China Seems To Have Abandoned Their Straddling Bus Experiment

You might recall that earlier this year, there was a video of a concept of a straddling bus in China. Basically the idea is that the bus acts like a moving tunnel where cars can pass underneath and through it, while the upper portion will house passengers. The goal, presumably, is to ease traffic congestion.

It was a crazy but clever idea that actually underwent testing back in August where the company behind it rolled out an actual working prototype. Unfortunately it seems that the project, for whatever reason, has since been abandoned. This is according to a report from The Paper (via Fortune) in which they claim that the company behind the bus has seemingly packed up and left, leaving the full-scale test model of bus abandoned at its testing site in Qinhuangdao.

It is unclear as to what happened, but some have speculated that it could be due to the technical difficulties and hurdles of the design that could have lent some pause to further development. However others are claiming that Transit Explore Bus, the company behind the project, was running a scam to abscond with money from its investors.

Whether or not those claims are true remains to be seen, but either way it seems that we will most likely not be seeing such a concept on the roads anytime soon, at least not beyond the tests and photos that we’ve seen so far.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Transportation
Tags: China, Social Hit