China's Transit Elevated Bus rides above traffic.
 

A model of a "transit elevated bus", an "Air Bus" made its debut at the Beijing International High Tech Expo.

At first, I thought it was a crazy bus driver flying a bus in the air after a horrific accident in China. :lawl:

Interesting design. :considered:

Just imagining all the accidents.... ppl in Richmond have enough trouble keeping it between the lines, can you imagine when they get shocked after having one of these pass over them?

Maybe if these buses drove against traffic, so that drivers felt like they were driving into tunnels instead of having a major shock come from behind

maybe in special areas of the city where each lane has a metal or concrete barrier preventing lane changes/crossing (similar to no lane changes in the messy tunnel but with safeguards)

even then yep...accidents...:lol

or maybe in areas with google's automated cars

The concept is not new. I remember seeing them back in the early 2000, but it never came into fruition due to the height limit it needs to impose on its roads and stations (so you either have to build very high stations, or limit the height of traffic that can go under it)

thats just disaster waiting to happen, it'll never come to reality

on rails, I see.


gotta build that model in the basement.........

Interesting concept and design. I don't know if that would work in the real world though...

this gonna explode

It wouldn't because Chinese drivers do not obey traffic laws. Like most things out of China it looks promising on paper however in the actual implementation things fall apart quickly.

Id rather still drive in richmond then in china.. lol...

What happens when comes across a semi?

Imagine how much damage 1 single vehicle can cause when a lifted truck/larger sized truck with something strapped to the roof or over sized vehicle gets hit from the back and is dragged forwards taking out every car in front of it until the train can come to a halt.

This concept is becoming a reality. China is testing the elevated bus.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/...0177460651.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/...0177506057.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...huangdao-hebei

credit where due
amazing how this went from concept to testing within a year...doesn't matter if quality isn't there yet the fact that they can get it out so fast is impressive

even if you take out NIMBY and road compatibility concerns, if they tried doing this in say a newly developed Vancouver suburb it'll take 30 years and couple dozen tax hikes to even come close.

The flip side of that coin is do we really want our governments to have carte blanche when it comes to policy implementation without any type of public consultation?

may be a classic case of the (wealthy) Chinese mentality of "here's my money. i want it, and i want it now"

i'm thinking perhaps it's more of pride and what they can achieve so lets make it happen than entitlement, similar to what they were able to do in terms of buildings for the olympics.

That prototype you see there probably costs more than what Translink spent all of last year. Remember when Vancouver 2010 costed less than 7 billion, and beijing costed 50 billion?

When money is no object and public perception, consultation, and probability of success are completely eliminated from the equation stuff like this become easy to do. No matter how terrible an idea they are.

Sh*t in China are like 10 years ahead of things here in Canada. Case in point, the stupid damn Compass card, gates, 1 zone, 2 zone, etc for Translink that just went live like a year ago with complication after complication. HK had efficient Octopus card for their MTR like 15 years. China's speed trains rock. Necessity is the mother of all invention.

^ I don't even.

Back to topic. It is quite amazing that they actually brought this concept to life.

Which part of "a lack of public consultation, business case analysis, environmental impact analysis, procedural justice" do you not understand? By nature, dictatorships are generally way more efficient than democracies. There is a reason you don't see any of them in the world being all that successful though.

And don't give me the benevolent dictator is best bullcrap. Power corrupts, so for all practical purposes, no dictator is benevolent.

Oh, I didn't know we were talking about politics, corruption, and environmental issues, I was just alluding to Asia's technology and efficiency.

Now that you brought it up ... I suppose BC with their democracy, public consultation, business case analysis has never failed ... you must not remember:
1. BC Fast Cat Ferries, (proj at $210 .. ended up $460m ... sold the three for $50m, this was back in 1994 so that's quite a lot back then)
2. BC Stadium Roof replacement (proj to be $345m ... ended up $514m) ... for just a f*king roof!
3. Port Mann Bridge (forecasted to be $1.1B ... ended up $3.3B), remember the first time we had ice storm?
4. Privatization of BC Rail $1B scandal with raids to government offices ... Basi and Virk took the fall.
5. The present housing crisis which lined the pockets of many politicians through 'procedural justice'.
6. Mining disaster, 2014, 24 million cubic metres of waste into nearby lakes and rivers.

If you think that there aren't any corruption, shady business deals with governments, or environmental disasters here in BC or North America ... well, I don't know what to say.

50 Billion / 17 million people = 2941.17
7 Billion / 603500 people = 11599.00

Beijing is a shit show in terms of city design and has fuck all drainage. 50 Billion is a bargain.

If you fail to grasp how politics will always directly or indirectly affect the general population's life, I guess you've failed to understand how the real world works.

Then again, from the examples you cited, I really shouldn't be surprised. The democratic process doesn't eliminate poor governments and failed policies and their implementation, it just merely minimizes the frequency of them occurring. Perhaps I should start listing the failures that Mainland China has done to itself?

If you think China's technology and efficiency is so good, perhaps I should remind you of the Chinese high speed trains disastrous safety history and shoddy construction? Or if you think Hong Kong's MTR technology is so advanced, may I remind you how it was introduced during the British colonial era? and how its service quality has now deteriorated to an abysmal level with frequent train failures, and highly dubious purchases of Mainland China-made trains and parts that do not live up to the expected safety standards? Our Skytrains fail often enough as well, but we haven't deteriorated into that sorry a state yet, but we might be heading in that direction if we -- as citizens -- don't stop the provincially proposed plan to purchase Mainland China-made Skytrains.

If you ever go hiking anywhere in BC, take a look around you and think about why we can still enjoy all this beautiful nature. And now go look at the multi-coloured chemical rivers that you see in China, or better yet -- look at the massively failed Three Gorges Dam project and the various natural disasters it has caused. And then turn to look at the demise of the Chinese white dophin situation in Hong Kong -- it is unfolding right in front of our eyes. When there is no democracy, no public consultation, no business case analysis, disaster is what you get.

:fuckyea: