Chinese to trial amazing traffic-busting 'tunnel bus'

by Steven Mostyn - Aug 5 2010, 13:07

The Chinese have seen the future of cost-effective public transport, and it looks not unlike a gigantic bus shaped like a compartmental tunnel that’s capable of ferrying around up to 1,200 passengers while two lanes of ordinary road traffic pass beneath it.

It may only be a concept at this point in time, but Chinese designers believe the aptly-named ‘tunnel bus’ is eco-friendly thanks to ‘relay charging’, its cutting-edge, roof-mounted electricity system. They hope it will also encourage vast sways of road users to leave their cars at home.

In terms of evaluating the placement and movement of the tunnel bus on the roads of China, current ideas are swaying back and forth between dedicated track lines splitting four-lane highways, or a combination of regular tyres and coloured directional road lines for the human driver to follow.

As the concept artwork clearly suggests, regular passengers will need to enter and exit the tunnel bus via elevated roadside stations. And, once in motion, the vehicle will scoot along above traffic without having to constantly adhere to the annoyance of congestion.

Part tunnel, part bus, and part tram, the tunnel bus will also come with inflatable emergency slides so that its elevated passengers can quickly disembark – a safety feature it clearly borrows from the aviation industry. 

While it may look like an idealistic pipedream, China is taking the tunnel bus concept very seriously. Moreover, a pilot scheme involving more than 115 miles of test track will launch in Beijing before the close of 2010. Now how’s that for serious?

The trial period will centre on determining how the technology functions and interacts with other road traffic, and how the giant tunnel can be safely managed so that it doesn’t become a danger to vehicles beneath it when twisting and turning.

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