Emperor Napoleon once said this – “Let China Sleep, for when the Dragon awakes, she will shake the world.” Today, not only China has awaken, there seems to be very little superpower America can do to stop it from continuously growing. From the perspective of history, China has no intention of ruling the world.

It’s pretty simple. If China has such ambition, it would have had conquered the world ages ago during its great exploration from the 2nd century BC until the 15th century. True, the Chinese technology may be miles behind the Americans and the Russians today. But they’re the master in building the biggest in the shortest time possible.

 

Six years ago in 2010, Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., Ltd proposed a giant “straddling bus”. The model was supposed to look like a subway but travels on road instead of rail. Passengers would board on the upper level while other vehicles lower than 2-metre can go through under.

Powered by electricity and solar energy, the bus can speed up to 60 km/h carrying 1200-1400 passengers at a time without blocking other vehicles’ way. Costing about 500-million Yuan to build the bus together with a 40-km-long path for it, it was only 10% of building equivalent subway. The giant bus can reduce traffic between 20% and 30%.

 

People thought it was a wishful thinking and more like a fantasy solution to China’s hellish traffic. At the 19th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo held in May this year, the same giant bus was re-introduced – Transit Elevated Bus (TEB). Each “bus” would have a carrying capacity of 1,200 people. It would, however, cost 5 times less and take only a year to finish.

A month later in June, the developers claimed in a jaw-dropping announcement that the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) would be ready for a test-run in August. When the prototype was actually built and taken for its “first test drive” Qinhuangdao, Hebei, on August 3, all hell breaks loose. Nobody believed the prototype could be delivered within 3-month.

 

Although the test-run didn’t exactly simulate real world traffic conditions with just one bus carriage on a controlled track of only 300 meters in length, the prototype actually works. The ultimate full-blown solution would have a total of 4 linked-TEB buses zooming above the street at 60 kilometres per hour, while traffic slips conveniently underneath.

The chief engineer of the project – Song Youzhou – says each car of TEB is about 22 meters long, 7.8 meters wide and 4.8 meters high. The new TEB is electric, with a super-capacitor on board that’s charged by poles alongside routes. It runs on tracks laid on either side of a two-lane road. People will board from above, via stairs or elevators from special stations.

 

There’re some confusions though. Will people get disoriented when they’re driving underneath a “giant moving bridge”, of which the stationary relative to the road would trick a person’s mind? What’s a person’s fixed point of reference? There was also the question on accidents where cars get veered, collided or simply flipped while underneath the TEB.

Nevertheless, the successful trial run of world’s first Transit Elevated Bus was good enough when it caught the attention of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has asked his road transport ministry to get maximum details and explore whether such buses can be of use on highly congested roads in Indian cities. Perhaps Malaysia and Indonesia should seriously look into this awesome solution too.

 

Update: After applauded the TEB, Chinese state media is now calling the project unfeasible and even a scam. Qinhuangdao officials claimed the test hadn’t been approved. Besides accusing the developer of scamming investors from crowdfunding, there’re tons of technical and safety issues which the developer has allegedly not able to solve.

 

Interestingly, State news agency Xinhua had initially acknowledged the testing as “Road Test”. It also boasted that the TEB has already attracted interest from governments in Brazil, France, India and Indonesia. Even party newspaper People’s Daily published the news with the triumphant headline, “This is not a simulation: The ‘flying bus’ has really hit the road!”

 

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August 9th, 2016 by financetwitter

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