Instead of a single carriage with ridiculous articulation requirements, maybe two parallel carriages, like two articulating buses side by side. At a station, all doors open and you can move between them.
What advantages does this approach have over elevated rail? It certainly doesn’t seem like it would be cheaper.
That doesn’t seem to save all that much space compared to a single tram line. But I guess that would be boring.
Well the infrastructure costs are slightly less than with an elevated line. But this is going to be MUCH slower because unlike an elevated line, this has to go through intersections…And it’s going to take very dense city to support a tram that carries this many people. And at those density levels, I suspect that an elevated line or a subway is economically supportable.
On long NYC avenues this could still work to just go up and down…if NYC streets weren’t constantly under heavy construction, heavily double-parked with trucks, etc…
Better yet, give these buses a yawning maw that consumes the cars on the road, and then the regular buses, light rail, bicycles and pedestrians can get about their merry way.
I would say that you don’t need to lay new stretches of rail and in the case of elevated rail in particular, you save money on the concrete and steel needed to build the separate right of way.So basically infrastructure costs… are lower?
I can’t see how this can be implemented without new infrastructure in any case, though.
Straddling buses would only work if they were made out of rubberWhy? When straddling buses it's not the bus that needs to be flexible. Believe me, I've tried.
Add to that, what happens when it inevitably breaks down. one whole side of the street is going to be closed to all straddling buses until it’s fixed or towed away. (Which I would demand to require a straddling tow truck.) With a normal bus they could just go around the broken bus for a while.
Wait, what’s the “they” in the headline…I think I need a sentence diagram…
This could totally work! After all, drivers would never change lanes in a way that could cause a crash, especially when all they see is a huge shadow overtaking them. 
They also certainly drive vehicles of a uniformly low height. (What city would be so badly planned as to have panel vans on the street?)
Yeah, trying to picture one of these on Chicago streets … and mostly failing, but what I’m picturing has a certain amusement value to it.
Like the 11-foot-8 bridge, only it’s the bridge that’s moving?
This is gorgeous, and impractical. Cannot see it working if it has to share any asphalt with cars. If this were a form of ovehead rail, yes, I could see that, anywhere that doesn’t already have overhead bridges, which is… where?
I could see this as maybe a connector line from a city center out to an airport (downtown DC to Dulles?) or out to a decentralized commuter rail depot. Departing every half hour, no stops, more frequent service during rush hour they could take a lot of cars off the road. I can’t imagine anything more than a several mile run being feasible though.
Or get stuck in the process of changing lanes when traffic comes to a standstill in the kind of traffic jams that are common there. Yup, that never happens.
Yeah, anything much taller than a sedan car would cause a collision. I’m not sure how one bans all trucks and vans from these roadways.
I can’t believe anyone is still expending any effort on this idea, given all the problems with it that were obvious immediately after it was shown several years ago.
Well, none, seeing as elevated rail works.
I also notice there are no large trucks among the cars in that mockup. I wish the Chinese well in this mad endeavor.
Anyone (vehicle) changing lanes will block forward progress. If you want a train, get a train
goodbye skyways! Goodbye low overpasses. Goodbye underpasses.
Its also about that overhead space that the bus has to pass through, and things like… traffic lights. I’m sure they would not be practical another what, 10 feet off the ground?
I guess we can expect an 8 foot 11 you tube channel for these new buses:
