In China as of the 30th October 2017, in the city of Zhuzhou, an amazing design has come to life.
A trackless, driverless, ‘rail bus’ has taken to the city roads.
Some say its faster than a speeding train, faster that a bullet, no, no it’s just a rail bus.
It looks like a Melbourne or Gold Coast tram at a first glance, until you look a little closer to see there are no rail lines, or over head power lines.
Some of the distinct advantages here are the significant reduction in costs. It’s extremely expensive ‘ripping’ up all the road to put in tram lines, or even rail lines. Then there are the overhead power lines that are required to power the vehicles below.
The cost difference must be enormous.
Some other functionality you could get, currently in Australia, ambulance and other emergency service personnel travelling in vehicles, are unable to use the resources of tram lines easily, especially not the rail lines. In the major cities of Sydney & Melbourne, this slows down the response. In an ever increasing world of terrorism, how more effective would our CBD environments be if the emergency services could utilise these public transport roads in the event of emergencies?
In design, sometimes the most obvious is the answer and sometimes it is not. This ‘rail bus’ design from China appears at a first glance as really plausible, using the Mythbusters analogy, concept that here in Australia we could use. The real question is, in Australia, are we blinded by what is possible, but the fear of what is impossible?
