Five Great Inventions

China’s Vision for a Straddling Bus Dissolves in Scandal and Arrests
By AUSTIN RAMZY and CAROLYN ZHANG

The traffic-straddling bus during its test run in Qinhuangdao in August. Last week, more than 30 members of the company behind the project were detained on suspicion of illegal fund-raising. 

HONG KONG — Maybe a giant tram rolling over pesky cars clogging the streets wasn’t the answer to China’s traffic congestion woes. 

A Chinese inventor’s plan to develop such a vehicle, called a “traffic-straddling bus,” has been effectively killed after 32 people from an investment company that backed the project were arrested.
The bus was designed to ride on tracks, but with its body elevated so that two lanes of traffic could pass underneath. 

Some 1,200 passengers were to have ridden between specialized stops.

But critics raised many questions, including the expense of installing tracks and stations, whether tall trucks would get stuck underneath and about the risk to smaller vehicles and pedestrians.
“Cars under the belly of the big vehicle would have no way to change direction, and even changing lanes would be dangerous,” The Beijing News said last year.

After some delays and breathless news coverage, the TEB-1, or Transit Elevated Bus, was tested in August in the northern seaside town of Qinhuangdao.

The 72-foot-long, 16-foot-high bus was designed to ride on tracks, with its body elevated so that two lanes of traffic could pass underneath.

In subsequent months, the Chinese news media and investors raised pointed questions about the company behind the project, Huaying Kailai. 

The company promoted the “reliability” of investing in public-private partnerships like the bus initiative and promised annual returns of up to 12 percent. 

A New York Times reporter who visited Huaying Kailai’s office in September saw walls lined with photographs of the owner, Bai Zhiming, with celebrities, entrepreneurs and local officials. 

A half-dozen investors stopped by over an hour. 

Some left with gifts and grocery bags full of cash.
“We are just a private tech company. We are not a briefcase company for illegal fund-raising,” Zhang Wei, the director of development and planning for TEB Tech, the Huaying Kailai subsidiary that developed the bus, told the reporter. 

“Everything we do is approved by related departments in the government, and if we are an illegal company with financial issues, why are the local governments still interested in us?”
In the fall, as public scrutiny increased, the test track and the huge, 72-foot-long, 16-foot-high prototype fell into disuse. 

In June, workers began dismantling the 330-yard track, a sign the local government would not allow the project to continue.
Mr. Bai was among the 32 Huaying Kailai staff members arrested last week on suspicion of illegal fund-raising, the Beijing police announced on Sunday. 

Company officials could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Chinese news outlets were harshly critical, saying the exercise was little more than a fraud from the start.
“The truth is the bus was a fake science investment scam, with no scientific innovation,” a Beijing News op-ed said on Monday. 

“The test was nothing more than a trick to attract investors.”

Five Great Inventions

Remember China's Transit Elevated Bus (TEB)? Project is a fiasco, officially scrapped: Authorities in Qinhuangdao have ordered the dismantling of a test-track for the traffic-straddling buses.
By Ken Sunny

A model of an innovative street-straddling bus called Transit Elevated Bus is seen after a test run in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, China, August 3, 2016.

The Transit Elevated Bus (TEB), the straddling bus of China shot to the limelight in mid-2016 as a practical and efficient invention to ease traffic congestion. 

The futuristic concept has been displayed with up to 300 passenger capacity. 

The bus allows vehicles to move uninterrupted since it can drive over traffic on a dedicated track.
Designed by Song Youzhou, the TEB-1 was supposed to be China's environmentally-friendly answer to the world's traffic problem. 

However, the project had a premature death owing to multiple reasons. 

One of the main reasons was the simplistic construction of the bus which is not practical in reality. 

Further, even the officials denied any knowledge of the test or association with the project. 

The city's top economic planner even accused the company of not even getting approval for the test.
Now the reports from China say the project has officially been scrapped. 

Authorities in Qinhuangdao in China's Hebei province have ordered the dismantling of a test-track for the traffic-straddling buses, reports EJinsight. 

Workers were seen using electric breakers to dismantle and remove the test-track, indicating that the TEB project has been officially dropped, The Hong Kong Economic Journal reports.

The interior of a model of an innovative street-straddling bus called Transit Elevated Bus seen after a test run in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, China, August 3, 2016.

Multiple reports also claim that residents in the neighbourhood have been seeking demolition of the track, which was said to be causing traffic problems. 

Further, the vehicle's design was not feasible for the real world. 

For example, there was just 6 feet 11 inches of clearance underneath the straddling bus, despite the country's regulations allowing traffic to be as tall as 13 feet 9 inches.
The Transit Elevated Bus was advertised with a speed of up to 60 kmph. 

The Elevated Bus concept showcased consisted of one segment with an option to get four compartments linked up together to accommodate 1,200 passengers at a time. 

In that case, TEB could have replaced 40 conventional buses.

Innovation with Chinese Characteristics

China's famous elevated bus is now just a giant roadblock
by Sherisse Pham and Serena Dong

China's elevated bus is going nowhere
After seizing the world's attention over the summer, China's futuristic elevated bus appears to have reached the end of the line.
Video of the road-straddling bus cruising over the top of cars during a test run spread like wildfire on social media back in August. 

But the quirky vehicle now sits idle at the test site in northern China, where it has become a hulking eyesore.
Billed as a potential answer to China's crippling traffic problems, the elevated bus is now the source of bottlenecks in the port city of Qinhuangdao. 

Cars traveling in both directions have to crowd together on the other side of the road to avoid the test tracks and the 26-foot-wide bus.
"The road is narrower, of course it affects traffic," said Wang Yimin, a local mechanic who was one of several residents who grumbled about the inconvenience.The cavernous space bellow TEB's elevated compartment.
To host the test drive, the city built special tracks for the giant electric-powered vehicle, which is 72 feet long and 16 feet high. 

The company behind the bus, TEB Technology, was supposed to restore the 330-yard-long test site to its original state by the end of August, according to China's official state news agency Xinhua.
But that never happened.
"The tracks are still there and we're aware that it causes transportation problems," said a Qinhuangdao government official, who declined to be identified by name because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
"I don't know much about TEB's future plans or what we will do with the tracks," the official said, adding that residents have been calling to complain.
Shortly after the test run in August -- in which people rode in an elevated compartment as the vehicle straddled a two-lane highway -- Chinese state media began questioning the legitimacy of the project.
They raised concerns that the whole thing was a publicity stunt funded by a peer-to-peer lending program, a loosely regulated form of investment that has resulted in scams in China.
Some local news outlets reported that TEB's backers were in financial trouble after promising investors overly ambitious returns.
Repeated phone calls to TEB went unanswered. 

When CNN visited the company's Beijing office one afternoon last week, most of the lights were off. 

Inside, a miniature version of the elevated bus was circling around a scale model of the capital city.The TEB bus and specially-built station take up half of the road, cars need to crowd onto the other side to drive past.

An employee who was there said he didn't know what the company's future plans were for the elevated bus or any other projects.
The vehicle tested in Qinhuangdao was just a prototype, he said, and TEB planned to have a real bus ready by the middle of next year.
"But with all this money cutting off now, the company can't do anything," the employee said, declining to be identified by name because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. 

His business card identified him as TEB's director of development.
The company appears to be "a good example of the risks that are involved" in peer-to-peer lending, said Zennon Kapron, the founder of Shanghai-based financial market research firm Kapronasia.The TEB bus sits idle, next to a station built just for the road test in August.
Experts also expressed doubts about the practicality of ever introducing the bus into Chinese cities.
The concept was originally unveiled in China in 2010. 

But it's not the first time a huge road-straddling vehicle has been suggested.The Landliner concept was featured in New York Magazine in 1969.

A pair of architects proposed a similar idea in 1969. 

The "Landliner" would have glided between Washington and Boston at 200 mph. 

The concept was featured as the cover story of New York magazine at the time.
But while that proposal faded into history, Qinhuangdao residents have to squeeze past the remains of TEB's concept every day.