China’s traffic-battling tram busted
Bus test ‘nothing more than a trick,’ newspaper charges as 32 from firm arrested
HONGKONG— Maybe a giant tram rolling over pesky cars clogging the streets wasn’t the answer to China’s traffic congestion woes. A Chinese inventor’s plan to develop such a vehicle, called a “traffic-straddling bus,” has been effectively killed after 32 people from an investment company that backed the project were arrested.
The bus was designed to ride on tracks, but with its body elevated so that two lanes of traffic could pass underneath. Some 1,200 passengers would have ridden between special- ized stops.
But critics raised many questions, including the expense of installing tracks and stations, whether tall trucks would get stuck underneath and about the risk to smaller vehicles and pedestrians.
“Cars under the belly of the big vehicle would have no way to change direction, and even changing lanes would be dangerous,” the Beijing News said last year.
After some delays and breathless news coverage, the TEB-1, or Transit Elevated Bus, was tested in August in the northern seaside town of Qinhuangdao.
In subsequent months, the Chinese media and investors raised pointed questions about the company behind the project, Huaying Kailai. The company promoted the “reliability” of investing in public-private part- nerships such as the bus initiative and promised annual returns of up to 12 per cent. A New York Times reporter who visited Huaying Kailai’s office in September saw walls lined with photographs of the owner, Bai Zhiming, with celebrities, entrepreneurs and local officials. A halfdozen investors stopped by over an hour. Some left with gifts and grocery bags full of cash.
“We are just a private tech company. We are not a briefcase company for illegal fundraising,” Zhang Wei, director of development and planning for TEB Tech, the Huaying Kailai subsidiary that developed the bus, told the reporter.
“Everything we do is approved by related departments in the government, and if we are an illegal company with financial issues, why are the local governments still interested in us?”
In the fall, as public scrutiny increased, the test track and the 22metre-long, five-metre-high prototype fell into disuse. In June, workers began dismantling the 300-metre track, a sign the local government would not let the project to continue.
Bai was among the 32 Huaying Kailai staff members arrested last week on suspicion of illegal fundraising, Beijing police announced on Sunday. Company officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Chinese news outlets were harshly critical, saying the exercise was little more than a fraud from the start.
“The truth is the bus was a fake science investment scam, with no scientific innovation,” a Beijing News op-ed said Monday.
“The test was nothing more than a trick to attract investors.”