Thrown under the bus

Last week we reported on a bizarre but weirdly clever public transport solution to China’s rampant urban traffic congestion; the Transit Elevated Bus, or TEB.

This retro- futuristic invention is designed to straddle two lanes of motorway and hover over the top of slow- moving traffic in an effort to leap- frog commuters ahead of backed- up traffic to their destinations on time. But all of a sudden this week, the project has been labelled a fraud. Huh?

Last week Chinese state media was falling over itself to applaud the strange invention, after its designers reported a successful run on a controlled test road in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province.

But now, in an about- turn, the official line is the transportation unit is a “complete scam” that will “defraud innocent investors”.

The change in stance has been exacerbated by Qinhuangdao officials who now deny any knowledge of the test or an official link with the project. In response, the company responsible for the TEB’s development — TEBtech — has issued a release saying the test run wasn’t a road test, but a component of internal testing.

The claim has seen further TEB testing abandoned, and the big Thunderbirds- style transportation unit now apparently hidden away behind a giant steel structure.

The video that accompanied the unveiling showed the vehicle moving only at a snail’s pace, but TEBtech insists it is capable of travelling at up to 60km/ h; a claim which now — along with other performance boasts, one assumes — has been thrown into doubt.

What a shame. While a strangely elaborate solution — and not without its impracticalities; bridges for example — we liked the TEB’s Jetsons- ish aesthetic.