This is just Bus Rapid Transit.
no no you see as it approaches a light, the light turns green, completely different from existing systems
We had busses with their own line on the motorway here in Korea for so many years.
We had electric busses in Poland in the beginning of the 80ies too.
Trolleybuses are busses with overhead power, this doesn’t seem to use pantographs or poles.
Sure because it has a huge battery on board which needs to be driven around, seems to me that the trolleybus is superior if you’re building infrastructure for this bus specifically anyway.
Trollybuses have their place, when you want a trolley, but the slopes too steep for metal on metal. Because you don’t have a track for ground, they either need a double pantograph or 2 trolley poles, which adds some complexity and can cause delays if they come off.
Battery (and ICE) buses are cheaper and more flexible since they don’t require pantographs.
Battery buses have their own issues: recharge time/complexity of exchanging batteries, range, battery lifespan, heating/AC. These don’t make battery buses infeasible, but they’ve caused significant issues for some implementations.
For instance, moscow replaced their trolleys with battery buses. Because running the heater during winter would deplete too much of the battery, they added gas heaters.
There’s a few cities that have tried battery trollybuses, that charge the battery when a pantograph is available. This seems like the worst of both worlds.
Tracks are much better for the environment and long-term sustainability then roads. Not having to build track shouldn’t be seen as a plus side, but as a compromise that had to be made.
It gets cars off the road immediately, so I think that’s the main value. I agree that tracks are a better long term solution.
That’s true. If this were america, I’d suspect the tracks would never come, but in China, maybe it is indeed an intermediary step towards light-rail or other non-road based people transport.
This is interesting in the way it has specialized traffic lines but otherwise works as like a more modern hybrid of a trolleybus and a light rail system.
It’s definitely an interesting and worthwhile iteration, but it’s not exactly revolutionary.
