China’s crazy car-straddling elevated is reportedly just a giant scam

After first trial the bus has just collected dust. Beijing police have arrested 30 people.

Read the whole story

 

[soulsabr]

... and a promised annualised return of 12 percent.

This goes beyond red flag in my books. This is self destruct klaxons with flashing lights and heavily armed troops levels of beware; I don't even have to see the project. When I first read about this my first thought was corners followed by high, delivery vehicles. Neither of these things seemed to phase the investors, though. Well, this is China so "justice" will probably be quick.

 

[soulsabr]

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mrseb[/url]":1tovls6w]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":1tovls6w]People who invested in this basically deserved to get scammed. A promised 12% yearly return?

Journalists everywhere should feel ashamed though. Way too many hailed this as something revolutionary. Even the original Ars article after noticing all flaws inherent to the concept ended the new story with:

Still, it's an exciting concept. In countries with very specific infrastructure setups—or the wherewithal to make dramatic infrastructure changes to accommodate elevated buses—the TEB could revolutionise public transport.

Of course it couldn't.

I stand by those comments! I still think elevated transport is a pretty good idea. It's cheaper than building tunnels.

You could totally imagine these things on long stretches of straight roads - the kind of roads that lead into major cities that are often congested. Kind of like autonomous lorry convoys. They're very effective - just only useful in quite specific scenarios.

Just how many of those perfectly straight roads are there? And how long are they? In my experience most are reasonably straight but still have some shallow bends.

Plus surely an elevated rail line would be more suitable as it is not restricted by bends and can therefore be more useful?

Elevated rail line.... Monorail?

It's really more of a Shelbyville idea.

I bet the pitch song and dance number was epic.