When it comes to public transport, people either love it or hate it. I personally am in between, neither hating it or loving it, but for the car drivers that get caught behind the bus on a busy day, I can only imagine their hatred of public transport. A Beijing-based company looks to ease your travelling woes with their new land Airbus design, a design that not only creates a whole new kind of bus but one that would never get in the way of your car on a busy morning.
The bus was unveiled at the 19th International High-Tech Expo in Beijing last weekend and looks like one of the large vehicles from Tron. The idea is simple, the bus doesn’t have to be at road level so why not create a bus that allows cars (as long as their 2 metres tall or less) to pass straight under it. The bus’ design measures in at 60 metres long and 8 metres wide which means they can accommodate a large number of vehicles. Although, this huge size will take up a great deal of space on the roads.
With a prototype in development for completion in late July, the bus could theoretically carry as many as a thousand passengers at speeds of around 37 miles per hour. While this may seem like a pipe dream it only gets better when you realise the bus takes inspirations from Trams, specifically the electric ones that are looking to come to places like New York. Designed to run on electric the tram would help reduce CO2 emissions while the total cost of a Land Airbus is only 16% of that required to build an underground system.
Absolutely terrifying, like a giant car eating centipede. Also adapting existing road systems will be very hard, so ideal for China that builds a new city every few weeks, but less so for other countries.
I think this will be as successful as urban monorails around the world.