China Will Start Building 186 Kilometers of Track for Mega Straddle Buses by the end of 2010

China is developing mega straddle buses to help solve traffic congestion like a recent 9 day 60 mile long traffic jam.

This bus straddles the road allowing it to pass over the normal road traffic on China’s busy city streets. The buses are 6 meters (18 feet) wide and 4.5 meters (13.5 feet) high which means they take up two road lanes, while still being low enough to get under most of the cities overpasses.

It can reduce traffic jams by 25-30% on main routes. Running at an average of 25 miles per hour, it can take 1,200 people at a time, or 300 passengers per cart. The straddling bus is that it runs above cars and under overpass. Its biggest strength is saving road space, efficient and high in capacity.

Each of these mega-buses will have a capacity of 1200 passengers while they zip down the streets blanketing commuters. They are electric powered, using a relay charging system that would recharge the bus as it is traveling by maintaining contact with at least one high-power electrical conductor that makes contact with the roof of the bus. The bus will either be on a railway style system, similar typical trolly cars we have now, or equipped with laser sensing cameras using regular tires following a painted line. The cost savings of this opposed to underground methods are over 90%. The Mentougou district of Beijing is beginning to lay out 186km of tracks by this years end for a pilot program

The mega straddel bus will cost about 500 million yuan (USD70 million) to build the bus and a 40-km-long path for it, only 10% of building equivalent subway.

The first 187 kilometer section will be a little over US$300 million.

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