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.

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[Fatesrider]

Faustus Scaevola[/url]":3259wrva]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.

Yeah... But...

I'd hardly think the specificity was available enough to justify the expense over other more available, and less specific mass transit options. Toss in the "holy shit, this tunnel's MOVING!" factor that you're bound to get and you have an instant, rubbernecking rolling traffic jam.

Inasmuch as sticking to one's guns is thought to be showing "admirable resolve", it's better to say, "Yeah, this should have been spiking our BS meter and we should have done more digging into the financial arrangements behind it" and show much more admirable humility.

People make mistakes, even journalists. I agree that building bridges is easier than building tunnels, but this thing is a rolling disaster waiting to happen in too specific of places to ever be practical or cost-effective and could never be a bridge.

AKA: A scam.

The Ars readers at the time were essentially saying "WFT?!?!?" to the original article, too.

As for what to do with it, they could anchor the thing down in some inland coastal region and use it as a Tsunami shelter. Beyond that, I really don't see many other practical uses for it.