Futuristic street-straddling bus gets test run

The Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) is powered by electricity and can carry passengers above two lanes of traffic while cars drive underneath it. The 22-metre-long, 7.8-metre-wide and 4.8-metre-high bus traversed a 300 metre stretch of road in the city of Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, at a very slow speed for its inaugural test run, but the finished version should hit speeds of 40 mph. The spacious interior of each bus looks like a luxury airport departure lounge rather than a public bus. It can squeeze in 300 passengers at full capacity. Original designs for the TEB showed multiple carriages linked together to carry up to 1,200 passengers. 

Designs for the TEB have come on a long way since they debuted at the 19th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo in May 2016. Back then, engineers unveiled a toy-sized model of the TEB while promising that full-sized tests would take place in the second half of 2016. While they certainly got ahead when it came to getting the bus on – or above – the road, tests still have a long way to go before the TEB is put to real use. The bus didn’t navigate any corners on its inaugural test run or deal with any tricky bits of road infrastructure such as crossroads, bridges or traffic lights. 

Passengers will board the sixteen-wheeled bus via elevated platforms on the roadside, although commuters in a hurry are still better off taking the subway as no high-speed tests of the bus have taken place yet. “Its construction can be finished in one year,” said Bai Chiming, the engineer in charge of the TEB project when the bus was unveiled in May. Chinese newspaper The People’s Daily estimates the buses could be in use by the end of this year. 

“The biggest advantage is that the bus will save lots of road space,” the project’s chief engineer, Song Youzhou, told state-media agency Xinhua earlier this year. “The TEB has the same functions as the subway, while its cost of construction is less than one fifth of the subway,” another engineer Bai Zhiming told news outlet CCTV. One TEB could replace 40 conventional buses, according to the firm. However, it is unclear when the vehicle will be widely used in Chinese cities.

It is not a new idea, but it was not seriously considered until a mini-model of it was launched at the 19th China Beijing International High Tech Expo in May. A month later, developers announced that the TEB would be ready for a test-run in August. Thousands took to micro-blogging site Weibo to express their amazement and incredulity. “I saw images of this not long ago and now it’s actually happening?” asked one user.