from Hacker News

Chinese plan for “traffic-straddling bus” ended after 32 people were arrested

by mantesso on 7/5/17, 10:17 AM with 115 comments

  • by tianshuo on 7/5/17, 12:15 PM

    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.

  • by GordonS on 7/5/17, 11:35 AM

    If nothing else, this always seemed like utter madness from a safety perspective.

  • by 99_00 on 7/5/17, 4:24 PM

    Interesting to to compare the comments now versus then

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214675

  • by Animats on 7/5/17, 5:14 PM

    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]

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn

    [2] https://youtu.be/vaUTIIggEis?t=131 [3] https://youtu.be/vaUTIIggEis?t=138

  • by gumby on 7/5/17, 2:43 PM

    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.

  • by rasz on 7/5/17, 1:06 PM

    Bicycle sharing companies are next I guess, give it a year or two.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g

  • by lawless123 on 7/5/17, 1:15 PM

    A tram would be much safer and probably cause less disruption.

  • by tyingq on 7/5/17, 12:31 PM

    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.

  • by ams6110 on 7/5/17, 4:16 PM

    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.

  • by diyseguy on 7/5/17, 11:14 PM

    Too bad, I was picturing this as another way for Amazon to deliver packages or perhaps snacks to people (while waiting in traffic)

  • by jlebrech on 7/5/17, 4:03 PM

    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?

  • by macawfish on 7/5/17, 10:46 PM

    If this was a scam... what does that make the hyperloop?

  • by timwaagh on 7/5/17, 1:43 PM

    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.

  • by Luc on 7/5/17, 12:04 PM

    "China's Vision", I mean, come on. There seems to be some opinion leaking into the title.

  • by GoToRO on 7/5/17, 12:37 PM

    Just ban cars. It's not that hard. We banned horses, why not cars?