China's Straddle Bus Is Our Kind Of Crazy

Gabe Zaldivar
by Gabe Zaldivar
Last updated: 10:00 AM ET, Thu May 26, 2016

Photo via YouTube

If you can't go through the traffic, or if you can't go around, then perhaps you better go over the mess.

That's at the heart of an infrastructure design making waves all the way from China. It's called a straddle bus, and it would, in theory, ride on rails that would allow the bus to, well, straddle traffic.

TravelPulse founder Mark Murphy was on CBS News and equated it perfectly to Pac-Man eating up ghosts, or in this case cars.

When your city has exhausted all other options, perhaps public transportation can just go over the ongoing traffic jam.

Here is how it might look thanks to CBS News.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this design. We say mass produce the thing and give Los Angeles an elevated solution.

According to Popular Science, which cites New China TV (seen below), the bus is the brainchild of Transit Explore Bus.

READ MORE: 10 Of The Best Travel Tech Gadgets Featured At CES 2016

More than a mere model exploration, TEB actually plans to test out the plausibility of a system in Chengzhou in July or August.

The system would have buses ride the street at heights of two meters and speeds of 37 miles per hour.

The obvious advantage is the absence of bridge or tunneling costs.

Yes, there are disadvantages to the design that you people who are so fun at parties will point out.

It would be problematic for one of these things to break down in the middle of the city, sure. But it's possibly just as dire when a semi-truck breaks down in a tunnel or a metro train stops working near an intersection.

Hypothetical scenarios withstanding, we like this above-the-street thinking.


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