China elevated bus gets first test run

Aug 05, 2016

If you think traffic in New York is bad, just check out some of China’s biggest cities. So how do you remedy congestion? With a giant, car-eating air-bus, apparently.

The concept for an elevated bus that would allow traffic to flow underneath has been kicking around for a while, but now they actually went and built one. No surprise, it’s as weird and awesome as you’d imagine. Dubbed the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB-1), the mass transit solution holds 300 passengers and features a 72-foot-wide interior. It runs on tracks embedded in the street and allows 7 feet of underneath clearance for cars (which sounds really scary for drivers, without a lot of wiggle room).

China’s Xinhua News notes the TEB-1 is currently being tested in the northeastern city of Qinhuangdao, in the Hebei province. It will eventually be rolled out in Nanyang, Qinhuangdao, Shenyang, Tianjin and Zhoukou — which should provide an excellent proving ground to see whether this is just a terrifying gimmick or a viable solution to traffic congestion.

Check out a video of the bus eating cars being tested below and let us know what you think:

Source: Blastr