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.
The name's Lanley -- Lyle Lanley. And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest ... Aww, it's not for you. It's more of a Shelbyville idea.
The strange thing is they actually built a full-size "working" demo, which if anything, only reinforces how precarious and ill-advised the whole concept was to begin with.
It makes me wonder if it wasn't a scam at all, but just a really bad idea with believers that wanted to make it real?
That does not actually kill the concept as long as you treat it like an above ground subway system. The real limitation is the buses can't cross 4 way intersections while cars are blocking their path and they can't travel around obstructions.
Another options is you placed them on slightly elevated tracks and add bridges over intersections, the larger problem is they need a lot of space above them which means overpasses etc could limit placement without major investments and it really just reinvents the monorail concept.
So, IMO it's unlikely to work in most cities, but there are a lot of city's and you only need a few. Thus, it probably did not start as a scam even if evolved into it.
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]
The CGI videos of it cornering show the sections bending, which only works in CGI.[2][3]
BTW this isn't the original headline (the error in the rewrite caused me to click on the title).
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.
What worries me about the bike shares is they all take a 100-200 rmb refundable deposit from each user. That's an unsecured interest free "crowdsourced" loan! If the company collapses, it's riders' deposits that'll go down the toilet.
Maybe when you've got too many of them, but Mobike has just arrived in Manchester, UK and I've tried it a couple of times. I really like it and am impressed with how well it actually works. They just need to deploy more bikes so that it is easier for me to find one during busy periods.
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.
It was just the vision of a bunch of hustler/entrepreneurs. It seemed too easy to hit with large vehicles and a death trap for vehicles underneath it.
An elevated rail system seemed so much easier and without the difficulties that this introduced.
But an elevated rail system required significantly more investment thus it had to be city sanctioned in a large way, rather than the minimal investments this required.
Not sure where you are but here in the UK it's quite legal to ride a horse or drive a horse with a carriage of some kind on the road. The carriage needs to be "road worthy" but aside from that you don't even need a license of any kind unless you're transporting passengers.
It's just not very fast compared to modern cars and quite expensive so not as many people do it.
Edit: Oh one minor mostly common sense note -
You can't ride/drive horses on the motorway and probably shouldn't on faster roads or dual carriageways due to the rest of the traffic going far faster than you.
Horses aren't banned. If you spend some time in a big city, they're everywhere. Police ride them, people ride them, people use them to pull carts and pull other people. The horses are always less useful than machines, but they exist.
China doing a massive ban-change to vehicles wouldn't be a first. Friedman wrote about their policy shifts in Hot, Flat, and Crowded. China has implemented changes to vehicle emissions in just a few years that took the US decades (e.g. unleaded gas). So, okay, they won't ban cars outright, but it isn't impossible to imagine other scenarios that would be impossible to imagine the US doing in the same time period.
Horses declined after a better option - cars - were widely available and accepted. I'm all for coming up with a better solution, but if you ban cars before we have that solution you'll effectively shut down civilization in much of the developed world.
>"Every person having control or charge of a vehicle shall, whenever upon any way and approaching any horse, drive, manage, and control such vehicle in such a manner as to exercise every reasonable precaution to prevent the frightening of such horse, and to insure the safety and protection of any person riding or driving the same."
>Traffic laws in a few states, including Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico, specifically state that horses have all the rights and obligations of other vehicles when they are being ridden or driven on a public highway. Everywhere else, except in states like Louisiana where it appears to be illegal to ride a horse on a paved road, riders and drivers probably enjoy similar rights and obligations by implication.
>Some states prohibit specific conduct when riding on a highway: It is illegal to ride a horse at night in New Mexico; to cross bridges at a gait faster than a walk in Idaho, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania; to ride or drive a horse "recklessly" in Nevada; to race or run horses on a highway in Kentucky, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey; to ride on a levee in Kentucky; and to ride on interstate highways in several states. Horses should be ridden on the right-hand side of the road, going with the flow of traffic, almost everywhere except Colorado, where riders must ride on the left.
Sorry but I don't think you know what you're talking about, you're not in the United States, or you failed to specify enough context so that in that limited situation your statement is true. At the very least you failed to make a simple Google search for a sweeping generalization that is demonstrably not true.
[+] [-] tianshuo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcinx27|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crispyambulance|8 years ago|reply
It makes me wonder if it wasn't a scam at all, but just a really bad idea with believers that wanted to make it real?
[+] [-] Retric|8 years ago|reply
Another options is you placed them on slightly elevated tracks and add bridges over intersections, the larger problem is they need a lot of space above them which means overpasses etc could limit placement without major investments and it really just reinvents the monorail concept.
So, IMO it's unlikely to work in most cities, but there are a lot of city's and you only need a few. Thus, it probably did not start as a scam even if evolved into it.
[+] [-] microtherion|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izacus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maze-le|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 99_00|8 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214675
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
The CGI videos of it cornering show the sections bending, which only works in CGI.[2][3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn
[2] https://youtu.be/vaUTIIggEis?t=131 [3] https://youtu.be/vaUTIIggEis?t=138
[+] [-] gumby|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Dylan16807|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|8 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g
[+] [-] averagewall|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aembleton|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawless123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrodust|8 years ago|reply
A traffic straddling bus is one of those "so crazy it just might work" ideas that gets funding.
[+] [-] tyingq|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diyseguy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlebrech|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blurbleblurble|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timwaagh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Luc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhouston|8 years ago|reply
An elevated rail system seemed so much easier and without the difficulties that this introduced.
But an elevated rail system required significantly more investment thus it had to be city sanctioned in a large way, rather than the minimal investments this required.
[+] [-] GoToRO|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corobo|8 years ago|reply
It's just not very fast compared to modern cars and quite expensive so not as many people do it.
Edit: Oh one minor mostly common sense note -
You can't ride/drive horses on the motorway and probably shouldn't on faster roads or dual carriageways due to the rest of the traffic going far faster than you.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 27182818284|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] profmonocle|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technofiend|8 years ago|reply
>"Every person having control or charge of a vehicle shall, whenever upon any way and approaching any horse, drive, manage, and control such vehicle in such a manner as to exercise every reasonable precaution to prevent the frightening of such horse, and to insure the safety and protection of any person riding or driving the same."
That's the law (for instance) in New Hampshire. The same article (the very first link when I search for "horse street legal united states") http://cs.thehorse.com/blogs/horses-and-the-law/archive/2012... further states
>Traffic laws in a few states, including Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico, specifically state that horses have all the rights and obligations of other vehicles when they are being ridden or driven on a public highway. Everywhere else, except in states like Louisiana where it appears to be illegal to ride a horse on a paved road, riders and drivers probably enjoy similar rights and obligations by implication.
>Some states prohibit specific conduct when riding on a highway: It is illegal to ride a horse at night in New Mexico; to cross bridges at a gait faster than a walk in Idaho, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania; to ride or drive a horse "recklessly" in Nevada; to race or run horses on a highway in Kentucky, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey; to ride on a levee in Kentucky; and to ride on interstate highways in several states. Horses should be ridden on the right-hand side of the road, going with the flow of traffic, almost everywhere except Colorado, where riders must ride on the left.
Sorry but I don't think you know what you're talking about, you're not in the United States, or you failed to specify enough context so that in that limited situation your statement is true. At the very least you failed to make a simple Google search for a sweeping generalization that is demonstrably not true.
[+] [-] dec0dedab0de|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickrio|8 years ago|reply
Cars on the other hand, don't do that at all.
Maybe that's the reason why cars are not banned.