China's straddling bus

A couple of weeks ago, Chris (and people around the world) reported on China's nine day traffic jam. The traffic jam was on the Beijing-Tibet expressway. Beijing itself has had many challenges with traffic congestion due to poor urban planning and transit policies that favor the automobile over public transport. When I was in Shanghai, I noticed the impressive transit system and was told by locals that it is well used. Beijing's public transit system is less impressive I'm told.

As Chris mentioned, congestion zone charges, highways tolls and carbon taxes could help ease traffic and pollution in cities like Beijing. Alas, these sorts of policy tools would probably not be well received by the motorists.

The straddling bus has been proposed by Chinese civil engineers. It would help save road space and could carry up to 1400 passengers. I think there are two really unique aspects of this transit mode (if is does come into operation). 1) The bus stations will have supercapacitors which would re-charge the bus with energy so it could make trips continuously. 2) It could carry over 1000 passengers. You do the math to figure out how many cars that could take off the road over a one year period and the drastic reductions in carbon emissions that would accompany this process.

Powered by electricity and capable of carrying over 1000 passengers, it sounds like a promising project for China's top tier cities like Beijing. Can't subways do the same thing? They sure can, but they are really expensive ($100 million per kilometre of construction) and they take years to construct.

Can the straddling bus help improve urban transit? We'll have to see what happens. 186 kilometres have been planned out in Beijing's Mentougou District.