Chinese Traffic-Slaying ‘Straddling Bus’ is nothing more than a big scam
shanghaiist.com
shanghaiist.com
But, about providing context:
* It is a very common occurance for 'Chinese Traffic' (nice pun) to ridicule any idea. The consencus commentary can turn on a dime and be quite vicious.
* That the Global Times, the English language tabloid government mouthpiece paper turn on the project suggests the wrong stakeholders were brought on-board to make this work, or they weren't senior enough. The alternative scenario: That this goes against key national development goals, or pet projects senior-enough officials have an interest or thumb in the pie of, get displaced.
Of course, the ultimate alternative, which is quite simple and feasible today: dedicated bus lanes at peak traffic times of the day, or all day. If you choose to drive, you know there's congestion. Don't punish others else for over-proportional use of the road: size of a car. A bus lane in my city in China typically sees 2-15 buses per minute. That's a lot of people.
It need a rails. No car higher than 2.1 meters can ride under this - despite the fact 4.5 meters is standard on Chinese roads. How could it be feasible?
The height issue just means it would have to be on roads that are 3 lanes or wider, so taller traffic can move around it. I don't think the height issue is as big of a deal as the tracks.
If they could make this bus using regular tires it would make more sense but then it becomes potentially more dangerous to drivers in cars. In theory the bus wouldn't have much need to change lanes but in practice any driver that did so while cars were underneath could cause a terrible accident.
If you look at the roadway required, you need two lanes for traffic, plus two lanes for the "tracks" plus five safety buffers - one between the two lanes and one on each side of the track.
From the pictures, it looks to me like you could have two lanes of traffic and one light rail in the same amount of space. And this configuration requires one less safety buffer. And light rail would probably fit under existing infrastructure (bridges and utility lines).
An elevated monorail's mooring infrastructure takes about a lane's worth of surface area whereas this required barriers, guard rails, two sets of guiding rails, low height restrictions, all the directional constraints of regular rail, etc. Any vehicles involved in a collision with this would be flattened. The undercarriage is very bulky. Nice idea to try but in practice the existing solutions are superior.
> the test run just 300 meters long and completely failed to mimic real-life traffic conditions
It looks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village