Transit Elevated Bus

Model of the bus at InnoTrans 2016.

The Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) (simplified Chinese: 巴铁; traditional Chinese: 巴鐵; pinyin: Bā Tiě) was a proposed new bus concept where a guided bus straddles above road traffic, giving it the alternative names such as straddling bus, straddle bus, land airbus, or tunnel bus by international media.

A trial was scheduled to begin in Beijing's Mentougou District by late 2010.[1] However the project was not given authorization by the district authorities because the technology was considered to be too immature, and further trials were subject to the development of a concept to prove the system actually works.[2][3] The city of Manaus, Brazil, has also evaluated the option of installing a straddle bus in its city streets.[4] At the time of the 2016 unveiling of the scale model, it was reported that a prototype would be deployed by mid 2016 in Qinhuangdao. Four other Chinese cities, Nanyang, Shenyang, Tianjin, and Zhoukou, had also signed contracts for pilot projects involving the construction of test tracks beginning in 2016.[3][5]

However a test of a prototype design was scrapped in June 2017 over concerns about its viability.[6]

In July 2017, 32 people involved into the project were detained by Chinese authorities on suspicion of investment fraud.[7] The prototype bus was removed from the test track in early July.[8]

  1. ^ 3D Express Coach to be put into trial in Beijing Archived October 1, 2012, at the Wayback Machine CNTV.news, August 25, 2010
  2. ^ "The Straddling Bus". August 7, 2013. Retrieved April 14, 2015.
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference NYT052016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Manaus was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Guardian052016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "China's 'straddling bus' hits its final roadblock". BBC News. June 22, 2017. Retrieved June 25, 2017.
  7. ^ Hornby, Lucy (July 3, 2017). "China 'traffic-straddling' bus scrapped after fundraising probe". Financial Times.
  8. ^ "China's Traffic-Straddling Bus – One Year On". Born to Engineer. August 1, 2017. Retrieved August 1, 2017.