.

Still not sure that won't happen.

I certainly expected to see a bus on it's side laying over several cars. With all the taxi's I've taken in China, I've concluded that they are the best drivers in the world. One driver said it's like fish in a river. Right hand turn from inside four lanes of traffic - no problem. Toll road kiosks - I've never seen lane markers used. In southern China they often get four cars wide on a three lane road. Traffic blocked - sidewalks, pedestrian lanes, and grass strips become lanes. I've had taxi drivers get to about 30mph on bicycle and pedestrian only lanes. And that's only the start.

Unless this is used mainly in BeiJing, I can easily see cars turning in front of it. A crash will damage the car. The yelling will start. The police may show up if they are nearby. Money may or may not change hands, depending on damage.

The drivers with the most guts wins. I've had a driver make a road flattener machine (steamroller) back down. And yes, the leveler was driving down the street. It was a little exciting to see that big front tube just outside the window.

I know I sure did, even thought it might yet another terrorist incident. Doh!!!

I follow a You Tuber named Serptenza who is originally from South Africa but has been living in China for the last ten years and he affirms Lyn's assessment of China's abysmal driving habits.

I was just in Vancouver and will second (or third!) that!

Hmmm... sort of like the Seattle monorail, except the bus IS the rail.

Regarding this being a bus: Doesn't this seem more like a train?

Bustrain...? I don't see the advantage....What happens when somebody crashes into one of the supports..? ...or it hits something wedged into the track....

The same thing that happens when a vehicle crashes into a locomotive. The bigger machine wins.

I would suspect it would have some sort of track scrapers that clear that stuff out but then again given its size and likely weight it might just do what trains do and crush whatever is on the track to bits.

Unless the give a wall to, or make an elevated wheelway keep road traffic off the path it's wheels run in, it is prey to traffic. = no solution at all.

Just what every country needs, more infrastructure to degrade because of lack of maintenance. How much will have to be spent in just creating the "roadbed" required? As usually is the case, the cost of the bus(es) will be peanuts compared to what it will take to create the infrastructure required.

An interesting concept though.↕↔

I wonder what bridge designers think about this concept.

That will create a whole new level of concern for this project. I suspect they will not be allowed over existing bridges, but will have to build new ones (not suspension bridges unless far wider).

I'm not thinking about the existing bridges this bus drives over. Although the gross load restrictions might come into play.

Probably nothing at all being they have standard clearance requirements to build to (17 feet/ 5.8 Meters in the US) unless grandfathered in and the civil engineers designing the bus routes more than likely have done surveys of their proposed track routes to make sure they have adiquate clearances.

At least we should hope so. I don't see this taking off into a major form of interstate or cross-country travel, but I have been wrong before. I never thought the horseless carriage would take off either....and so far, it still won't fly (on purpose or accidentally).

For the time being, I am thinking that this concept will be only for high population areas that have a heavy reliance on pubic transportation.

The only way I could see it as a viable transcontinental system would be if it was beefed up to handle freight such as full-size shipping containers sitting sideways stacked two or thee high by five or six deep per rail unit. Massive super cargo trains of sorts but at that level, it again runs into the cost of implementation barrier.

The upside though with that theory is that if every car unit was self-propelled and able to do Co-Gen dynamic braking they could conceivably be scheduled to traverse uphill climb side of the mountainous regions during off-peak hours followed by doing the downhill Co-Gen runs during peak hours.

Or option two would be to have one climbing while another is descending so that most of each other's power consumption/return energy is canceling each other out and only the system loses are needed from the grid to make up the difference.

(I had lots of free time to think about that while cutting hay yesterday. )

Why stack freight up so high? That creates an enormous drag, and will make the whole cargo thing a non-starter. Can they really make this thing powerful enough to match the power output of a gas-turbine powered frieght locomotive? I don't think so.

Don't tell those who are doing it that it can't be done. Don't forget they already have high speed rail and maglev in operation. The difference between them and us is; we procrastinate before doing anything while they just go ahead and do it. If we hear too many negatives to an idea, we tend to drop it and meanwhile, someone else picks up on it and brings it to reality.