"Straddle bus" public transportation system workable: inventor

The "straddle bus," a newly-developed vehicle that may reduce traffic jams by about 30 percent and is less costly than urban subway system has theoretically proved workable, its designer said Wednesday.

A work group led by Professor Zhang Jianwu from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University conducted the research that proved it could work, said Song Youzhou, the vehicle's inventor and chairman of the Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment Company (SHFPE).

The "straddle bus" spans two of traffic lanes and sits at a height of 4.5 meters. It will be used on major roads in cities and may reduce road traffic by 20 to 30 percent, according to Song.

The bus will run along special tracks and will sit on a pair of stilts so ordinary cars can pass underneath it. It could carry up to 1,400 passengers and it could travel as fast as 60 to 80 kilometers per hour.

The cost of manufacturing the bus and building the road facilities is 50 million yuan (7.34 million U.S.dollars) per kilometer, about one tenth the cost of building a subway line of the same length.



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