Straddling Bus or Scam?

The New York Times, among others, has publicized a claimed test run of the “straddling bus,” aka “transit elevated bus” (TEB), that promises to relieve congestion by “floating” above regular traffic. In fact, it was less of a test drive than a publicity stunt, moving a vehicle at 6 miles per hour on a few hundred feet of test track, not on a real city street or highway.

Supposedly, the advantage of these 300-passenger behemoths (or 1,200 if four are hooked together) is that, unlike rail transit, they can be added to a city without building a lot of new infrastructure. But that’s a lie. The vehicles themselves run on tracks, and they weigh so much–upwards of 100 tons–that such tracks will be expensive to install. As Wired points out, it “is not a bus. . . it is a train.” (Technically, it is a railcar; it only becomes a train when two or more are hooked together, but you get the point.)

Moreover, at 4.8 meters (15-3/4 feet) tall, the vehicles are higher than the clearance under many overpasses. The height limit on most roads in China is only 4.2 to 4.5 meters. That means extensive reconstruction would be needed to any route the buses would run on. Thus, the TEB violates the Antiplanner’s principle of shared infrastructure, which says that, to be successful, new transportation technologies must use existing and, preferably, shared infrastructure.
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The current estimated top speed of the vehicles is 60 kph or about 37 mph. This means that any vehicles unable to fit under the TEBs, including trucks or regular buses, will be relegated to slow speeds. Even if the TEBs are boosted to regular highway speeds, trucks and buses–along with any cars that happen to be behind them–would have to halt whenever the TEBs stop at a station. That’s not going to relieve much congestion.

The vehicles themselves have an estimated cost of $4.5 million. For that price, you could get at least five articulated or double-decker buses capable of moving well over 100 people on existing infrastructure.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all is that China is rapidly moving from big-box transport to small-box transport, namely cars. Chinese are buying around 20 million new cars a year, which means the market for transit will be declining if it isn’t already.

Chinese cities would do better to install exclusive busways, such as the one in Guangzhou. The Guangzhou line moves up to 350 buses per hour, some of which are rated to carry up to 160 passengers. At just 100 people per bus, the line could move 35,000 people per hour, which is more than the Washington Metro’s capacity. Actual peak use is 26,900 per hour, which is probably not much less than the TEB could do considering that, for safety reasons, the latter could not run as frequently. Best of all, busways would cost far less than TEB tracks and could be quickly converted to shared lanes if the demand for transit ever does decline.