A few months ago, the pictures of a weird, elevated bus that glides above the traffic on the road started circulating on the internet. Predictably, everyone including me freaked out that the so-called “straddling bus” will be a joke and end up as a dream. It looked like the bus was eating cars, or how insane anyone would have to be to actually drive underneath.
Thankfully, the Chinese company that designed the bus has answered the internet’s prayers by actually building one. According to China’s Xinhua News, the TEB-1, or Transit Elevated Bus, took its first test ride Tuesday in the northeastern city of Qinhuangdao, in the Hebei province.
Pictures show a spacious interior that is over 72 feet long 25 feet wide, as well as beaming passengers gazing out the window. It’s roughly 16 feet tall and offers about 7 feet of space underneath for cars to travel through. The bus, which can carry up to 300 passengers, rides along tracks embedded in the street.
The bus was first unveiled in 2010, and then again last May at Beijing’s 19th International High-Tech Expo. Song Youzhou, the designer of the bus, says prototypes are being constructed, and that five cities — Nanyang, Qinhuangdao, Shenyang, Tianjin and Zhoukou — have signed contracts with his TEB Technology Development Company for pilot projects.
Of course, many questions remain about the feasibility of the straddling bus, most importantly how it won’t cause many, many traffic deaths. The prototype that was launched in Qinhuangdao this week will hopefully help answer some of those concerns.
