Check out this cool bus-train hybrid:It is an electric bus designed to be able to switch seamlessly between ordinary roads and dedicated "supertracks", on which it can reach speeds of 250kph (155mph).... The Superbus would be driven in the usual way on roads and an autopilot would be engaged when it reached a supertrack.Sounds pretty revolutionary: a super-SUV that picks you up at your house (with your own entry-exit), then drives to the Metro station and hops on to the tracks. Would Virginians give up their cars (and their gridlock) for this kind of commute?Though it is as wide and long as a standard city bus, the Superbus is only 1.7 metres high, or roughly the same height as a sports-utility vehicle.... [T]he designers managed to keep the Superbus this small by doing away with the central aisle usually found in today's buses, a vestigial design feature that allows passengers to stand upright, but also gives conventional buses the aerodynamic profile of a brick.
The low-riding Superbus, in contrast, has a separate door for each of its 30-odd seats. The low ceiling and the use of lightweight materials make for a far more streamlined vehicle, which in turn requires only a modest electric motor: though engineers have not yet decided whether the Superbus will be powered by fuel cells or batteries, they estimate that it will be able to accelerate from rest to 100kph in a leisurely 36 seconds.
The individual doors also allow for rapid loading and unloading of passengers, which will need to be fast if the Superbus is to live up to its promised door-to-door mission: instead of making predetermined stops, the vehicle will pick up and drop off passengers based on their text-messaged requests.
When we complain about how the 5.1 billion rail will not reduce congestion (from the studies), I have been told by Hudgins and Smyth...but people have an alternative.
I recommend the Super SUV alternative.
The idea is interesting though. I think they need to pick a friendlier looking design. It looks like a cross between the Batmobile and that vehicle Sigourney Weaver drove in Aliens!
Although I have allowed enough "progress" into my house to own a cellphone, I don't have a plan which allows texting. I have enough trouble keying in a phone number on those teeny-tiny keys, not to pay extra for texting-ability. Not everyone is young and nimble. In fact, it's those who aren't young and nimble who need a bus with seats-only.
And what about -- young and nimble -- mothers with infants and strollers and a couple of kids? They always seem to take a much longer time to get onto the public transport. Also, in an ordinary bus (with standing room as well as seats), you can always squeeze in an extra kid; in a bus with seats only... What if there are 3 left and you need 4?
And, with just 30+ passengers, how expensive would a ticket have to be for the thing to be fiscally viable? And who'd collect the money and how? OK, I suppose I *can* see an answer to that last question -- a pre-bought ticket, which you punch in, in a box on the door, which makes the door open.
The idea and design seem interesting, but the logistics are mind boggling (at least... they boggle *my* mind). And its duality -- the ability to drive on ordinary streets like a car and then jump onto a "super track" like a train... Might as well follow the sci-fi imagination all the way and make moving streets, like those "conveyor belts" at airports; just add seats, maybe with some sort of roof against bad weather...